For September, I challenged myself to get back on track. I’ve done a lot of variations of this challenge since the pandemic started. It’s been hard to get back to good habits when my world is not the way I’m used to. It’s hard to have a schedule when you don’t have things to schedule around. I tried to find a way to get things to feel a bit more stable, but I kept struggling.
And just like every other attempt at this challenge, I feel like I made some progress but I didn’t fully succeed. But I do feel like I made more moves forward than I have before, and that’s something I’m proud of. I think it did help that I had 3 things that I really focused on and I had some clear ideas of what I wanted to do. I focused on my sleep, my workouts, and my food.
For my sleep, I’m not quite back to my regular sleep schedule. But I’m getting closer. I am still staying up a bit later than I would like to, especially when I know I could sleep in if I wanted to the next day. I’m really trying to get back to my regular schedule where I don’t sleep in. There’s really nothing happening now that I need to stay up for. I just don’t go to bed on time. I’ve been getting much better at getting in bed before midnight (I want to get it closer to being in bed by 11:30 or maybe a little earlier). And while I do read in bed before I go to sleep, as long as I’m in bed by that time I usually do ok with my sleep. I had occasional nights where I was up until 1 or 2, and I felt really miserable the next day. I think that I just need to keep working toward going to bed earlier and I’ll be back to my schedule soon.
My workouts also are feeling a bit more on track. I’m having setbacks and my bad weeks are really tough on me. But having weights really has helped me feel like my workouts are closer to what I used to do when I went to the classes in person. I’m feeling sore, which is a good feeling to me (I still can’t believe I like feeling sore) and I know that I’m getting some of my strength back. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t struggled to keep up with my workout schedule because that would have been really hard to fix. But having half-ass workouts has been a bit of a struggle too and I feel much better about how my workouts are going after this past month.
Getting my food back on track was harder for me. This is something that is so hard for me even in normal times. But doing it during a pandemic when I’ve had so many setbacks is even harder. But I still had some good things happen. I’ve been more mindful of what I already have when I make my grocery list. I try to limit how often I get groceries delivered. I’ve tried to not order in as much from different restaurants because I know I always have something I could eat at home when I do that (it just might not be as tasty or what I’m craving).
And getting my food back on track fits in with my challenge for this month. I want to work on finding some more easy and lazy recipes this month. By easy and lazy recipes, I mean things I can put together with almost no effort and with things that I either usually have in my house or have ingredients that are easy to get. I don’t have a lot of these recipes right now in my life. I would say making a turkey burger or veggie burger and steaming veggies is one of them. Another is roasting some potatoes and onions and then putting an egg on top of it (sometimes I add cheese too). Those are super easy for me to make and I don’t have to think too much about it when I’m making them. I also have minimal clean up when I make them.
I know having more recipes like those will help me continue to make progress with getting my food back on track. I don’t think I will ever be someone who wants to cook every night (although that is a challenge I’m considering), but I’d love to cook from scratch a majority of the time. If I eat a frozen dinner once or twice a week and have things I made the other nights, I would consider that a huge step forward. But in order for me to have that happen, I know I need to find more lazy recipes. That’s the only way I can see that idea sustainable.
Hopefully, I’ll find some great recipes that I will want to make over and over again. And if I don’t, I’m still hoping that this challenge makes me cook more and gets me to a better place with my food. The only way I see myself failing this challenge is to not try. And I know that is possible, but I’m really hoping I don’t allow myself to do that.
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Failing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month)
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