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weekly write up: week of september 15

What did you do this week?

One of my top highlights of the week was going to Costco, and if that doesn’t resonate with you, we’re just very different people. It’s okay, but we need to acknowledge it. There are approx. 200mg of caffeine and 2000g of sugar in those frozen mochas from the food court, and man do they get me going. The chicken strips are also something I’m happy to recommend. Other great things from my Costco trip were the Kirkland Burnt Ends that got stuffed in a baked potato, and a rotisserie chicken that turned into my favorite chicken salad. We had a huge plate of crunchy cold vegetables with some homemade hummus one evening, I got to go for a run with my coworker turned friend Henry, and I got to run in the Presidio, one of my favorite places in the world. On Saturday morning while David was out on his long run, Z and I built a 301 piece Lego excavator, and it was awesome. Some weeks I am able to see really clearly how the unremarkable day to day stuff is just really where all the magic is.

Last Week’s Goals

✅ Get 100 responses on the nutrition habits survey

Percentage wise, this was a fail. I got 58 responses, after sending pleading texts to several people, posting in r/samplesize and reposting in several other subreddits, and, thanks to one survey responder, posting in surveyswap.io. BUT- The goal of the survey was really just to give me some directional insights to question or validate things I already had bouncing around in my head, and point me towards things I should keep digging into. From this perspective, we’re calling it a success! Lots of fun insights, some ideas about future writing on how data and real human stories have to pair together to be valuable, and when and how each should be used.

✅ Schedule 10 calls with folks who complete the survey

I had one lovely call with my favorite Sports Certified RD, Stevie, and I have another call scheduled this week with another RD, and one next week too! I had three more structured chats about people's survey responses, and have four more people to follow up next week. That is 4 calls done, 2 more scheduled, and 4 more to schedule! The talking to people is the fun part, I’ve always wanted my own podcast, maybe I should be recording these sessions?

✅ Put together some SEO learnings and ask for feedback

Check out the most basic intro to SEO here! I had initially felt like this was a failure result, because I wasn’t being honest with myself about what my goal was. After I sat down and wrote 2 pages of learnings, I realized this was a worthwhile goal and I completed it successfully. I’ve known what SEO was and have realized its importance for businesses and people building things for at least six or seven years, but I had next to no idea what inputs went into it. Like I shared in my write up, it doesn’t seem important to me at this point in time to understand each individual algorithm (which is probably not even possible), but spending some time on Google’s developer docs and wrapping my head around the basics not only made me feel more prepared to keep writing things online that someone besides my husband may read some day, but also made me feel like a more informed consumer of internet content. Learning stuff, all you can really ask for right?

This Week’s Goals

  • ☑️ Package for myself all of the hypotheses and theories I’ve started to formulate from chats about nutrition habits, and conversations with RD’s and other health and wellness professionals.
  • ☑️ Make some meal plans and recipes to try together for these last few weeks before the Chicago Marathon.
  • ☑️ Share another piece of writing- a few things in progress right now!

Have you changed your mind on anything? What have you learned?

A lot of what I’ve been learning lately are just reminders of things I know, and haven’t really embodied well, or with confidence. If this is the only place on the internet where you’ve been for the last oh, 8-9 years, things are bleak. There are approximately a billion things we could all be doing, learning, and understanding that might make us better, that might help us make the world better. I also think that if many of us said less, or did less when we didn't actually have a ton of conviction or if something didn’t really deeply resonate with us personally, we’d all be more effective and well, sane.

Some of the things in this category of “It does matter, but not to me right now” include Sydney Sweeney and whatever latest ad she was in, whether that one tennis playing dude tries as hard to support his soccer playing girlfriend as she does him, and whether AI is going to kill us all in the next ten years. Just because I don’t have an informed or even a half baked thought about any of these currently trending items doesn’t mean I care any less about the sexualization of women, the importance of equality and representation of female athletes, or the overall survival of our species. This week, I showed my care for these things by being really present with my daughter, by drinking a real cup of coffee in a real local business while I wrote on a regular old piece of paper with a nice pen and chatted with the girl at the next table over for a few minutes. I showed my care for these things by choosing to eat nourishing meals and run in beautiful places. This week I did a workout with my shirt off even though I felt bloated and unattractive because it was hot and I felt strong in my sports bra running up a hill.

These things matter. If you are human, and feel like every single day is asking you to choose which side of history you’re on, feel that you constantly must speak up, please know that I, and many many others will not love you any less if you just close some tabs, put your phone down, and go love the people, including yourself, that you see in your real regular life today. There is an absolute shit ton of awful awful stuff out there, and there are endless things we can all be doing about it, but the next best step may just be to be kind, present, and human.

I know and agree with the idea that being silent makes you complicit. I also think that can exist in tandem with the belief that what you say in your own life to the people around you matters more than what you don’t say on the internet.

ANYWAY. A few brief but fun (and potentially obvious) insights from nutrition habit chats and survey responses too- please feel free to comment on any of these if you have a hot take on any of them. You can also still take my nutrition habits survey here.

  • People who are most confident in their nutrition don’t use apps to track their food intake.
  • Most people who have worked with a dietitian rate the experience as positive, and feel more confident in their own nutrition habits, AND are more likely to be maintaining their nutrition habits, not changing them in any way.
  • People who are confident in their nutrition habits tend to talk about how food makes them feel physically and emotionally.
  • Most people stop using food trackers because they’re tedious, or they create obsessive or negative feelings about food.
  • People who use social media as their primary source of information about nutrition also report having the least confidence around their nutrition habits.

What went well? What could be improved? What didn’t go well?

WWW: David mentioned that eating a real breakfast with real protein gave him good energy for the day. I took this as my cue to make some egg muffins for the week. A handful of hash browns, some diced up ham, some frozen bell peppers, pour egg whites over it, top with cheese if ya want! Megan Featherstone has a more complicated version of this tater tot casserole you can try too if you’re feeling extra. I love the casserole, but have not been disappointed in my faster, easier muffin style options this week.

WWW: I really love Instinct. I have tasked it with managing my to do lists that usually bounce around in my head, setting some calendar appointments I usually forget to add, things like that. I’ve never been excellent at creating task tracking systems for myself, but Instinct is making it easy to offload right now.

WCBI: I missed my Tuesday write up cadence this week, I really just felt brain dead and tired yesterday- I think if I had just gotten moving earlier in the day I could have overcome the fog. Good news is, I got right to work on Wednesday morning and felt much better. Gotta get momentum early in the day.

WDGW: My favorite downhill trail in the Presidio was closed, so I just ran down the road, resulting in a gnarly blister on my toe. I then decided I’d just pop that blister, I did tooo muchhh, and now I have a very sore open wound on my toe. I shouldn’t talk about my feet this much on the internet, but I know the runners understand. Sorry to everyone else.