Motivated Monday

I had a run of blog posts about Embracing Mondays a while back.  In which I would wake up with full enthusiasm for the week ahead...with a workout plan and a menu full of healthy meals.  I still have those thoughts on Mondays but the motivation wanes by Wednesday and my desire to think about cooking or making healthy choices is all but totally gone by Friday.  All I can think about is a fat glass of red wine, and curling up on the couch for 36 hours straight.

This weekend I had a little meltdown about this. 

I knew going in to my new job that I would probably struggle with maintaining balance, but my decision to keep my other job multiplied that situation exponentially.  I hadn’t taken into account the amount of time I was losing.  The time I would spend meal planning and preparing, recipe perusing, Tweeting, blogging, blog reading, and working out, is GONE.

Without spending a lot of time here whining about the situation, I decided that I just need to acknowledge that my days have changed and I need a new game plan.  Just giving up and going for convenience eating, giving in to cravings for unhealthy treats, and completely ignoring any form of working out is not me.  And after three months it hit me emotionally.

So I asked Michael to be my support buddy, I worked my brain around eating the same things for lunch all week to save time with batch prep, and I made a super simple at-home workout schedule.  That’s it.  Those three things are what will save me from myself.

Oh, and I told the girls at the office that I will be avoiding any and all snacks that I didn’t plan for.  That place is a sweet lover’s paradise (or hell!). 

What I ate today (and will eat tomorrow!):

• Green Smoothie inspired by #CLEANrestart – ice, banana, spinach, vanilla protein powder, flax meal, coconut oil, unsweetened vanilla coconut milk, unsweetened vanilla almond milk.
• Coffee with almond milk.
• Light Rye Wasa with TJ’s Sunflower Butter.
• Quinoa with roasted root veggies, wilted spinach, and goat cheese.
• Grapes.  Almonds.
• Scrambled eggs with yellow pepper, red onion, spinach, black beans, ground turkey sausage, cheddar, salsa and avocado.  With whole grain toast.
• Organic strawberries over plain yogurt with hemp hearts & grated dark chocolate.

All things healthy, quick to prepare, and easy to duplicate for another day or two.  And above all…delicious!

And now…the stretches my chiropractor gave me for core strengthening and a round of upper body weight training.  Thanks for listening…if anyone is still out there.  :)