January Blog: Creating Routine
December is very commonly accepted as a break from routine. In the months since the start of the challenge I was able to really attack some different aspects of what it means to eat healthy and live healthy. In terms of living more actively, I routinely walk to work and take the longer route (still less than a mile), vegetables and fruits are embedded in my meal selection and natural additions to my meals, my wife and I actively attend the local climbing gym and combine calisthenics with cardio to feel energized and keep our activity levels high.
In December, while all of these individual activities were improved upon and utilized, routinely incorporating them was a bit more difficult. Travel, holidays, and a general lack of typical routine can make keeping habits difficult. Coming into the New Year, rather than an opportunity to make some drastic change in my life to promote a healthier lifestyle it seems much more beneficial to take these tools I have worked on and actively implement them on a daily basis. This would not work for everyone, many get bored of repeated meals or static schedules. For the purpose of holding myself accountable over the next month and maybe the next few, I am going to share a very general idea of what my typical weekday looks like and reflect next month on how well I kept to this routine.
Breakfast:
Banana and protein oatmeal
Lunch:
Mandarin/apple and a portion of meat and cheese with a sports drink (Bai, Body Armor etc.)
Dinner:
Meal designed with veggies. Examples include BLT, chimichurri beef potato and asparagus bowl, zucchini tomato pasta, pork salad, vegetable curry.
Activity:
It’s either a climbing gym day or it’s a long brisk walk day. These alternate and 10k steps is always the goal.
Even as I reflect on December as a month with several fallbacks and a lack of routine, I do realize that this challenge has significantly improved my daily energy and mental health. It is easier to wake up in the morning and choose to work hard when you filled yourself with good food and made your body work hard and improve itself the day before. I used to have the hardest time waking up for work and now I find myself with additional time in the mornings. Choosing to incorporate more vegetables and fruits and be more active has made me a happier human and allowed me to have more energy than I have felt in a long time. Doing the lazier activities are less appealing than they used to be. I still play video games and watch TV but my ability to sit there for hours on end has waned a bit and I actively desire to get up and go for a walk in the middle of my workday, something that wouldn’t have appealed to me before the challenge. Small steps and adjustments are leading to large changes in my daily routine and lifestyle. I think it’s hard to realize how much room your energy levels can improve when you are very used to how they are.
