Moving Forward

After my last post, a good friend sent me a text message, the gist of which was "move forward." (of course, she put it much more nicely :) ).  It was appropriate and was absolutely what I needed to hear.  It never fails to amaze me how the Lord works through my friends and family to get me the message I need to hear (but that's a whole other blog...).  But I have been thinking and working through some of this mentally.  I have not been eating well and I have been slacking on my exercise. Honestly, while I'm not thrilled with this, it's also been a nice break from being SO concerned with what is going in to my mouth every minute and have I worked out yet today and am I doing X, Y, and Z? I think I've just needed a break. This isn't a sprint. I have time. Whatever I'm doing needs to be sustainable and clearly what I was doing wasn't sustainable for me.  So I've come up with a few things to try. Back to my n = 1 experiment, right?  So here's the plan, subject to refinement and/or change at any point in time. :)

Exercise:
Mon/Wed/Fri - some form of yoga or Pilates. These are two of the workouts that I really enjoyed from P90X3 so I'll likely continue these. I may do the AbRipperX workout one of these days in place of, or in addition to, yoga or Pilates. I may also throw in one of the other workouts every once in awhile to change things up.

Tues/Thurs/Sat - Running! Yay! This just makes me happier.  I'll likely do one day of intervals (treadmill), try one day of sprints (treadmill), and on Saturday or Sunday, do a longer run (4-5 miles) outside. I have a race the end of April with a friend that I need to get ready for!

Nutrition:
I'm going to stay mostly Paleo, but not strictly Whole30. So what does that mean? My food will mostly look like this:

Notice that it says Often, Sometimes and Rarely. Not Always and Never. Not Yes and No.

In addition to that, I'm going to start tracking what I eat with MyFitnessPal again. I need the accountability of a food journal and want to watch calorie intake as well as the type of food I'm eating.

Stress Management:
Survive until May. Just kidding (but not really).  Take it easier on myself and others about the little stuff. Running will help with the stress relief. Remind myself that 100% isn't necessary. Perfect is not the goal. Loving life is the goal, and that's hard to do when I'm searching for perfection.

So that's the plan. Life lessons, right?

Checking in

Once again, I'm not sure what to write here. Or how to start this. There are a lot of thoughts swirling around my head so I'm just going to try to get them all out "on paper."

First, my nutrition has not been great lately. I've definitely been making some poor decisions. In fact, today I had an apple fritter and some thin mints. Most days, my meals are okay, but I have been snacking and those have not been healthy choices. The other thing I've been struggling with is feeling like a role model and feeling "pressure" from others, even though I'm sure they don't see it that way at all.  There are several friends I've introduced to the Whole 30/Paleo type of eating and although I have no doubts that they know I'm not perfect, I feel like every time I'm eating something not Paleo, that someone is going to catch me. Yes, it's a little ridiculous. I can hardly imagine what it must be like for "real" Paleo bloggers who have a much, much, much larger following than me. One of the things I need to consider is what Paleo looks like for me, and for our family.  What do we include? What don't we include?  And I need some more variety - as much as I love chicken salad and tuna salad, I'm really tired of having that for lunch.  I can't wait for summer veggies/salads!

My exercise has been so-so. I really miss running. I'm not 100% in love with P90X3 but I am feeling guilty considering stopping it with just a few weeks to finish. Running and doing the P90X3 on the same day isn't feasible but doing a combination of the two within a week is a possibility.  I don't know what to do about this. I felt GREAT after running on Saturday and the daylight and warmer temps this week have me itching to get out and run. I like the idea of cross training by adding in the P90X3 workouts. I feel badly about ditching my group, though, so may stick it out until the end of the 90 days. 

Stress. Ugh, stress. This is a big one for me. Work is really, really busy right now, and will only get busier until the end of April. We're busy at home, too. And honestly, the stress of trying to keep up with P90X3, the nutrition, and everything else is becoming overwhelming and not helping my productivity in ANYTHING. So again, not sure what I'm going to do or where to go from here, but I feel the need to make some sort of change. It's just going to require some more thought/consideration before I do it.