Bad Habits

I will preface this post by saying that I am home after having worker's comp surgery and will be off for the month of October, before starting a new job November 3rd. Being used to working full-time since the age of 18 (almost 12 years now), this month will provide me with a much needed break, but I also sense I will be posting a lot out of boredom. So don't judge me too harshly.

I was thinking of all of the bad habits Joe and I have. I thought it would be good to list them. (This might be a long post.) This way we can take a step back and look at what needs to be fixed and thing about how to fix them. (Did I mention I am a scientist? I like to think analytically.) One note: because we live at home there are many things we are exposed to that we know are bad that we have no control over, such as my mom's addiction to air fresheners. For the purposes of this blog, I'm not really going to list them, but I may need to write a separate blog when we buy a house.

1. We both have water bottles, but too often we buy bottled soft drinks. I am especially addicted to Vitamin Water. I know about chemicals leaching from the plastic and about how long it takes the plastic to break down, but I just love XXX. It also serves the purpose of rehydrating me after practice (I'll spare you the gross details, but let's just say I sweat so much in 2 hours that I look like I jumped in a pool) when I need the electrolytes. It isn't cheap. I probably spend about $20 a week. That adds up to about $1000 a year. Too much.
2. We leave things plugged in all the time, resulting in phantom drain. There are too many people living in my house to calculate how much we electricity are not using, but I leave the following things plugged in all the time: TV, broken DVD player, DVD player, Tivo, Cable Box, blow dryer, cell phone charger, Ipod charger, Mac Book charger, printer, 2 lamps, alarm clock, and a hanging light. Joe probably has similar electronics plugged in round-the-clock.
3. Though I am careful to only buy cosmetics, etc. that were not tested on animals, I don't know anything about their chemistry or packaging.
4. I drive an SUV, albeit a 20 mpg SUV (but with 175 pounds of dog, it's a necessary evil).
5. We live in the suburbs, so we drive everywhere.
6. We eat a lot of sugar. I'm very nutrition conscious and to me, sugar is almost as bad as trans-fats. Even worse than sugar is High-Fructose Corn Syrup, which is in everything.
7. We both live in very toxic environments. Our mothers like to clean, but they almost exclusively use mainstream cleansers that are loaded with carcinogens, poisons, chemicals, fragrances, etc. that are not good for our health. Not so much our bad habit, but worth mentioning.
8. We don't workout enough. Joe is in great shape and I play roller derby, but neither of us does any strength training, which is so important for bone strength.
9. We don't eat enough protein. There are plenty of healthy ways to get protein as a vegetarian, but we need to focus on making sure we get it into our diet.
10. We don't take vitamins or minerals.
11. We rely on plastic WAY too much. Plastic containers, plastic cooking gadgets, plastic wrappers, plastic, plastic, plastic.
12. We spend too much money eating out. We don't eat out at healthy restaurants either. Typical meals are cheese (not rBGH-free), fat, non-organic vegetable laden. Not healthy, and expensive.
13. We both take excessively long showers. Joe just likes really hot showers. I take long ones because I have very long hair and using SLS-free shampoo takes longer to clean it.
14. We (mostly I) watch too much tv. I do Tivo most everything, so I can fast forward through commercials, but there's something being recorded every weeknight, sometimes 5 shows, I'm ashamed to admit. I wish I could say it is mostly PBS, Discovery and National Geographic, but they are a far cry from what is actually being recorded, like 90210, Gossip Girl and the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I often put the TV on just for background as well.
15. We shop at Whole Foods, because they have great selection at a great price, but it's half hour from our town. I used to shop at the one in Princeton on my way home from work, but now both Whole Foods in the area are at least 25 minutes away. The health food stores in our area are not very good. The Foodtown down the road has an OK health food store, but HORRIBLE eco-policies (that's a topic for another blog) so I really don't like shopping there.
16. I nap too much. I can't really explain why. I have some sort of circadian rhythm problem because I would nap all day and stay up all night if I could. I have never been a day person, even when I was a little kid.
17. We don't manage our time well. It results in tiffs and us not getting to do as many things as we would like. It relates back to #14 and #16 a lot as well.
18. I never thought this would be a bad habit, but...I hate clutter. I throw everything out because I don't like junk sitting around and it results in me generating a lot of trash. I recycle what I can, but my town only recycles plastic, glass and metal, so it's a small percentage.
19. We both like shopping way too much. In fact, I would go so far as to say we are shopaholics.
20. We have horrible posture and we both have back problems.

I know we have more bad habits then these, but now we have somewhere to start. Funnily enough, I text Joe as I was typing this to ask him what our bad habits and he responded with almost the same things I did: eating, lack of exercise, sleep habits, not taking vitamins, staring at screens for too long. We think in parallels.