I have a lot planned for this month. In less than a week, I will be starting a new semester, and I plan to do it the same way I did my very first semester of college. In other words, minimal amounts of caffeine (i.e no coffee after the first day of classes, this Monday), conscious eating and exercising (although I slacked on the latter my first semester), very good sleep patterns, and then the hard part: finding people with compatible lifestyles.
What's important to me isn't so much that I do all of this for 30 days, but that I can get a good idea in my head and just go for it, instead of waiting, doubting myself, or avoiding it for social reasons. The physical changes are mainly to keep my brain strong enough to handle the psychological changes.
If anyone is interested in the idea of
Accountability Partners, I also started a thread on that. I thought one on one communication might be more effective than the occasional, arbitrary post telling us that you succeeded, or didn't. It would expecially work best between people with similar goals.
In summary:
1. I am minimizing junk food/caffeine/alcohol to the point of making a checklist. Ten instances of junk food (defined as empty calories, not just any processed foods), two caffeinated beverages (only one can be coffee), ideally no alcohol, but maybe a sample. This seemed simpler than 'minimizing' or eliminating altogether.
2. I want to lift weights four times a week, do cardio four or five times a week, and for the remaining two days I'll do something milder.
3. I will be getting on an earlier schedule. No more going to sleep at sunrise and sleeping until late afternoon. Well, that is a little extreme, but it's exactly what I've been doing this last week, for whatever reason. It's a horribly depressing schedule because the sun gets almost totally left out of it.
4. I will do better in school. I won't be a perfectionist like earlier this semester, but I do want to start acting like a student again.
Due to my current circumstances, this plan will start on the 7th. Until then I will just be preparing. I'm not doing too bad so far, except for the fact that I've been awake for twenty hours right now.