My Journey With Health And Fitness – Keeping Busy

I am so glad to be back at the condo. It’s not just our friends and the warm weather (note it is definitely not the freezing cold pool) but I am back to feeding all my cats and dogs. So many of them chase me down and want some sort of cuddles along with their treats. Even several of the feral cats will now come up to me (though still leave some distance). There’s a long legged chihuahua named Mia who literally starts vibrating and dancing when she sees me. It really makes me feel good to have all of these 4 leged friends.

So my husband and I committed to having fun our first week here (i.e. not particularly paying attention as to what we were eating or drinking). We agreed that as of yesterday it would be time to get serious about a few things. For me it was to not find excuses to avoid working out (even ran a 5k this morning after walking a 5k then did a fitness class), reduce my carbs and not have alcohol more than twice a week. For him it was to improve his eating and same with the alcohol (note he’s a work in progress when it comes to walking each day). The challenge is that it is so easy here to just go out to eat, snack on chips or sit on the back patio with a beer or tequila. However, I have come up witha plan.

There’s that saying something about idle hands are the devil’s playground. I believe that in terms of if you don’t have anything to do, that’s when you get into trouble. Keeping that in mind I decided what will help keep us on the right path would be to find things for us to do. So I made a list of things we could do around the condo each day. We also have all sorts of board games that we can play to keep ourselves occupied. Finally we both have several books we want to read so we are committing time for that as well.

Today it was clean the windows. I know this doesn’t sound like much but trust me, we have very large windows. There are 2 sets in the front that are battered by the wind and rain and therefore can be quite filthy. The ones at the back off each bedroom are more protected but are much more challenging to clean because of their locations and size (these are huge patio doors). Still we went to it today and after several hours those windows are sparkling clean.

I am a firm believer that our tasks should not be more than a few hours each day. After all, we are here to get some relaxation and socilization as well. Remember, even with these tasks I am working out 4 hours a day and still have clients to deal with. Instead, I have broken all of the tasks down to which area of the condo to work on. For example, tomorrow will be reorganizing the closets/cupboards in both bedrooms. Thursday we are going to clean out and organize the cupboards and drawers. After that we are on to the pantry and eventually the kitchen cabinets which will likely take a couple days because I want to wash the exteriors. Trust me I am confident that when all of that is complete I will be able to find more for us to do.

I’m good with keeping us busy the next 4+ weeks. I want to normalize that when we come down here it is not an excuse to just sit around and let ourselves go. Rather, I want to make it so coming down here improves us and that is exactly what I think is likely to happen.