Rhthym

Daily challenges in 6FIT are the same week to week.  Mondays are meatless.  Tuesdays are "tone up" (attend a toning class or do the toning at home workout).  Wednesdays are dairy free. Thursdays are "try something new".  Fridays are "fresh air".  Saturdays are seafood for 1 meal that you cook.  Sundays are sugar free.  There are some days that I still forget, but for the most part I have come to memorize and plan my weekly meals around these ground rules.  Restricting certain things for a short period of time works for me.  Forgoing (my beloved) dairy products for an entire day of the week allows me to explore new ways to prepare my favorite meals in a healthier way.  I have come to find comfort in these challenges and feel a real sense of accomplishment when I stick to them a few days in a row.
Lately I have felt like DanceFIT classes, preparing the classes I teach, planning a picnic for my entire church this summer, cleaning the house, dropping off dry cleaning, grocery / meal planning and shopping, walking the dog, visiting with friends and staying up to date with out of town family has all gotten in my way of doing structured things with Connor. Some days I fear I just drag him around with me from errand to errand and I don't feel good about myself as a mother on these days.  So I decided to adapt the "daily 6FIT challenges" to some structured mother & son activities.  Here's what I came up with:

Music Mondays
Touch and Feel play Tuesdays
Work your body Wednesdays
Thoughtful Thursdays
Free Fridays

Each week in addition to planning my workouts, meals and errands I will create each day's activity and write it on our calendar.  All of things are "priorities" to me; I need to do things that make me feel good and important so I can continue to be a good mom.  And writing them down holds me accountable and adds variety into our days.
How do you "switch things up" with your routine?  Does it help to write / chart things or do you enjoy last minute planning?  I'd love to hear what works for you : )

Mental Power is Just as Strong as Physical Power

I have never been one of those people who can regularly work out 5 - 6 days a week for months on end.  I get burnt out way too quickly, both physically and mentally.  I do much better making goals on a monthly basis.  I can plan for the weather fairly accurately, holidays that will occur and all the parties that will take place, and have a general ideas of what my husband's travel schedule looks like for work so I know which days I will be "single parenting".  And it works for me, because I am a planner - I love to plan everything.

We are now into the end of week 4 of 6FIT and I'm starting to get a little sad!  Sad that I will miss my teammates daily support, sad that I will not be able to be motivated by my teammates food choices on our charts, and sort of sad that I haven't had as many high scoring days than I would have liked! Like all goals, sometimes you need to stop and make revisions as necessary.  I had another unavoidable road block this week when, on Monday, Connor got a really bad stomach flu.  He was sick as a dog all day which meant I needed to drop everything and tend to him.  This was a first for me!!  Of course he is my priority on a daily basis, but this was him clung to me literally for 12 hours straight.  I couldn't cook myself food, much less log healthy food choices or get a workout in.  Then Ned got it the second day, the day before he had to go out of town to work a midnight shift.  So wifey mode kicked in, and I was tending two sick boys.  Then I woke up early the next morning sick as a dog.  Life happens (this has been theme for me this round of 6FIT!! Maybe there is a hidden message in all of this for me : ))!!  And that is OK.

Mentally, I was really upset on Monday.  I felt like there was so much I wanted to accomplish this week.  First and foremost - new vegetarian recipes to try for "no meat" week and new stretch / tone workouts to try after a great week of cardio.  But I had to take a few days off.  I had to literally give myself a pep talk: "no, your teammates will not be mad at you for not getting points these few days, they will understand".  I had to convince myself that all was not lost because of a few "off" days!!  And the same rings true for anything in our lives: unexpected out of town work trips (a lot of my teammates have encountered this and they dealt with it amazingly!), last minute work projects, family duties, or health issues (hurt muscles, pulled body parts, etc).

Here we are in Thursday and I am back!  I'm even more energized for the last two and a half weeks of 6FIT. I have new (silly?) goals, but they are important for me.  What silly selfish goals will you set for yourself to make YOU feel great?!!?

(Oh and if you were wondering, my goals are: not eat meat through Sunday (finishing veg week strong), eat salmon again on Sat, no more snappea crisps!, no sugary foods until C's bday party, get outside at least once a day while the sun is still shining - hope my friends will join me on this one!)