I had the most boring, unproductive day Sunday, but it allowed me to catch up on a lot of sleep, which in turn allowed me to start my week off with a nice, 6 a.m. workout. I kept that up Tuesday and Today, and also got a lot of good walking in at King’s Island yesterday.

It’s so difficult to get up that early, as I’m not a morning person by any means, but I’m working out now more than I have in a long time because doing so in the mornings helps me avoid some of my excuses. On a typical day, I may be pumped about working out until about 3 p.m., but then my exhausted brain ends up talking me out of it by the time I’m on my way home. If I get it over with in the morning, I avoid (most of) that, plus I feel better about myself all day for having completed that small goal. I may lose a little more sleep, but realistically I wake up like 80 times throughout the night anyway, so that hour or so I lose two or three days a week hasn’t made me any more tired.

I want to continue this trend because I’m finally making some progress. I did slip up over the weekend diet-wise, though, so I need to make sure I do my grocery shopping before I run out of all the good stuff!

I used to do a better job of eating healthy, but when I took on the second job I found myself less willing to cook for a while and more willing to settle for convenience. I’m starting to enjoy cooking again, but it’s been harder this time to get myself back to some consistently good habits. I think part of it is boredom with life and maybe a little bit of depression. I tend to want to snack more often when I’m bored. I try not to buy any sweets or other processed foods for this reason. Meal prepping would probably serve me best, so I’m trying to consider that more.

Lately, I’ve been taking it one day at a time, but I think I need to set longer goals when it comes to taking care of my mind and my body. Otherwise, I just find myself “restarting” every week. You can maintain things that way, but it makes it more difficult to make any real progress. Fortunately, I’m in a good frame of mind at the moment, so it’s a good time to try to set those things in motion.