Creature Of Habit

It’s 10:30 PM and I just finished the Eccentric Lower program from X3. I normally get up early and get my workout in before work. I haven’t been feeling that great the past couple days and the last two nights I’ve fallen asleep on the couch only to wake up around 1:00 am and then up to bed. Then this morning I overslept and didn’t have time to workout so I had to wait until tonight. I felt really off all day, like I was doing something wrong by not working out. See, I’m very much a creature of habit. Once I get committed to something I become addicted to it. I’ve always been this way. It’s worked both for and against me. As mentioned before, I’ve had some ups and downs with my weight throughout my life and a big part of that has had to do with my ability to develop habits, good and bad.

Back in college when I was horribly out of shape and decided to get healthy I started with small changes. Once I started seeing results it became an obsession. I become totally focused on losing weight and getting fit. I loved everything about it. Back then my dream was to open a gym. Now I wish I had changed my major to Kinesiology or something. But instead I got a business degree as if that would help. If I could give my college self one piece of advice now it would be – change your major, idiot.  But I’m getting a little off topic. My point is that I became addicted to fitness. I worked out constantly, ate totally clean. By the time I graduated from college I had lost 55 lbs over the course of about a year and a half. It totally consumed me.

Shortly after graduating I was at work and having a bit of a bad day. A few guys were going out to have a cigarette and for some stupid reason I thought I’d just go have one. I hadn’t smoked in a couple years but I was in a pretty bad way and caved. By lunch time that day I was at Wawa buying a pack (if you’re not from the Philly area google Wawa NOW – best place ever). After that I smoked about a pack a day for the next couple years (sorry Mom and Dad). I also started drinking pretty heavily. When I say heavily I mean that when I went out I was going out with the intention of getting very very drunk. Again my habits consumed me, but this time they were very bad habits and they killed my health. I had some fun, but I was not in a good way.

Eventually I wised up and quit smoking again and really cut back on the drinking. But it wasn’t until recently that I really started focusing on my health again. And now that I am, I’m completely addicted again.  I’m highly focused and I’ve got a pretty solid routine going. The problem is that because of my obsessive nature, if anything in my routine changes it totally throws me off and I don’t feel good about it. Like I really have a hard time dealing with it in my head. I can’t even tell you how many times today I thought about how I didn’t work out this morning. It drove me crazy.

A lot of people have made comments to me over the last couple months about how I should have a little cheat meal here and there and don’t need to eat 100% clean all the time. And while I do totally agree that if you eat healthy 90% of the time, you’re in good shape. The reason I don’t let myself do that is because I don’t want to add back in any bad habits. I’m afraid of where it would lead. I’m afraid of the “I’ll just have one” situation again. So I stay away from it. I’m a creature of habit. But from here on out, I’m pretty driven to make sure only the good habits hang around.