NEW! Donuts + Down Dog Weekly Wellness Tracker
What’s your biggest struggle when it comes to your personal wellness?
For me it’s time. I start with the best of intentions, but when life gets busy I always put things like my workouts, meditations, or outdoor walks on the back burner. I’ll treat them as a “nice to have” instead of a “must-have” when things get rough. The irony, obviously, is that skipping those things just makes my stress levels worse. And then I feel worse. And then it spirals. And I know I am not alone in this.
Which is whyyy…..I created a wellness tracker!
Actually, I didn’t really intend to create anything. The wellness tracker originated as a format I would use in my journal each week to keep myself on track when COVID started and all of the days started to blend together. I would get to the end of the week and, despite not really having gone anywhere or done anything, I would realize I hadn’t found time to workout, I wasn’t nourishing myself, and I wasn’t sticking to any of the productive, healthy habits that make me feel my best; things like meditation and making sure I go into the sunlight every day (there’s a reason every vampire movie is set in Seattle, we THRIVE in the darkness). After hearing so many of you were struggling with the same thing, I decided to turn my personal journal formatting into a tangible resource for all of us to use. Enter: the Donuts + Down Dog weekly wellness tracker.
☟ Want in? Grab it here ☟
Here’s a breakdown of how it works:
Focus: What do you want to focus on this week? Do you want to put on real clothes for work? Do you want to have better boundaries surrounding work? Do you want to find more joy in the soul-sucking monotony of staff meetings? Having your one focus for the week listed front and center will keep it top (pun intended!) of mind.
Mantra: What’s your theme song for the week? What quote is giving you life? Nine times out of ten my mantra is a Beyoncé lyric, for obvious reasons.
Rest day: Lately I’ve been sharing a lot of content about overexercising and exercise-addiction in women. One of the most common mistakes that I see people make in their fitness goals is skipping rest days, or never taking a day off. Rest days are important for muscle recovery, reducing inflammation in your body, and allowing yourself time to just relax. I always suggest scheduling a rest day each week so that you know when it’s coming. This also gives you the flexibility to move it around week to week depending on your schedule and needs. Here’s a little bonus time: you can take more than one!
Habit tracker: The habit tracker is like a tracker within a tracker. Is this inception?? This is where you declare the habits that you want to stick with for the rest of the week, and then have a daily visual cue reminding you to follow through with them. I usually include things in my habit tracker like meditation, a daily walk outside, 30 minutes of reading, or putting on sunscreen. It seems small, but the simple act of physically crossing something off a list is incredibly motivating.
Nutrition: After many failed attempts I realized that I will never be the kind of person that spends every Sunday afternoon meal prepping for the week; I just can’t stick with it. I like to do my meal-prepping on a more basic level by planning out what I’ll cook or throw together based on my schedule and what we have around the house.
Hydration: Hydration is often overlooked and underestimated. Staying on top of it, though, can help digestion, energy levels, and skin health, just to name a few benefits. Personally, I use each drop to signify ONE water bottle. Use them to represent whatever amount makes the most sense.
Self-care plan: How are you going to take care of yourself this week? What do you need? Remember: this doesn’t have to be face masks, nail appointments, and bubble baths. Self-care for you might look like going to bed before midnight, having protein with breakfast, or putting your phone in another room while you work.
To-do: Think of this section as your non-negotiables for the week, a list of all the really big things that you want to get off your plate. I use this section to list out the things that are stressing me out the most and then chip away at them one by one. I always feel so relieved at the end of the week when I look down and they’re all done. Goodbye, anxiety dreams! (Just kidding anxiety dreams will never die, but at least now they won’t be about those tasks).
It’s also not dated so that you can use it when you need it without getting stressed if you miss a week (or 5).
