Home is where the bad habits are.
If you’ve come around to the notion of thriving health in your adulthood like I have, your family time and family environment come with all sorts of baked in and less than healthy associations.
I know it’s not just me because I can’t tell you how many client conversations have taken place on this subject. Home is where you can expect to find the exact special box of cereal and/or bagels in the morning. Home is where you have a family tradition of ordering out for Chinese food (and it’s not the steamed stuff either). Home is where you open the fridge to find that ridiculously nostalgic ice cream brand staring back at you and a double sized bowl to put it in. These things are like clockwork. They are ingrained. They are unavoidable.
You have two options: embrace the hell out of it or impose a different plan.
If you don’t spend much time with your family and you’d rather turn off when on the premises, that is understandable. Go forth. Enjoy. Be merry.
If, however, you spend a decent amount of time with your family, and you come away from these experiences feeling like Sigourney Weaver from Alien, you may choose door #2.
Door #2 requires premeditation. If you come home empty handed with the vague notion that you’ll “eat healthy” this time around, you are basically the Cleveland Browns expecting to win the Super Bowl. Next thing you know you’re in a food coma wondering what happened.
Note the verbiage of the second option: impose a different plan.
Imposing a different plan requires thought. It requires preparation. It requires a clear idea of what success means.
Two examples:
You may recall that Marissa and I returned to her family’s house over the July 4th holiday. We knew there was a brand new Whole Foods 5-minutes away, which reduced our packing pressure. We brought some things, but we also scheduled an immediate shopping trip to take care of the rest.
Last weekend I returned to my Dad’s house, which doesn’t have a Whole Foods anywhere near it. Instead, my planning required a full packing job, or else I would be marooned on ice cream island.
Consider your own family time. First ask yourself what option suits it best. Once you have an answer, do the necessary work ahead of time. Then go focus on all of the other wonderful aspects of being home.
Day 46, 47, and 48 Recaps
While my initial plan was to mass build through mid-next-week, I’ve started the transition early. Why?
One, things were getting a little stale. Now if my intention was to extend mass building, that’s easily solvable by evolving the programming itself, except…
Two, I’m transforming, remember? Part of my commitment to the process is overseeing a “complete” body alteration and eliminating some excess bodyfat. That isn’t a requirement of the program, but it was my personal decision, and I’m honoring it. That’s all well and good, but my excitement to transition comes from…
Three, shifting into Spartan Race mode. With all the hype surrounding our Spartan Race push at Relentless Fitness, I’m antsy to get going. If you want to excel at something specific, you must specifically train for it. That will require swapping some heavy strength, lower repetition, long rest for medium strength, higher repetition, short rest work, as well as incorporating more sprint burst activity and a little overall endurance.
The above highlights the fun of evolving your goals. A new focal point means a new training program, which means a new experience, new excitement, and new results.
A fourth unsung reason for the slightly early transition is the time spent at my family’s house. I knew that there wouldn’t be equipment on hand to execute my normal Saturday strength workout. That made my decision easy. I respected and maximized my environment.
With the above out of the way, here’s the exercise protocol:
- Friday closed the book on strength. I had some spare time on my hands due to a client cancellation, and I rocked an old school beach workout. Shoulders, arms, and a bit of core. Lateral raises, TRX IYTs, rope presses, Olympic bar curls, and stability ball jacknives.
- Saturday was my first away day, and I simply focused on movement. Two significant chunks of 1-hour walks, incorporating 25-minutes of sporadic sprint style running into the first walk.
- Sunday I repeated the day before with a 25-minute jog replacing the sprints.
Steps and miles (add 20%):
- Friday: 13,982 and 7.51
- Saturday: 16,683 and 9.06
- Sunday: 16,079 and 8.74
Sleep checked in at:
- Friday: 6 hours and 54 minutes (7 restless minutes)
- Saturday: 8 hours and 27 minutes (5 restless minutes)
- Sunday: 7 hours and 55 minutes (10 restless minutes)
The nutrition…
No pictures for you today! Upon returning home, I detached from my phone (and thus pictures) as much as possible. Instead, I’ll share with you my packing list, which prioritized convenient, portable goods with no extra prep required:
- La Colombe Pure Black (easier to rely on cold pressed coffee single servings versus bringing beans, french press, etc.)
- 3 Greek yogurts (I left my normal concoction and all its ingredients – whey protein, creatine, cacao nibs, etc. – in the city, and leveraged single serving, heartier yogurts)
- Rise Bar box
- Grass-fed whole milk
- Bananas (since I knew I’d be moving a lot and relying on running/sprinting for exercise, these matched up well)
- Chicken and brown rice mega-Tupperware (enough for 3 dinner/meal servings)
- Frozen green beans
That’s it! For two rock solid days I leveraged the above list. I came back to the city feeling great.
Daily Fuel
Let’s begin with Relentless Riss’s Transformation weekly recap! Her perspective is both refreshing and different. I know enough to know that my take doesn’t resonate with everyone. It’s very, very important to digest different stories from different angles, all in the name of the same goal – thriving health.
We’ll continue with one of my favorite minds of the exercise world: Keith Norris. His latest article focuses on adaptation and accommodation, something that ties in very well with my exercise musings above. Remember, if I decided to stay on mass building road, adjustments would be necessary in order for positive results to continue.
That’s all folks – go set the world on fire!
I am away Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to cross an item off of my bucket list – watch a UFC event live (specifically, UFC Fight Night 45). The travel challenges continue! I am working out extra hard today in preparation, bracing for way less sleep than normal by prioritizing good sleep tonight, and I plan to leverage more restaurants than normal for my nutrition. I’m expecting plenty of eggs, fresh fruit, and salads, in addition to a pre-planned and sure to be delicious treat at Bobby Flay.
My next post will be Friday, and it’ll be a good one – the 67% recap. Stay tuned…
Image Credit: Bad Habits – http://workablewealth.com
No Comments