Tracking Archives - Pinecone Papers

Tracking Energy & Fatigue When You Have a Chronic Illness

jess — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 01:52:53 +0000

Tracking my chronic illness symptoms has been very valuable for spotting trends and just understanding my illness overall. But did you know I also track other habits and self-care routines that affect my overall well-being outside of my lupus flares? I track some of these on the Flare Symptom Tracker and some of them I look at more closely or track completely separately on their own pages. My sleep & energy tracker is an example of something I keep on a separate page. Why? The simplest reason is because when I’m not in a flare, I have a lot of control over my energy from day to day. It’s super empowering to realize that decisions I make will help me have more energy and feel more like a productive human! Let’s take a peek at how and why I track my energy. Day-to-day choices and habits that affect my energy levels The purpose of tracking my energy is to help me see patterns and to keep myself accountable when I am not in a flare. Outside of a flare, I know I have some control over what affects my energy because tracking has taught me this! I can easily see the pattern between nighttime sleep, naps, water intake and food choices and how it affects my energy levels. During a flare, I still want to be on track with these habits because they will help my overall well-being and they do play a role in how I get through a flare. For me, the biggest factor affecting my daily energy outside of a flare is the amount of sleep I got the night before and whether or not I’ve napped. I need a ton of sleep, so if I start to see the amount of sleep I am getting fall off, and I don’t make time for naps, I will definitely see a drop in my energy levels. Two other major factors that affect my sleep are my hydration level and whether or not I’m making good food choices. These are two things I do actually track on the flare tracker as well, partly because when I’m in a flare I really want those two self-care habits to be front and center in my mind. Some may feel that’s overkill, but I like it this way. 🙂 If you’re starting to track your own daily energy levels, you may want to start by identifying the things that affect your personal energy. For most of us, sleep will easily be on this list, but there may be other factors, such as: Physical activity may either wear down your energy or it may actually increase it Mental stimulation (reading, solving problems, etc) could be draining or stimulating Social interactions can drain or stimulate your energy The types of food you eat can affect your energy Hydration, vitamin and mineral balance affect your energy Stimulation and crashes from sugar or caffeine Rest periods during the day (naps or meditation) How fatigue symptoms affect my energy levels If I’m in a flare, fatigue will be the number one reason my energy is low. While I should definitely be making good self-care choices, sometimes all the sleep in the world or other self-care habits won’t bring my energy level up if I’m fatigued. So, what is fatigue? First, I should start by saying that the word “fatigue” can mean different things to different people. But in the chronic illness world, it is generally understood that “fatigue” is NOT tiredness. Here’s the difference: Taking a nap, going for a walk, changing your activity to something more stimulating, or drinking caffeine will typically relieve tiredness. It may be short-lived, but you will generally feel refreshed or have renewed energy for a time if you do something to address your tiredness. But none of these activities will relieve fatigue. If I am having a lot of fatigue, a nap is not going to make me feel less fatigued. I’ll wake up feeling the same as when I went to sleep (sometimes worse). Walking doesn’t help… caffeine doesn’t even dent it… in fact, there is very little I can do during the day to wipe the fatigue away. All I can do is modify my day to cope with the fatigue. Fatigue can be caused by illness symptoms, medication side effects, inflammation, brain changes, depression/anxiety, and pain. It can affect your quality of life. It can stop you from doing things you love, spending time with friends and family, or being able to work. Fatigue affects your energy (like tiredness), but it also affects you physically, mentally, and emotionally. Because fatigue is actually a symptom of so many chronic illnesses and mental illnesses, it’s something that is treated medically and is not something that typically fluctuates from hour to hour the way tiredness can. For me, all of the factors I listed above (especially pain and medication side effects) can affect my fatigue level. I hope that helps clarify the difference and why I don’t compare my “typical” daily energy levels to my flare symptom fatigue levels! Let’s look a bit closer on how I track both and why they are in different trackers. Tracking Energy in my Bullet Journal Two of my trackers are back-to-back in my journal — my water/veg tracker and my sleep/energy tracker live right next to each other so I can look at any given day and see how things are related. (I’ll admit it took me a few months to realize they should be next to each other!) Here’s how these trackers look in my bullet journal: I track how much water I drink during the day (I track glasses, not ounces), and how many times I ate vegetables or fruit. I am not currently tracking how much sugar I eat but I am making changes to include this soon since I know it plays a big part in my energy levels (can we say sugar crash!!?) For my sleep tracker, I keep tabs on how many hours I slept at night and how long I napped during the day. And the last column here is a simple rating system for how much energy I had during the day. Five hearts means I had great energy and felt very productive and alert. One heart means I was dragging, felt tired and had a hard time accomplishing my tasks. One thing to note here is that if you were to look over any of my monthly trackers by themselves, you would see that energy levels for any given day may not correlate to the other things on my tracker. For example, I might have done everything “right” one day and still had terrible energy. What isn’t really shown here are other factors like schedule changes, life stuff (family in town, a draining doctor appointment, etc.) or illnesses. Those are generally noted in other places in my journal and I try to only focus on overall patterns here and not individual days. Understanding the monthly patterns and not getting bogged down with the daily details is why I created the Tracker Summary page (check it out on the Printables page here). When the month is over, I go through my trackers and summarize trends, what I learned and what I could do differently. Being intentional about this has really helped me find patterns! Tracking fatigue in my bullet journal Since fatigue is a symptom and side effect of my illness, it is tracked in my Flare Symptom Tracker. If my fatigue levels are going up, then it’s quite possible I’m heading into a flare. I can see this because my past flares have shown my fatigue levels rise and stay high while I’m in a flare and lower when I’m not. I talk more about the number system I use in my video for the flare symptom tracker (watch it here!), but I’ll give a quick overview here with relation to fatigue tracking. When I first started tracking I decided to think through and understand my “baselines”. How do I feel on a typical day without being in a flare? Even though lupus is a disease of flares and remissions, there are still daily symptoms and medication side-effects I manage every day even when I’m not in a flare. When I track my Fatigue level, I am starting at my “baseline”. I only assign a higher point if I am feeling like my fatigue is higher than what is “normal” for me and what is above my baseline. When I was first diagnosed and wasn’t fully treated, I went through a really bad episode of fatigue. It was a few weeks before Christmas and my family was bringing in our Christmas tree. This is one of my all-time favorite family traditions and I was so excited when I woke up that day. But as the day wore on, my fatigue became unbearable. As the kids were bringing the tree upstairs, I remember sitting on the floor up against the wall and just feeling like I couldn’t function. I felt I NEEDED to sleep. I closed my eyes and fell instantly asleep among all the chaos and excitement. It was like my body shut down. I didn’t stay asleep, of course, but it was an alarming sensation to crash so hard and feel like a limp noodle on the floor. That would have been rated a 3 on my tracker. 😀 So, what if you have just been diagnosed, or you’re in a flare, or you have started new medication and you are having some terrible fatigue symptoms. How do you rate your energy levels then? Great question! The truth is, if you’re in a flare, every one of your trackers is probably going to be affected. You will see your flare symptoms seeping into all areas of your life! So, you will see your energy level drop, as well. But the thing is, when you are out of your flare, your energy level is (hopefully) going to be something you have a bit more control over again. That’s why I don’t focus on only tracking symptoms of my illness that are out of my control. Instead, if I also track daily habits and self-care, I can begin to see how different things affect how I feel when I’m not in a flare and how I can take control over my own health overall. I hope this has helped inspire you to track your own energy levels and reflect on what you might be able to do to improve your overall energy when you’re not in a flare! I encourage you to make a habit out of helpful self-care routines and then reflect on what patterns you may be seeing when you start tracking!

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Tracking Your Flare Symptoms in Your Bullet Journal

jess — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 01:05:36 +0000

Normally, I try to journal a little about how I feel each day during a flare, but pain and swelling in my hands can make that pretty difficult, especially after typing all day at work. So, a few years ago I created a simple flare tracker for my bullet journal that lets me easily keep an eye on the most important stuff when writing in paragraph format just feels too overwhelming. I hope this kind of tracker is helpful for you, too! If you’d like a printable flare symptom tracker to add to your bullet journal or planner, head over to the Free Printables Library and join the newsletter to get access, or sign up below! This flare tracker is meant to be very easy to use, and I’ve left some room on the printable version for you to add additional symptoms, events or activities that you want to keep track of. A tracker like this is a great tool to reflect on how you’re feeling and it’s also helpful to share with my doctor. Flare Tracker Elements Pain and Fatigue plotter Keep track of pain and fatigue on a scale of 0-3 with 0 being none/very little and 3 very high. You’ll probably have different levels throughout the day, but this is an overall score for the entire day. If you find yourself having a lot of ups and downs every day, consider tracking morning and afternoon/night with two different colors on the plotter. Medications Enter the number of times you take symptom relief medications that day that are not part of your daily medication regimen, like over-the-counter pain relievers or meds your doctor has prescribed for temporary use. Check off or write a “y” (for yes) on each day that you take your regular medications. This can be crucial in showing how missing medications can affect your symptoms. IDEA: You could also denote days when you have increased your regular medication (like steroids, DMARDs or anti-seizure medication) during the flare with an “up arrow”, a circle or other marker Daily Symptoms & Feelings I’ve played with different ways to rate things here, but found simple y/n and 0-3 to be easiest to understand and to use to compare everything. You can certainly use different words and ratings, but it’s a good idea to place a key somewhere on your page, especially if you are making copies for your doctor. Think back over your last few flares and add symptoms or other important things you want to track. It could be anything from your menstrual cycle to a specific activity such as physical therapy appointments. The important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need to track everything. If you find that you have the same answer to everything every month, consider eliminating that row from your flare tracker. That being said, I personally would never eliminate my medication row, and I also would keep any activity I’m trying to build into a habit so I can see consistent progress and feel great about it (such as “going to bed on time”). The section under “How I feel Today” captures emotional well-being and cognitive symptoms or “fog” that many of us get directly from our chronic illness, from medications, or from pain or other symptoms. If you notice a lot of consistently high numbers here, you might want to talk to your health care provider about how to get your emotional health in a better state. For me, I notice that I have a lot of anxiety when my pain is high. This means keeping my pain under control is a top priority not just to make my body feel better, but to help my emotional well-being. Taking Care of Yourself This is the new section of the flare symptom tracker that I added for 2019. I really wanted to focus on self-care habits and put each activity in the front of my mind every day. I’ll be honest, there are times when I am not doing so well with taking care of myself and I feel guilty. But, the whole point of a tracker like this is not to make you feel bad — but to help you feel empowered to make the changes you need to feel better! If you’re finding you aren’t drinking enough water, for example, start a new page in your journal to jot down ideas on how to change that! Most importantly, cut yourself some slack if you fall off the self-care wagon a little bit. WE ALL DO. Creating the Flare Tracker by Hand I started by counting how many columns my journal has on the page. This could be different depending on the journal, so be sure to count out 31 columns for days from the right-side so you have enough days! Next, I added the main dividers for the left-side tracking labels and the two main plotters. Finally, I added the labels and the monthly header. I really recommend downloading the printable to use as a guide if you’re planning to draw this every month by hand. Sometimes I like to use color to plot and show highs and lows throughout my day. Sometimes I color things on the day I record it, other times (during the flare, especially), I just leave coloring for another time. And sometimes I don’t color anything at all. The important thing is that I tracked, not that I colored the square. 🙂 Here’s a sample tracker I created just as an example of how it looks all filled in for the month. One thing I like to do is show where a flare started. This can be hard to tell right away, but the tracker helps you see the patterns after a few days have gone by. Here’s an example of an easy way to show the beginning of a flare, especially if it continues into the next month. I’ve also created a video showing how to draw the flare symptom tracker and I go into each section in a bit more detail. You can check it out here! I hope this flare tracker helps you as much as it’s helped me and I’d love to hear from you by email at jess@pineconepapers.com!

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The “Core Four” Daily Habit Tracker for the Bullet Journal

jess — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 23:43:32 +0000

I’ve seen a lot of incredibly creative bullet journal habit trackers for weekly and monthly spreads. Since the daily spread is my absolute favorite, I’ve gone a different direction and created a simple daily habit tracker. I’m calling it the “core four” because I think tracking just four habits each day is enough to help motivate me without being overwhelming. Okay – sometimes tracking even ONE habit is overwhelming, but we all have bad days! 🙂 While a weekly or monthly habit tracker is fantastic for seeing how you’re doing over time, I use this daily tracker to simply be mindful each night about my habits and then give them a large space in the spread to signify their importance. Simply put, it keeps those four habits top-of-mind, which in turn helps motivate me to strive to do better each day. Choosing the “Core Four” Habits to Track I’ll admit, I have a lot of habits I’d love to improve and I could (and probably will, eventually) make a big table tracker full of all that stuff. But for this tracker, I sat and thought about the most important habits I need to really lock down to have a happier, healthier life right now. For me, those habits are simply: Drink more water Eat more nutritious foods Be more active Sleep better My ultimate goal here is to get those four habits to be so ingrained into my daily life that I can start replacing them with new habits to improve! I’ll probably be able to knock out “drink more water” in the next couple of months, which will open that slot for a new “core” habit! The Daily Habit Tracker Layout This cadent pattern is something I picked up a few years ago when learning more about zentangle. It’s one of the simplest and I just love the dimension it adds to my daily spread. Best of all, it’s super easy to make and needs just a minimal amount of shading. Here’s how I learned to do it: Note: It’s easiest to make if you’re using a dot or grid paper. Starting on the left, draw a small open circle around a dot or in the intersection of the square grid. Count out 4 to 6 dots/squares depending on how big you want the tracker to be, and draw the next circle. Continue counting and drawing your circles until you have a grid of three across and three down, for a total of nine circles. Starting on the left top, you’ll be connecting the circles with a curved line. To do this, start at the bottom of the top left circle and end the line above the first circle to the right. Draw all of your horizontal lines in the same way for the three rows of circles. Turn your page 90 degrees and repeat the lines in the same way. Lastly, shade the circles to give depth to the drawing. Once your cadent sections are drawn, you can enter your labels and leave space for your tracking! Interested in more layouts and ideas? Sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get regular emails from me, including a printable guide for the Core Four! Variations for the “Core Four” Daily Habit Tracker If you don’t want to track four habits, it’s easy to modify this layout into a single row (for two or three habits) or expand it into two columns and three or four rows to track even more! The possibilities are fun to consider! Labeling and tracking are also fun to experiment with! It really depends on how much time you want to spend drawing, lettering and coloring. Each day can be completely different, if that fuels your creativity! I hope this daily habit tracker inspires you and I’d love to hear more about what “core” habits you like to track! <a href=”mailto:jess@pineconepapers.com”>Feel free to email me</a>.

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