Iron Spike Mike

 

I strive each week to eat well every day and to get in some type of daily fitness activity. But it's not uncommon for life to get in the way and throw me off my routine. Fitness and dietary detours can come from any number of circumstances. Keeping any type of routine when traveling can be notoriously difficult. Or maybe it was just a hectic schedule that just squeezed out any opportunity to get to the gym or head out for a run. Maybe it was that fancy dinner out with an unneeded desert that threw me off my dietary goals for the day/week. And then there's alcohol. I do my best to limit drinks to the weekend and only 1 or 2 drinks at that. But sometimes, for any number of reasons, I fall short of those goals. 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

When any of these detours throw me off of my routine, instead of beating myself up, I just consider Monday to be the great reset day. When Monday comes around, it doesn't matter what happened the previous week - it's a clean slate and an opportunity to get off to a good start. Reset Mondays will include both my primary cardio workout which is typically a 45 min to hour-long bike or run plus weights. Yes, I need to set aside time for a longer workout, but I make sure to allow for that in my schedule. Dietary-wise, Monday morning will always include my morning fast until noon and I'll make a special effort to eat a healthy salad at lunch followed by a healthy dinner. I've also been experimenting with 24 hour fasts once a month where I skip both breakfast and lunch and Mondays are perfect for that coming off of a weekend.

Monday = Reset Day

On Monday, I set my sites ahead and ignore what happened the previous week. Often by doing this, I can get a string of a few good weeks going. And when the hiccups inevitably occur, it's no big deal, I just start again the next Monday. Using this strategy, I've often times find myself "accidentally" stringing together a number of good training and nutrition weeks as recorded on my Garmin watch and in MyFitnessPal. Garmin actually goes a step further and uses an algorithm which takes your training load and VO2 Max estimates over a period of time and spits out a status such as "Productive", "Maintaining", "Recovery" etc. I take this with a grain of salt, but when I see the dreaded "Unproductive" status come up, I know I'll do better starting next Monday!

PS - Click the graphic up top, then you can blame me when you get that song stuck in your head 😀