NokiaBetaLabs

Finding ways

Written by Eeva, Wellness Diary team.  Photo by Anna Backman

It's been two weeks and it's time I report back on my progress of taking the advice. There's good news and bad news.

The good news is that I eat better and it's getting easier every day. Also, getting more exercise was easy: everything counts and not having a car at my disposal sort of forces me to use my muscles to go places.

The bad news is that the extra steps were hard to find at first, and my weight hasn't exactly gone down either. On the other hand, I have been walking to work and back again, noticing all kinds of little things on the way that get ignored otherwise. It's surprising and fun to find such little islands of nature in the middle of the city - I get to slow down and see what's really there.

Creating habits of tracking have proved to be the most challenging – it’s sometimes difficult enough to find time to squeeze in the extra exercise, let alone to remember to enter the things I’ve done. Happily, Wellness Diary has reminders that can be personalised to remind me to enter data. Now I type in my veggies and other foods in the evening, all at once, so I don’t have to remember Wellness Diary during the day if I don’t want to.

So what have I really done? I’ve taken up the habit of going for walks and searching for geocaches while I’m at it. I’ve noticed how the autumn colours change day by day, depending on the weather. I breathe more deeply, eat better food and consequently sleep better. I won’t bore you with the actual statistics, but I had to raise my exercise target pretty much straight up. Now I’m aiming for four hours weekly, and it looks like it’s doable.

I have to confess – I wouldn’t have found myself in these delightful places without this Wellness Diary challenge. Perhaps changing my lifestyle a little is not so hard after all? So far so good. Stay tuned for the final assessment.

How are you doing, any problems you have encountered?

- Eeva