Taking care as writers: are you all right over there?
Finding a sustainable routine while nurturing your passion for making up stuff.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about planning a summer routine around three staples: a regular writing practice, quality time with loved ones, and regular diet and exercise. This last one—regular diet and exercise, part of our overall well being, often goes ignored by writers. I even find myself, someone who has prioritized wellness from my twenties into my thirties, ignoring my health if I am in a writing flow, if the weather stinks, or I’m overly stressed.
This week, I want to share my ideal routine for maintaining well being through diet, exercise, and sleep. And by “ideal,” I mean my routine is sustainable in the face of my 9-5, my writing practice, and adult responsibilities, while allowing me to feel consistently good, both physically and mentally.
Diet
After emerging from the funk of winter where I ignore basic human functions—unfortunately, it is not sustainable for 40 percent of my diet to consist of chocolate chips—I am prioritizing three healthy meals a day (along with a sweet treat, of course). I repeat the same meals for breakfast and lunch and have several dinners on rotation at a time to keep decision fatigue at bay.
My go-to spring/summer breakfast is overnight oats. I make them in batches twice a week, so in the morning, I can just add toppings and dig in. I’ve been making a chocolate blended oat recipe that tastes like pudding, and my version has about 38 grams of protein. (And yes, the cocoa powder in addition to the chocolate protein is necessary for the perfect chocolatey flavor.)
For one serving, blend all ingredients together and refrigerate overnight:
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 scoop chocolate protein powder
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
4 oz. milk
2.5 oz. water
Salt+cinnamon+vanilla to taste
To top, I add a banana and a serving of PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter.
But really, for breakfast, whatever floats your boat and is easy for you to prepare each morning is the best option for you.
For lunch, my least favorite meal, I keep it stupidly simple, otherwise I would skip it or snack my way to dinner. My repeat lunch is three soft boiled eggs, two pieces of toast, and a bowl of raw veggies (carrots, bell pepper, broccoli). This sounds like a depressing lunch, I know, but it hits the checklist of protein, carbs, and fats, and ensures I’m not only eating vegetables at dinner. It’s also quite a crunchy lunch, which is nice after eating blended oats for breakfast, and nothing is more savory and delectable than a soft boiled egg with salt, pepper, and oregano. Also, I’ll note that this works for me because I work from home. If you work outside your home, a meal-prepped style lunch might suit you better.
Dinner is where I enjoy the creative process. I love to cook and find new recipes, and I often try to find recipes with overlapping ingredient lists that are both healthy and provide seasonal comfort (crunchy, filling salads in summer vs. savory tofu noodle soup in winter). I wish I were a cookbook person, and in fact, I own many. But I often find my recipes through Instagram (the one pleasure of an otherwise soul-sucking app), or most recently, I repurposed a recipe I enjoyed at a neighborhood restaurant.
My husband and I were vegetarians for several years, so many of the Instagram cooking accounts I follow are plant-based. I really enjoy From My Bowl and Glow Diaries. It’s really simple for me to find a veggie-packed recipe and add my preferred protein option, be it of the meat or plant variety.
For instance, we’ve been loving this brown rice salad recipe by Glow Diaries. Super simple to make and a perfect base for chicken or tofu. I typically make a smaller two-person portion compared to the original recipe.
Another current staple is a salad recipe I took from one of our go-to local restaurants: mixed greens, blueberries, watermelon radish, goat cheese, candied pecans, avocado, cucumbers, pickled red onion, and champagne vinaigrette. The ingredients felt like an odd pairing, but the salad hits all flavor notes—sweet, salty, tangy, and earthy—along with being pleasingly colorful. I can’t easily find watermelon radish, so I leave it out, and I swap pumpkin seeds for pecans, along with making my own white balsamic vinaigrette. When in doubt, make a recipe work for you.
Keep it simple, keep it healthy, and keep it flavorful. That’s the recipe for a successful diet.
Exercise
My current exercise routine has been more than a decade in the making. I began consciously exercising in my early twenties. This meant using my college’s rec center and its various machines, though I often didn’t know what I was doing or why, but bless me for trying. When I graduated and became a low-paid journalist, I took up Yoga with Adriene at home, following a recommendation by my sister. Yoga is widely accessible, and though I’ve transitioned away from it as my main form of exercise, it’s a great gateway to building an exercise routine and a wonderful practice to maintain flexibility and strength.
In the years following, I transitioned from yoga to Pilates to weight training. Here I will add that I do all of my workouts from home. I wish I were a gym person—I’d love to have access to heavier weights and machines, but I know that if I had to go to a gym to work out, my routine would crumble. I’m an introvert! I don’t want to fight for dumbbells or treadmills, and I certainly don’t want to plan my workouts around avoiding crowds. That’s adding stress onto an activity meant to destress me. If you are a gym goer, wonderful. I am jealous of you. But it is not for me.
I started strength training with free workouts on YouTube from Sydney Cummings, followed by Caroline Girvan. Cummings is a great instructor for all levels, but especially beginners, as she talks through every workout. Girvan is pretty hardcore, better for intermediate/advanced individuals. While I now pay for Girvan’s CGX app, she still has a number of free programs on YouTube.
For low-impact cardio, I love walking. I have a walking pad I love dearly in the winter, but I’ve been enjoying post-dinner walks with my husband as the weather gets warmer. Bonus: If you can get outside and keep your headphones at home, you’re bound to find writing inspiration from both the endorphins and varied scenery.
Your workouts do not need to be “pretty” or Instagram-worthy to count. In our small apartment, our workout setup (weights, walking pad, exercise bike, and workout bench) are stuffed into the entryway. Not ideal, but as introverts who do not host regularly, it works for us.
The best exercise for you should feel good, challenging, and manageable. And let’s not forget, in a capitalistic society of people trying to hawk their workout and weight loss programs: exercise, at its core, is free.
Sleep
I won’t over-explain this one: Sleep is good for you. We all know that, but we don’t always practice good sleep behavior. I have been a fiend for falling asleep to YouTube videos or scrolling Reddit, which is awful, awful, awful.
Two actions have recently done a 180 on my sleep routine: taking post-dinner walks and leaving my phone out of the bedroom. As weather allows, I join my husband for a walk after dinner, which allows us to spend time together and wind down naturally for the day. I’ve noticed my sleep improve with this gentle movement in the hours before bed, along with cutting out late night eating.
And of course, nothing helps bring on sleep like forbidding the bright little rectangle from your bedroom. I have found this an easier habit to maintain by:
Having an actual alarm clock and not relying on my phone.
Having the accountability of my husband who also goes to bed without his phone.
Using an app blocker to reduce the temptation to bring my phone to bed. Focus Friend is my most beloved, and I like to put my jelly bean friend to work knitting socks before I head off to dreamland. Then when I wake up, I can trade in those socks for some virtual garden plants. It’s the little things.
Reading before bed is a natural, quiet, potentially screen-free (if you like physical copies) way to wind down. I would like to make this a habit, as I currently read in the morning before work.
This routine has vastly improved my sleep—going to bed earlier, less tossing and turning, and on total, catching 7-8 hours per night.
How do you take care of yourself as a writer, or more broadly, a creative? Alternately, what would you like to improve about your daily routine? I hope my insights help you. Your routine doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to look the same every day, it just has to work for you, over time, to keep you physically well, so that mentally, your brain can work its creative magic.
What I’m Reading
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong
Wong sat on an AWP panel on the flash essay form, and I really loved hearing from her and about her memoir. Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is my pick for my family’s May book club, which includes Wong’s reflections on growing up in her family’s Chinese restaurant on the Jersey shore.