I’ve Got My Routine Back!

Hello World – It’s nice to see you again 🙂

Yes, I’m alive and well – but I have been MIA from my blog for a few months, and I would like to offer a sincere apology to anyone who had been following my posts. I initially planned on taking only a week away, but a week turned into two, and then three . . and now here I am 3 months later – embarrassed and apologetic.

I don’t plan on going into a lot of detail in my blog posts regarding the reason for my absence, but I will be brutally honest: Over the last few months, I have made some less-than-stellar food and fitness choices. I won’t make excuses for why this happened – regardless of extenuating circumstances, I am responsible for the choices that I made.

On to the GOOD news: I’m 100% back on track and feeling awesome! I’m reminded once again that we sometimes don’t realize how much our bodies are affected by our bad food choices until we eliminate them, and then: SHA-BANG!! It feels A-Mazing to have a “clean” body again! I didn’t realize how bad my body felt until it didn’t feel bad anymore . . does that even make any sense? It may not if you’ve never experienced it – but I think anyone who’s done a Whole30 can relate.

I learned several lessons from my mistakes during my little hiatus, and will gladly share these with the world with the hopes that I can help one person avoid having to learn these lessons the hard way.

Lesson Learned #1: I am a Creature of Habit, and I love having a routine!

I think that a lot of us are creatures of habit. If you’ve done a Whole30 before, I’m sure that you will agree – the first week is rough because you’re not used to prepping all that food. You’re used to the convenience of Grab-and-Go Processed foods, and your cravings really kick in when you suddenly realize that it’s lunch time, and you don’t have anything already prepped – Am I Right?

By the end of a Whole30, a lot of people describe the last week as being “fairly easy” and finally feeling “normal”. This is because they have learned to set time aside to prepare meals, and always have something on hand prepped in advanced that they can eat in a pinch. Setting time aside to cook is no longer a chore, but just simply part of the day-to-day routine.

But some people fall off the wagon, and then find it very hard to get back on because they lose that “routine”. Once I got out of the habit of cooking breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, it seemed like such a CHORE! I was tired, and Subway was easy – I would cook tomorrow night. This soon became my mantra nearly every night.

The same thing went for my workouts. Once I got out of the habit of going to bed by 9:15 and getting up at 5 to go work out, I forgot how to do it! Suddenly, I was staying up till 11:30 every night, and getting up with just enough time to shower and get to work. Once I broke my routine, it was really, really, really hard to fix it again!

This time around, I had to sit down and pencil out my schedule for the first week. I wrote in my work hours, grocery shopping times, meal prep times, workout times, and my going to bed and waking up times. I had to FORCE myself to stick to this plan for the first few days, and it was aweful! But now it’s feeling “normal” again, and I love it. I’m back to the point of wondering why I ever lost this routine in the first place, because it feels so darn good 🙂 Starting a new routine (or getting back to one that’s been abandoned for a while) is never easy, but once it’s established, boy does it feel great!