Old Habits

Just like I lost a lot of the fitness I'd built up during my weeks away from exercise due to illness, so too did I lose the good habits I'd worked so long and hard to develop. I had gotten really good about getting up before dawn nearly every day to go for a swim or a run. Then I spent a couple of weeks stealing every extra minute of rest I could get, and stopped setting my alarm completely. Now I'm setting the alarm again, but I can't seem to make myself obey it.

You see, I'm chronically overtired. I never get enough sleep, and there's not much I can do about it. There just aren't enough hours in the day for me to be the mother, wife, and employee I expect myself to be.

Part of the reason I let my weight get so out of control is that I never made exercise enough of a priority that I could work it into my schedule. And isn't that one of the most common excuses not to work out? "I just don't have the time." But if you don't find the time to take care of yourself now, then later you may run out of time in your life too soon! So I finally started MAKING the time to get in shape. It wasn't an easy process, training myself to get up early every day. I am NOT a morning person, and I never will be. But eventually I made early morning workouts a habit, a routine, a natural part of my life.

And now all that has unraveled. I'd forgotten how delicious a soft pillow feels under a tired head, or how cozy the blankets are on a chilly morning. I forgot how good an extra hour of sleep could feel to someone trying to function on a deficit. Right now, sleep is kicking exercise's butt in the battle of my mornings.

I think I have just temporarily lost my focus. Now that winter is approaching and the racing season is winding down, all my major goals are further out on the horizon, so I don't have anything to be pushing myself for at the moment. I'm not feeling any serious motivation to break out of these old habits into which I have re-settled. I don't know why it has to be one extreme or the other for me. What I'd like is to find some happy medium...the drive to keep exercising several days a week even if the workouts are not too challenging. I'd like to maintain some reasonable measure of fitness through the holidays before I start training again for spring events.

So that's my struggle right now. Hopefully soon I'll have a positive update about how I've found my motivation again and eased back into regular exercise!!