Half Way to a Habit

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” Aristotle

Yay, today is day 7 of pulling myself out of the slump I was in and getting myself back to the gym and back to clean eating. They say that it takes 14 days to create a habit, so I am half way there! So, all of you out there who have made resolutions to get healthy this year, don't give up. You will stumble, you will have bad days, you will cheat. This is absolutely normal (not great, but normal), but we must choose to move forward and not sit and wallow in our own self pity and continue in doing what we know is not a healthy choice. Choose to move forward.

Last Monday as I started back into my happy world of working out and eating clean, I also started a new supplement stack with one of my work out buddies. It's one she had found in a magazine a couple months ago and we thought we would try something new as you should cycle supplements, especially thermogenics. So sticking to my norm, I woke up at 5:20am, stumbled into our dark bathroom to put on my new Zaggora Hotpants (darn those groupon deals!) and work out clothes, brush my teeth and swallow my morning supplements before hopping onto my elliptical machine to pump out my 45 minute fasted cardio session. About 20 minutes into my cardio I thought I was going to lose my cookies (no, I haven't been eating any cookies!) and barely made it through 30 minutes before I had to cut my cardio short by 15 minutes. Typically I would beat myself up all day and/or try to compensate by going overboard and doing more throughout the day, but instead I gave myself a small pat on the back for getting up and getting in 30 minutes of good, sweaty cardio and later enjoyed my first day back to lifting. Aggravated yes, but told myself I would try again tomorrow. Well, Tuesday the same thing happened. Ugh. Ok, time to make some tweaks. So Wednesday I removed one of the four supplements that I thought was making me want to hurl and jumped on to my elliptical with enthusiasm and excitement of finally getting to that 45 minute mark, but no such luck. I barely made it 35 minutes. Thursday came around and I took out a different supplement, but same thing. I got through 30 minutes. Well, you can't say that I went down without a fight, but Friday I took the supplements out of the equation and joila, an awesome 45 minute session was accomplished. Woot woot! And Saturday I felt so good that I got in an entire hour. It's also amazing how fast time will fly when you have good reading materials (thank you santa for my KindleFire!) or catch up on all of my Words With Friends games, LOL. How can I possibly do cardio and read you ask?! Well, when I do my elliptical I concentrate on my lower body and not my upper body, so I don't use my arms and thus I am not bobbing up and down ferociously. It's a winning combination for me and it makes the time fly by, so much that I often wish I had more time to keep going!

I want to share an awesome article that one of my fit friends sent to me last night in response to yesterday's blog. Sadly this fit friend had to move away towards the end of last year and I miss her and our Sunday HIIT sessions dearly, but it's fun staying in touch and reading about each other's progress and trials (I have a link to her awesome blog on my blog). Since I'm still too new to this blogging app, I don't know how to make it an active link, but you can copy and paste this URL into your address line. http://www.stumptuous.com/how-to-dump-sugar. I will warn you that this is an R rated reading (LOL) as she likes to use the F word, but it is so good! I loved it! She also confirms the other reading I've been doing talking about how sugar addiction has nothing to do with willpower and you personally (thank God as I truly thought something was wrong with me and have been considering getting medical help for some time as I was sure that I was the only one that had this monkey on my back). I mean it isn't possible for anyone else to be like me, right? To be so health conscious and have such control over my eating with exciting accomplishments like a fitness fashion show and figure competitions to look forward to and hard core work outs for months and then flip to habits of the complete opposite. To stand in the pantry and devour eight bags of my kids fruit snacks without even tasting them while staring at the cupboards trying to find something to fulfill my craving. To not be able to simply say no. To stop when I was full rather than continue to cram sugar laden food into my mouth to the point of feeling disgustingly sick; so sick that I wished I could just throw up. When I'm on, I'm on, but when I'm off, I'm way off. I'm sad that this is so widespread, but glad, that I apparently am not alone after all.