The Struggle

I've had thousands of Day Ones. I'm not ashamed of how many of those fizzled out, but at the same time, the handful of ones that became Day Twos and Day Four-Hundred Fifty Threes and so on, have been something that keep me motivated to start over again and again, as many times as I need to keep trying, rather than racking up as a reason I can expect failure.

Today was a layered Day One, which means it has more potential for failures. Diet, exercise and I'm not buying cigarettes either, so something might collapse, only to need a push back up on the wagon. However, I'm going to force each day to be another Day One if that happens. I gave myself too much room to cheat or stray when I made Mondays the magic Day One. 

Starting out slow but ambition. No P90s to start, if I ever go back to that. It was doing some damage I couldn't ignore but it's not completely off the table. I did love how Kenpo and MMX made me feel and yoga is always a good one. However, there were some strength and high impact prompts that too often I pushed irresponsibly and, while the low impact ones were great, the videos tend to get me overconfident to 'try' the higher impact.

So, I'm using the Leslie Sansone walk videos to start. The lower level ones are a bit too easy for me--I clean a fish tanks several times a week so I'm quite used to hauling heavy loads and stretching to prevent injury for that. The five mile video takes about an hour, a little over that, to do, but I liked the three-mile as well. Have yet to try the four-mile, though I may do that tomorrow if the exertion from today doesn't leave me with a less ambitious need. I tend to be one of those people who are energized on the day of a workout but find out I overdid it when I wake up half-crippled with pain the next day. 

Diet? Back to the simple. Egg on toast and yogurt in the morning. Lentils, maybe in soup, maybe with raw veggies. Dinner is whatever calories I want to take on, maybe leaving room for a light snack if I know my appetite is a bit ravenous that day. It's... not exciting, but I know how to vary it if need be. Tuna salad at lunch is a good alternative. I like breakfast to stay the same. I love eggs and yogurt and there are a lot of ways to vary the flavor there, but a tablespoon of salsa in the eggs and the honey vanilla greek yogurt is pretty consistently yummy.

I may slip up and bum a cigarette here and there. Anxiety sometimes creeps in and urges me to binge eat. I'd rather grab a cigarette than eat three days worth of calories. I know you get told that smoking is worse than overeating, but doctors just don't get how bad an anxiety binge can be either. It's an either-or I've worked out through experience. It's easier to manage habits if you understand the weight of the sacrifices.