Hello comrades and welcome to the second improvement megathread of November! 
I hope your month has started well.
As usual, some discussion ideas:
- Do you want to share something you’ve done in the previous week? Everything counts, nothing is too small.
- Do you have any goals or plans for next week?
- Do you have any streaks? For example, “sober for one day.” Feel free to post your streak every day in this thread.
- If you don’t have a continuous streak, did you manage to abstain from something for a day or more?
- Did you come across some useful information or resource that might help others?
Poster caption: “Scatter the old world, build a new world”
Dasui jiu shijie, chuangli xin shijie
(打碎旧世界创立新世界)
Good luck with your goals! 
Gym This week marks the first time I have been to the gym 3 times maybe since high school. Sadly, I do not have access to anything but Planet Fitness right now, but doing a small thing regularly and sustainably is my priority. I am thinking of buying a used power rack when/if I max out on the dumbbells since the smith machines hurt my back.
I am looking for advice to improve my routine. Right now, I do 5 sun salutations and whatever stretching feels good, 3x5 (increasing reps until the next weight is doable) of bench presses, leg presses, skull crushers, incline situps, and lat pulldowns building to pullups. My main goal is to develop a good outlet for physical energy and get more confidence in my physical condition for street fighting so I am ultimately agnostic about weight lifting. It’s just not a martial arts gym I can afford in my area.
Smoking I also haven’t smoked cigarettes since Rosh Hashannah and I am never going back (hopefully). Already my lungs are getting stronger. I had this really beautiful moment at temple last week where I realized I was the last person singing during the Shema where we say each word as a whole breath. That hasn’t happened since I picked smoking back up and it made me cry.
Although, I have been snacking and drinking a bit more than I like to compensate, I am developing more self-awareness about it which is helping me go down the right path.
Current Challenges I’m realizing that I have still not developed a good routine or rhythmn for living in my new home which has made it hard to grocery shop and reliably eat good meals since I don’t really have a kitchen yet. This has led me to eat out and spend too much on food on top of the sublimated impulses from quitting smoking.
Next Steps My next steps will be to work out my flows for eating and living in my house better, and be more intentional about drinking. ‘Having a beer to relax after work’ is a slippery slope for me and I need to act more responsibly in light of it.
Finally, I am a first year school teacher and am starting to get into a better workflow with preparation and things which is giving me more and deeper peace during my freetime.
I can relate to the extra eating. I am doing the same thing after quitting caffeine. As long as it’s not too much, I say it’s not horrible in the interim. Your brain is probably looking for some extra happy chemicals that it’s under-producing without nicotine. Also, doesn’t nicotine suppress your appetite?
Absolutely.
Do you have a fridge? If so, you can make overnight oats in the fridge for breakfast, just put a bunch of oats into some milk or yoghurt and mix in some cinnamon, flaxseeds, chia, honey and so on. For lunch I would do stuff like canned beans or chickpea and tuna fillets which are all ready to eat without any prep. For dinner I would eat hummus with some bread and vegetables. Those are just some suggestions of what I would do
Alhamdulillah I have a fridge now.