You ever had one of those weeks where you feel like things are spiraling out of control but you seem helpless against it? That is sort of how I feel at the moment. I’m feeling equally under and overwhelmed depending on what part of my life we are talking about.
During my chiropractor appointment this morning, I could tell that my doc was shaking her head at me. She asked me if I had something stressful going on and teased me about how stress in my life made her job harder. It’s really crazy how your body reacts to stress. It manifests itself in physical ways. For some, you might have trouble sleeping, others may feel like all they do is sleep and it’s never enough. Maybe when you are stressed out, you reach for comfort foods. Apparently, when I stress out, my body declares war on itself and things stop working properly.
A big part of my journey (both on this blog and otherwise) is learning about myself. Figuring out what works for me, what doesn’t and hoping that along the way maybe I help a few other people out with their goals. I think the 30 Day Food Challenge (Primal/Wheat Free inspired) has helped me start listening more to my body and it’s certainly created new awareness about how different foods impact me – for better or worse! Doing my 90 day Summer Challenge (TurboFire) showed me I had the energy and will power to work out 6x a week. It gave me routine and structure that I think I really needed at the time because I was feeling a little lost on the work out path.
So here I am, trying to pick up the pieces after my fitness challenge. I’m doing something new – but it’s not nearly as structured. There is a lot of room for flexibility (which I probably raved about a few days ago) – but what I didn’t consider was that with flexibility comes great responsibility. Okay – so that’s not quite how that quote goes, but you know what I mean? Having options for my work outs on most days means I also have the option to just not work out. That’s what I’m struggling with right now – I don’t want to not be active. But I also don’t want to have to stick to the same schedule every week. Where is the in-between?
I’ve been thinking about this for the last few weeks because I just haven’t been pushing myself as hard with my workouts…which is probably good because my body deserved a little break from 3 months of intense cardio workouts. But I feel like I’m dropping the ball a little and not sure that working out a LOT less is going to be the direction I want to go. And this is especially true if I have a day where my food is totally off-base, I need to be upping my workouts to try and negotiate a little body bartering:
Me #1:”You ate a lot of cheese, so that’s going to cost you 2 pounds on the scale.”
Me #2: “I hear what you are saying – but what if I worked out hard for an hour and get my food back in gear the rest of the day? Could we call it an even split?”
Me #1: “You want to play games, do you? Well how about you do your work out, you eat your cheese, and we’ll just see what happens.”
I’m not a very good negotiator. But I DO believe that if my food is not where it needs to be, I have to at least try and make up for it with increasing my workout.
SO all this non-sense to really get to one point (and yes, sometimes i need to ramble before I get to the main event).
If I don’t want a rigid schedule because I feel like it’s a bit suffocating, and I don’t want to have total freedom because I think I’ll just end up staring at the wall at home (or dragging my body behind like this giant bear) instead of doing something active there is really only one solution:
I’m going to try and plan my workouts one week at a time. Just like selecting my meals for the week – I’ll sit down and figure out my game plan for my workouts one week at a time. Then I’ll write those workouts on my schedule in advance so that way I don’t have to think much about it day of – I’ll know what’s on the schedule. But I’ll also have the choice for it to be something totally different the next week if I want.
ThirtyStory 