#7: Real-World Re-Entry

Good Lord it's hard to get back into a groove. 

Uhhh .. me. grooveless. not having it.

Just call me STELLA. 


And I've only been OUT of my groove for 4 days. Unless you count the 3 days at the office BEFORE I left where I was also out of my groove. And the 11 days of vacation from work I had before THAT. Man ... maybe I should stop complaining...


If vacationing showed me nothing else, I certainly learned that I have come along way with being comfortable with no schedule or routine. I probably couldn't have gone MUCH  longer without wanting to hurt one of the other hotel guests, but I was still doing great when we left. 


Before I get to my Challenge progress and updates, let me give you a few life updates: 

• I have created a website spurred from this blog. You may notice that linking to my blog now takes you to a full domain site of www.challenged30daysatatime.com . The website still focuses on the Blog, but has added a few things extra. 
• Resources: things I use, favorites of mine, products or items I talk about;
• Popular posts of the Blog;
• Other Bloggers I follow;
• Things I mention that you might want to use like a certain workout routine, a recipe, a project I did;
• I am creating another Blog site that will be built from other contributions versus my writing. Stay tuned. 
• I have made some new long-term plans for my life, based much on the experiences I've had these past 11 days. I'm not ready to share because they aren't well-defined and as you may recall, I don't do grey-area well. :) But as soon as I am ready, you will be the first to know!
• Also, I'm  finding great pride, inspiration and motivation in the fact that some of my friends are either coincidentally on similar life-improvement-journeys, or have joined into my style of life-improvement-journey with their own 30-day challenges. I get messages from them that makes me smile, keep me going, remind me why I needed this in my life. 
• One of my friends in particular started a new journey in this new year and, like me, created a blog about it. For all of us who love food but don't love our bodies for loving food, it's a great read. And a great motivator. Follow her here: foodietofitness.blogspot.com (or link to it over there ------> under "Blogs I Love!"). 

Kumbyah / Booyakah / Get It!!

Oh ... and I'm back at work. yay. 

So ... How is MY Challenge going? 

I seems that I am currently managing both my physical and mental struggles with this quite well. The last 48 hours I have craved but not caved and continued to eat as well as I can no matter the circumstance.

Let's start back on Monday, January 9 as The Bestie and I started our venture home. Still ravenous, I stuffed my face for breakfast and lunch. But at least I stuffed it with protein and produce. In Mexico that means a breakfast of blandly scrambled eggs, mediocre sausage links and really-good-so-I-had-to-limit-myself-to-one-scoop-of-tropical fruit. 

Actually, writing that right there ^^^^ is all the motivation I need to realize that 4 days of vacation was all that I needed!

Lunch was sensational chicken quesadillas with lots of pico de gallo and tomatillo salsa. I could probably live on that daily if my body would revolt and kill me!

Then the trouble began ... Because we were travelling, food wasn't readily at my fingertips. Well, scratch that. HEALTHY food wasn't. However, if I was interested in full blown sugar and white flour trauma, I could have eaten any one of 100s of items sold at dozens of "Convenience Store"s at the Cancun Airport. I searched carefully and found trail mix and water. Why is it exactly that it's so hard to find food products that are actually GOOD for our bodies? 

But I made it home without gorging on Twix and Ruffles. Go me!

TUESDAY (aka Day 10)

Woke up and ate some steel-cut oats with nothing added. Worked for nourishment, not for flavor. But maaaaan was that coffee GOOD!

I can say for sure that I felt refreshed about my routine, work, life. I think that last week was particularly hard for me given the anniversary of my dad's death falls on the 4th and I was just coming off of a week-and-a-half vacation and I knew I was boarding a place for paradise in less than 70 hours. 

But this week I'm feeling like I'm back!

Which lasted until about 2pm. Impressive, really. I mean, who REALLY wants to work 8 hours a day? And this is coming from someone who LOVES to work and LOVES their job. I think it's important that we ease back into such responsibilities. Plus, the more we excel, the higher the expectation we set of ourselves by others. And the lower the bar, the easier to surpass it. How many of you want people to look back at your life and call you an "overachiever?" Not me ... I much prefer the freedom of mediocre. Those of you who know me know this!

I did stop for food and despite ordering from somewhere where I've previously enjoyed the Carb-Platter, I ordered 3 fresh tacos on corn and whole beans. It was filling. And it was GOOD. 

No need to point out the obvious correlation with the types of food I was eating just 24-hours earlier. KTHANKS.

What I did notice was that I really have to make my food for the workday either the night before or the morning before work. Coming to work without even a snack is a recipe for disaster in the form of either 

A. STARVATION from lack of food (probably quickly followed by gorging); or 

B. SUCCUMBING to the cravings that kick in when I'm hungry.

For dinner I planned (including searching online for a yummy recipe) to cook in my handy-dandy crock pot. But when I got home, it turned out that I was instead going to run around with too much to do, leave for my daughter's puppy training class and then have to stop at the local SuperStore for items my son announced were due tomorrow. Suddenly it's 7:30 and I haven't eaten in 7 hours and I'm about to start gnawing on Middle Child's arm. So thru a fast food window we went. 

[[Let me pause and say "I know I know so SHHHHH." But, in my defense, this was a smart move because if I had dared go home this hungry, no one would have enjoying any home-cooking because I would have needed food fast instead of healthy.]]

But I was good enough to order myself plain grilled chicken, no fries or fry-adjacent foods and a Coke-Zero which means no carbs. I stuck to chicken for the kiddos too and my sweet daughter in the seat next to me said "Can I have the fruit cup instead of the fries? That's healthier for me." Thanks my sweetness for the support!!! 

I did enjoy one sugar-free dark chocolate-pecan treat. From the low-carb aisle at above mentioned SuperStore. Not bad, folks. Not bad. [Find a link to the item/brand in my "Links" section and trust me - TRY THEM.]

I admit whole-heartedly to climbing in bed satisfied and unhungry. Yes!

TODAY ...

It's 2:30pm and I'm ready for bed but that has ZERO to do with nutrition and ALL to do with the fact that I decided last night was a great night to stay up talking until 4am. 

My 4:30am alarm to head to the gym went off and I promptly declined it's polite invitation to waken. 

"Screw you bad decision to stay up late!"

I think my exact words were "Have your people get with my people when there is a 6 on the clock." After badgering me with wake up nudges at 4:10am, 4:20am, 4:30am, 5:00am, 5:10am, 5:20am and 5:30am, I finally dragged-ass out of bed at 6:00am. 

Oh ... wait ... we've come to the point in our entertainment where I should acknowledge that I have uncovered for you yet another NEUROSIS of mine. Fully paranoid about oversleeping, missing meetings, running late (one of my biggest pet peeves, FYI), I set a ton of alarms. TO be even more in-depth, I use the 4:** ones if I'm heading to the gym and the 5:** ones if I'm not. But either way, no less than 5 go off each morning. And I never make it #5. Until today. Phew ... thank God for crazy!

Back to the point. 

I'm tired today. And I skipped making lunch because I didn't care. And I didn't eat breakfast because I didn't care. And lunch was a "best I can do at the across-the-street-market" because I only slightly cared. But I did eat pretty well. Protein bar with no more than the allowable carb grams and a coke zero and some crap beef and cheese burrito that I scraped the contents out of and toss the tortilla of. It is what it is. 

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Well ... let's be honest:

1. I'm ROCKING the cravings thing.
2. I've been too tired and busy to notice the mental challenges of the last posting.
3. I need to re-focus on making good choices and pre-planning so I don't find myself tempted or forced into bad choices because they are the best of the worst available. 
4. I'm over 33% percent there. 

Now it's time to start thinking about what parts of this challenge I'll keep around permanently on February 1 and what parts I will be chocking up to "THAT WAS FUN."