Time. There’s never enough it seems and there’s always one more thing to do than time allows.
I’m facing such a problem now when it comes to my health journey, and it seems many people face the same thing. I have taken a new job that will have me commuting to Sacramento and Oakland 20 days out of the month, with the remaining days here in San Diego.
My problem: How do I continue to work out and eat right when I’ve got a new gig, am traveling a lot and won’t have my trainer with me for weeks at a time?
Additionally, I like most people, am a creature of habit and making new habits is hard and I just don’t want to do it. Enter my next problem, when I lose a habit and have no support while forming new ones, I tend to get lazy.
I’ve been talking with John, my trainer about this and my largest fear with all the newness in my life is that I will slide back to the old me and stop working out, will eat “on the run” rather than plan meals and I’ll get fat again.
How do we make time for everything when sometimes it’s not possible? I’m sure many people have said it, but my mom always told me you take care of what’s important to you. It’s that simple. But is it?
In my normal life here in SD my days are planned, and I can prep food, so I really have no problem at all. Now, going on the road means everything I know will change. How do I change with that and pay attention to what’s important? – In this case me, my workouts, and my food.
How would or have you handled this? Do you just create a new plan and get to it? Do you flounder around a while to see what works and then jump in? Or, as I am wanting to do, do you procrastinate until it’s almost too late and then do something?
A friend of mine once told me that “Commitment is what you have when passion or circumstance fails or changes”. This is the key then, I think, to keeping my health journey going and perhaps it could be a key for you as well.
I am committed to staying healthy. I’ve dropped over 80 pounds and it looks like my bodybuilding competition will be in October so I can’t give in or give up.
The question is, how do I implement a strategy that allows my commitment to work well, for only having commitment is not the answer. If there’s no plan, all the dedication in the world won’t get you very far.
I looked at how my life is assembled. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in the media business for so long, but I figured out how to “day part” my life. In other words, what do I do during different parts of the day? Early morning, late morning, mid-day, early afternoon, evening, and overnight.
My life and my day parts are about to change radically. But knowing how to slice my life into parts gave me the key to success.
To me life is like a set of Legos. There are different shapes, sizes, colors, and they all work together to build almost anything. Kind of amazing.
With my set of life Legos and my day part strategy I was able to reconfigure my new days so I could start mentally forming new habits before I leave. This should help me transition to the new life much easier as I can play with all the life Legos and see how they best fit together for me.
Here’s one day of the old and new day-parted life to give you an idea of how this works:
Old day part:
Wake up 4:30 a.m.
Read, see what happened in the world
Relax and meditate
Feed and walk the dog
Eat breakfast
Go to work
Work
Work out
Go home
Take the dog for a walk or run (cardio)
Eat dinner
Relax
Catch up on anything I want or need to do
Sleep
New day part:
Wake up 4:30 a.m.
Relax
Read
Work out
Eat breakfast
Go to work
Work
Go home
Rest
Catch up on things
Cardio
Eat dinner
Rest and do what I want
Go to sleep
You see, it’s basically the same thing, just with my life Legos rearranged to meet the reality of what is.
Try my life day part strategy for yourself and see if you break things down to what they are and what time of day they CAN happen and see how they all fit together.
It took me a few days of rearranging my life Legos into my day parts to craft a plan I think would work. At least, now I am confident I have a way to stay on my health journey.
Be well!
