Balancing the day to day stuff

Countdown: 5 days


Wow... I don't want to slip into bad habits again, but it's going to be challenging at times.  It doesn't start with food, but usually could end there and what I worry about is it will then spread to my workouts.  So what happened?  Work, it get's in the way.  All kidding aside, it's part of life, but one thing I haven't touched base on during this whole challenge is the demands of my job.  I took a good window of opportunity to do me time to get myself back where I need to be.  It helped the way the holidays were spaced out and paid time off to take advantage of being out on PTO longer utilizing them strategically.  Unfortunately, the demands begin to creep back up.  I tell myself, don't put yourself in situations that you could have easily avoided.  My only other worry is, what happens if or I mean when I have to start travelling again?  If this is a change I am doing for life, then I need to make sure the commitment is there for me for life and I will need to plan accordingly.

It started yesterday with almost forgetting a deadline and next thing I knew time was tight and dinner was in question and I still had to workout.  To add to the confusion, I had to stop at home to pick up my 3 yr old to help the wife keep her sanity in getting our  5month old to bed as well.  Luckily I had picked up a box of protein bars and snagged one on the way out.  We made the trek to the pet store as we were out of dog food and unfortunately the local one's don't carry the brand we use and they were at least 30 minutes away and we were fighting against their closing time.  I was STARVING.  The bar held me over for a little, but I hadn't had real food since 1pm and it was half a sub that was lacking my normal amount of protein and greens.  We made it home and I got him settled in and I'm hungry... but I need to hit the gym and do my lower body workout.  I make the trek and walk in the entrance, happy that I am finally here even though it's after 10pm, but wait... what is that smell?  Pizza?  Oh come on, seriously??  Customer appreciation day?  Seriously... who orders a ton of pizzas at a fitness center for people who are technically trying to stay fit.  My mouth started watering at the first smell by my nose, it doesn't ever forget it's old friend lol... All I could do was walk by just shaking my head, I just find it hard to believe that in all the previous 11 weeks, when I wasn't starving, there was never pizza at the gym.  I almost felt like it was one of my tests for a right of passage and I passed with flying colors.

This morning I had a great cardio day, HIIT was on and I managed to hit a new high for me on intervals.  I survived the below intervals:
4,4
4,5,5,6
4,5,5,6
4,5,5,6
4,5,5,6,7
4

My BPM's were at 170 after my last interval high point, HOLY COW!!  To this I added an additional 20 minutes at 4mph.  Felt great.   Stopped at home, got ready for work, packed up my food and off I went.  However, I messed up.  I brought my stuff to my office, but then left in the afternoon to one of our other buildings.  As I was walking out, I thought to go back and get my snacks and water bottle, but had every intention of coming back.  As you know, it never works out the way you want it to and you got it, I never made it back there and missed my 4 pm shake and boy was I hungry.  Calls went longer than expected and before I knew it 630pm was here and I decided just to go straight home.  The lesson I learned is that my food needs to be attached to my side just like I had it on vacation.  It would have been no bother to bring my cooler with me, but you live and learn.  I'll be making my last protein smoothie shortly and off to bed I will go.  I have my last upper body workout of my first challenge tomorrow, weird to say that... but I'm pretty sure I'm going to go straight into my next challenge next week so it's not like I'm going to miss anything lol...