Becoming Superhuman

[Not me]

I feel like it's time to start journaling again. Last time I tried doing this I wasn't very motivated and didn't find much help from this. Right now I feel like I can make decent progress on my own, but to really grow fast and get the next level results I aim for I have decided that it is necessary to hod myself accountable. And since none of my friends do personal development I think this forum is the way to go. 

Right now my life is great. I go to a high school where I spend five hours a day, I have great health, amazing levels of energy and a supporting family. My mum even meditates and dad reads self-help books . I have good relationships and school goes well. I meditate two to three hours a day and listen to one personal development audiobook per week and I feel quite happy most days. But I feel I can be more fulfilled and kick way more ass in my life. So this journal will be about taking my life to a superhuman level.

 I have a couple of obstacles on my way to the life of my dreams. Those are binge eating and not getting enough sleep. If I let these continue they will destroy my energy and health in the long run. So I will dedicate the next few months of my life to finding permanent solutions to these.

 I actually found the solution to binge eating already. I read the book "Never binge again" and there I was told to create a food plan and any time there were any thoughts or feelings that told me to slip away from that plan I would reframe those as "the Pig". So I don't have cravings, the pig does. Binge eating is basically just a survival drive gone wrong in my lower brain. So now that part of my brain thinks it needs to binge to survive. However it doesn't have any control over my actions and that's why it tries to generate thoughts and cravings which seem like they are mine to get me to binge. So the only thing I need to do is not to mistakes those cravings as mine.

I have created a food plan for myself which basically says my diet consists of natural sources of protein, beans and vegetables and I can eat them as much as I want until my hunger is satisfied. I have promised myself to never binge again (any time I eat outside my food plan is basically a binge) and now I will make that promise to all of you here on actualized.org too. So that when the pig tries to convince me to eat disgusting sh*t, I will remind myself of how painful it will be to tell you all I have failed.

After the binge monster is caged I want to get to 7% body fat (currently 12%). The reasons for this are that achieving this goal requires almost complete control over my actions and habits and transforming my psyche/subconscious into a new one. These will all be so valuable skills in the future that I feel this is the perfect project for me (besides, everybody loves abs ).

The problem with sleep is just that It takes like an hour for me to fall asleep so I will be experimenting with strategies to if all asleep faster so I can get the rest I need. At the moment I sleep about eight hours a night but nine would be optimal because I don't feel quite as rested as I want to be.

I'm also going to write down other thoughts, insights, my daily progress, struggles and my meditation hours to keep this interesting and hopefully also provide value and helpful ideas for you guys as well. 

I will commit to writing this journal for 15 minutes every morning before going to school so expect to hear from me every day. I wish you all the best on your journeys! 

 

[Not me]

Yesterday was great!  I meditated one hour and and did one hour self-inquiry in the morning. After that I felt so alive and everything seemed so beautiful. Sun was shining outside and I listened to music and everything felt really good. Almost starting to get to that childhood vibe a little bit. Also don't have any idea if self-inquiry is working or not. I just see that in my direct experience my own head is just a thought and the feeling I call me is a feeling inside that thought and it changes places when I try to point at it. Sometimes it also disappear entirely and I have zero idea who I am, but I still don't really feel like I'm getting any enlightenment experiences or anything like that. Just a whole lot of confusion.

I did school stuff the rest of the day and ate only one meal the whole day. There were some urges to go and eat the dessert my dad had made but I was able to immediately notice them as not me.

[Not me]

Today I meditated 15 minutes before school.  And in the evening one hour of just trying to meditate but getting lost in thought like every five seconds. I thought I was gonna be tired because I only slept seven hours but my energy was actually pretty high the whole day. Although after lunch I'm always dead tired which is why I skip it as often as I can but I can only do that when I have a different lunchtime than my friends. It feels to me that my days are always the same and that I never do nothing new. So I changed just a small thing: I went to a different store to buy food and walked around that neighborhood a little. Even a little change like that felt really good and brought newness to my life. I think I will try to spice up my life with those kinds of small things more to keep my daily routine from becoming too boring. 

The aren't much urges to eat unhealthy foods during weekdays. They usually hit me on the weekends or when I'm really tired.

[Not me]

Today meditated again 15 minutes before school and one hour in the evening. Been feeling a little sick for the past two weeks and not been able to exercise. Slept really well last night, almost 10 hours. My sleep really has a huge impact on my ability to focus during meditation. When I haven't slept properly I feel like I'm just sitting and trying to stay awake  .  

What I realized today is that if I put too much salt on my food, my hunger doesn't seem to go away at all and I will have crazy cravings. For dinner I ate half a kilo of salmon, two cups of beans, an entire broccoli, two carrots, two bell peppers and like five tomatoes. Then meditated for one hour and was super hungry after that  . Even though my stomach was all filled up I still experienced hunger, weird.

[Sevi]

Funny and yummy

I'm not expert or something on diets; but if you use your brain a lot, think a lot your body uses your sugar resources for it. You ate protein stuff in the diner, then if you focused your mind kind of intensely in the meditation, your body might be saying you that your blood sugar level is getting low..

Put some ice cubes on your liver while meditating, you'll sense a sudden silence in your mind? you can try that before sleeping to see the effect..

May be I'll write you the relationship between the sugar and the liver and the thoughts later? good night!

(Oh I wanna eat salmon right now! But too late.. I'm almost about to sleep..)

[Not me]

@Sevi I will definitely try that. Thanks!

[Sevi]

And I will definitely eat some salmon

 

[Not me]

Damn! This is what happened: I often feel strong cravings when I haven't drunk enough water and that's exactly what happened today. I felt a strong urge to eat something and I just went to eat something small because I thought I actually was hungry. But after I ate, I felt even stronger urges to eat something more and that continued for quite a while. I didn't eat much unhealthy stuff but simply stuffed myself with normal foods because the hunger didn't seem to go away. Logically I already knew it was just thirst but somehow I just didn't drink. I will make sure next time I will drink a big glass of water before eating anything. This also screwed my meditation. Because the eating took so long I was only able to meditate for ten minutes .  I think I will try eating only mean meal in school, one snack and a dinner so that I'm not wasting all my time just eating.

[Not me]

Yeeeez back on track! Today I had only two meals + some bcaa for snack. I felt really productive because I had so much more time. After school I read about half of the book "Mastery" and  also cleaned the house a lot.  Then I finished the book breaking the habit of being yourself by Joe Dispenza and started doing the subconscious reprogramming from the book. I also meditated for one hour in the morning and did 15 minutes of self-inquiry in the evening. Plus I was asking what the heck am I almost the whole day whenever I could. It's funny because I'm in school with my friends and all those people around me but still I have absolutely no clue of who I am. Before going to bed I took a walk. It was really beautiful outside: it was snowing and the lights of the town were glowing through this white-yellow snowy fog. And it was quiet everywhere. I really enjoyed the silence.

[Not me]

Loving this two meals a day thing. Even though I still eat quite slowly I have much more time in my day. However I only got 15 minutes of meditation which isn't that bad because I feel I get a good amount on most days. Now I actually realized that I don't know who I am and that is super scary. I feel like I don't want to ask that question anymore because it feels so scary. Until this enlightenment has just been some kind of impossible to reach goal in my mind but now I can actually feel what it would be like to have no self . 

Some things I realized today: If I drink a lot of water after meals, I quickly get hungry again, if I tell myself that I'm the kind of person who doesn't eat unhealthy foods and say I don't do that rather than I can't do that, it will become part of my identity and I'm much more likely to stick to my food plan

 

[Not me]

Hate to admit it but binged. We had some sort of pancakes and lots of delicious looking bread at our lunch table (I live at home). I immediately felt strong urges to eat those but I recognized that that's not me who wants to eat them. I ate a big serving of cauliflower and lentils but I still had super strong urges so I though (or rather "the pig" did but I din't recognize it) that it doesn't matter if I eat just of some of those pancakes. After all it's Saturday and once a week won't do any harm right? So I ate bread and pancakes until I was completely full and then stopped. In my previous binges I had just eaten and eaten until I couldn't physically put more food into my body, but now I was able to stop much earlier. After that I went to do other things but couple hours passed and I was still hungry so I ate some more bread and a couple eggs and stopped there. I probably ate a little above what my body needed but that's better than going completely overboard. I'm making fast progress towards being completely free of bingeing but I still sometimes mistakes those urges as me. 

Oh yeah and I meditated for 90 minutes and did self-inquiry for 50 minutes.

[Not me]

Okay still overeating. Must stop kidding myself and actually do something about this. I will do self hypnosis and affirmations every day for at least a month and see how it affects this. And go to sleep earlier. Then I don't have much cravings.

Meditated for 90 minutes and did self-inquiry for 90 minutes.

[Not me]

I've been doing quite a bit of research into habit change. I've watched and read tons of videos and articles about it. One technique I found is kinda similar to that in Leo's video "awareness alone is curative". It's basically just mindfulness where you notice the urge and what's going on in your mind and body when you get triggered to do the habit. And also noticing how the triggering cue feels. Then you just enjoy letting go. I've found that this kinda makes any bad habits feel less good to do and when you notice how unconsciously you have been acting it also makes you less likely to do them. 

Today I felt really good because I ate moderately and super healthy foods. I meditated for 45 minutes before school in the morning. I was supposed to do another one in the evening but I went for a walk with my family and after that I didn't have any more time for it.

[Not me]

Everything going well. Meditated for 40 minutes in the morning and did self-inquiry for 30 minutes in the evening. My sense of self has been quite shaky for the past week. Almost feel like enlightenment could actually happen but obviously I can't know. It's now been a year since I first started doing self-inquiry.

I ate two healthy meals during the day and a big snack before bed. I tried to go a little lower in calories today because we didn't have much food at home and I didn't want to go buy any. That caused me to be pretty hungry before bed and eat some foods outside my food plan. However it was all perfectly under control so no problem there. Currently I can tolerate hunger well at almost any time except when I need to go to bed.

[Not me]

Felt really good yesterday and the day before that but today I ate way too much outside my food plan. I didn't even have strong urges to do so but I just did it anyway. I didn't overeat that much and I was able to stop it quite fast but it seems that often in the evening I forget to recognize that any wants and urges to eat unhealthy foods are not mine. We don't really have that much unhealthy foods in our home but bread is something I have hard time resisting and I would rather not eat it. I just need to remember to detect those urges no matter how small or innocent-looking, especially at those times when I think they won't be coming. 

Was really tired and only got 30 minutes of sleepy meditation in the morning.

[Not me]

I ate two huge meals and was able to detect way more urges than before and felt really powerful and in control because I din't act on them. I woke up a little later than usually and didn't have time to meditate in the morning. I did two workouts, one before school and one after school, and felt really good the whole day. After school and working out I just listen to change anything and took notes until it was almost time to go to bed. Then I did 10 minutes of self-inquiry and 10 minutes of meditation. I really felt myself and realized exactly what I think I am. Then I focused all my attention on that sensation and I'm like "F*uck am I gonna die doing this". It was so weird. I only had to ask once who am I and immediately fear came up. Almost feels like I'm losing my mind

[Not me]

Feeling really good! My friends are also interested in getting to amazing shape and we had a really motivating conversation over a cup of coffee. We decided we are all going to get into amazing shape by summer. I felt really motivated because I made a promise to someone and because my friends are on this journey with me. Now it feels like I will do it no matter what. Apart from school I just walked an listened to Change anything. The ideas in that book are really motivating and I feel almost unstoppable putting those ideas into practice. I've read many self-help books but this one is not just ideas but how to actually change anything in your life. It is about getting the six sources that influence your decisions on your side during critical moments.

I ate healthy foods in moderation and felt great about it. Before bed I meditated for 20 minutes.

[Not me]

Everything going well. Just finished Change anything and it seems to be working well. Usually I have binged on Fridays or Saturdays but this time it didn't happen. I just won't let it happen any more. Also realized that I often eat way too much protein and that I don't always need to eat when I'm hungry and I can go to bed just fine even when I'm a little hungry. Another thing I learned is that if I eat just one bread it will always turn into binge so bread is something I must absolutely avoid.

I meditated for 30 minutes in the morning and did self-inquiry for 30 minutes in the evening.

[Not me]

Now I have learned to eat much more moderately than before. But if I'm to lose fat, I will still have to reduce my eating a bit. I'm used to always taking two plates of food so now I will try to cut it to just one and wait for a while and see if the hunger goes away. But anyways it feels like I'm finally able to change myself. I will also try adding visualizations and affirmations and do them on my way to school for extra boost.

I meditated 30 minutes in the morning. 

[Not me]

Feeling really good about this progress I have been able to make. My sleep has improved and I feel much better every day. I have been eating much more moderately and had much more control over my urges to eat. I watched some Leo's weight loss videos and since that I have been really focusing on the day at hand and what I can do to eat less. I have eaten only healthy foods for the past four days and that has felt amazing as well.

I haven't been meditating that much because I have just been looking for solutions to this eating problem. I also have exam week coming so we'll see how much I will be able to meditate then. Today I meditated for 30 minutes right before bed.