Me Time...

One of the biggest culprits of my bad habits are from what I have turned "me time" into.  I love my "me time".  Everyone needs an amount of "me time" otherwise we'd all go crazy.  I've come to enjoy what I would do to relax and just "veg".  Unfortunately, what I do is my biggest enemy.

My "me time" would consist of me coming home after work (roughly 1:30am) with a big bag of McDonald's and watch 2-3 shows on Netflix.  It's quite enjoyable.  I get to catch up on my shows.  I get to eat some food that I enjoy.  Then I go to bed.

So.....as you can see I need no explanation as to why I am where I am.  There are so many things wrong with what I would do at night after work.  We could pick this apart piece by piece and point out the errors of my ways.  It's pretty obvious what the problem is.

I need to re-think my "me time".

The obvious steps to get started would be:

• Go to bed as soon as I can to get the most sleep I can before my morning must begin

• I work until 1:00am so going to bed before 1:30am is unfortunately not possible.  However, there is a big difference between going to bed at 1:30am vs. 3:30am because of wasting time on TV shows.

• Ditch the fast food.  Ditch any food before bed.

• Pretty self-explanatory.  Don't buy McDonald's, EVER.  To add to it more though, is that I shouldn't eat anything that close to bed time.  I've heard you're supposed to stop eating at 8pm but that's not realistic with my work schedule.  Mainly because my dinner break is at 8pm.  I can however stop eating 2-3 hours before I go to bed.  This could most definitely help with any acid reflux, insomnia, apnea, digestive, etc.  There are a lot of benefits to not eating before bed. 

These steps aren't all that hard to follow.  Just drive straight home, change into my pj's and call it a night.  This will do me so much good!  There is a problem though.  How do I get my "me time".  Hmmm...let me think about it a second.  I want to give up the bad habits but I don't want to give up the time I need to just recharge.  What to do, what to do...

Wait a second.  I have kids in school all morning.  What have I done with that time all year?  Sleep.  I would sleep because I would stay up late all the time watching tv and not sleeping well because my stomach was full of poisonous fast food.

So here's a thought.  How about I make sure I go to bed and instead of going back to bed after the kids go to school I take advantage of the time I'm home by myself?  Kind of a no brainer right?

Well I could take this time I'm home without the kids and watch tv right?  Well that wouldn't be very productive would it?  I love watching TV and whatnot but I need to get off of that couch!  I need to re-think what I want my "me time" to be.  I know it should be something active and/or productive.

Time to re-think and change things.  Like I've said before, there are no more do-overs.  

No more...

I've been attempting to kick my terrible habits/addictions for a very long time.  It's been the same game of starting, going strong, temptation, give into temptation, what the heck I already cheated, all the way to forget about it.

It's been one do over after do over.  I need to change this pattern.

I am out of do overs.  That's what I'm going to say.  No more do overs.  This is it, this is now.  I have to succeed.  I can't fail this time.  I have too many people counting on me.  I can't continue down this path.  I'm getting older (sob).  It's not going to get easier.  I have to stop this before it's too late.

Now that is not to say that I will slip up at some point.  That is not to say that I won't have a bad day.  This will most likely happen.  I have birthdays coming up, I have holidays.  It's going to happen.

What I need to NOT happen is to allow a singular cheat or a bad day to snowball.  In the past I would cheat or have a bad day entirely and it would just snowball into "well I already cheated this much".  I even had a time when I was being active with my workouts and I actually said to myself that "this cheat is ok, I'll work it off tomorrow".  Yeah it was that ridiculous.  I'm the queen of excuses.

This time if I fall of the wagon, I need to get right back on again.  No more days or weeks or months of cheating because my hard work had already been undone.  I cannot do it over.  If I have a bad day or a cheat I have to make sure I get right back into it with no delay.

This is my plan.  This is my now.  I have no other choices. No more do overs.

I'm back?

Well, it's been almost 2 years since I've used this blog.  It's a shame really.  When I used this it really helped me stay on track.  I can't exactly pin point when and why I stopped using this blog for my health journey, and I can't explain why I stopped my healthy lifestyle all together.  I look back on it now and it's quite disappointing.  I was going so strong and doing so well.  I lost over 30 lbs.  I was almost halfway to my goal weight.  I was much healthier.  My aches and pains were going away.

Like I said I can't quite pin point why I stopped.  I have a lot of different excuses and ideas but I don't need to get into all of that.

Recently I was dealt a blow that I was not prepared for, and took quite hard.  It took a toll on me.  I wasn't in a dangerous place mentally but I was in a VERY unmotivated state.  I slept too much.  I ate too much.  I was not active at all.  I gained a lot of weight.

I recognize now that this is not the way to live.  I need to snap out of it.  I need to let go of my anger and my sorrow.  I need to flip that switch and finally accept it.  I need to start living life again.  I need to start making every day matter.  I need to stop just making it through.  My kids and husband deserve better than that.  I deserve better than that.

My cousin is involved in a health challenge for February.  I decided to take advantage of this challenge and use it to help kick start my healthy life again.  I haven't started off strong.  But I'm slowly getting a plan in place.  I'm slowly starting to get excited.  I'm slowly getting to where I need to be mentally.  Just like how I was two years ago when I was so strong.

I'm going to start utilizing this blog more.  I think I might even start the video posts as well (maybe).  It's time to get back on track.  It's time to stop standing still.