Wine & Wellness Wednesday: Change Up Your Routine, or, Flexibility! It's Good for Your Health!

I did something odd last Friday.

I exercised.

That wasn’t the odd part. One of the things I’ve been happiest with for the past weird year as we dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic was that I maintained my morning routine of meditation, journaling, and exercise.

So how was last Friday weird?

I exercised at 4 p.m., after breakfast and lunch and coffee and running errands.

Why was that weird?

I didn’t exercise in the morning per my usual habit, thanks to a rough night and a late start on the morning.

But as I was dragging and lacking motivation and energy in the late afternoon, I thought, “Why can’t I exercise now? Maybe it will energize me a bit and it will make up for missing the morning.”

I was right. I felt better after I was done on the exercise bike. It was movement without having to leave the house again and go out into the cold for a walk, and it was something I enjoy doing. It was just strange to do it so late in the day.

I’ve posted about routines and also about breaking routines, and this was a really good break in routine.

What routine have you broken lately that felt good? Do you give yourself flexibility to shift between routines in case you don’t do something at the usual time?

Cheers! Here’s to your health!

Wine & Wellness Wednesday: Routines Are More Than Just Routine

It seems as though periodically I come back to why routines are good things, and it seems as though it’s happened a lot in the spring. I recently posted about having gone through a colonoscopy and food allergy testing en route to figuring out some fairly significant (and extremely annoying) gut issues.

I didn’t realize just how badly my routines had been disrupted until I started getting them back, and oh, my, do I feel better! I am incredibly grateful to have my morning meditation, journaling, and exercise routine back. I’m getting back into the routine of setting up the next day’s coffee at night so it’s ready to go. I’m starting new routines, such as spending chunks of time in the yard on multiple days of the week. My cross stitch routine has reached 596 days, which is awesome and a little scary.

Routine may seem to equal boring…and yet it is anything but boring!

What healthy routines do you have, or are you still working on building them?

Cheers! Here’s to your health!

Wine & Wellness Wednesday: Building Habits & Routines

I have certain things that I like to do every morning, and it’s become very rare that I don’t keep to these habits.

I meditate & journal. I exercise. I have coffee with or after breakfast.

While I’ve become very good at maintaining those habits, and they all feel critical to having good days, sometimes I would scramble in the morning to get going on my routine. After a conversation quite some time ago with another coach, I started to look at how I could prepare differently in the evenings in order to have good mornings.

It’s been rocky. As a morning person, I’m much more with it in the a.m. than I am in the p.m. Evenings are my time to wind down, relax, cross stitch, or read, and so on. So then waking myself up a little to be productive and prepare for the following day sometimes feels counter-productive.

It isn’t. It’s extremely productive. Not only am I accomplishing things that will help me have better mornings, I feel better going to bed because I’m ready for the next day.

I set out the clothes I’ll wear for exercising.

I program the coffee maker.

I am getting better at prepping lunches for the following day as well as setting up my desk to be clear so I can sit down and work right away if that’s on my agenda.

How long does it take to make something a routine or a habit?

Honestly? It’s going to take as long as it takes for you to be comfortable with and happy with your actions. The so-called age-old wisdom that it takes 21 days seems to be up for debate. I saw an article that said it takes 66 days to build a new habit. That’s more than TWO MONTHS. Two months is a lot longer than 3 weeks, and it feels overwhelming and intimidating.

So…I’m not going to think about how long it takes to make a routine or habit.

I’m celebrating that I’m working on those habits and routines and that I feel good about how they work in my life.

For the record? BREAKING a habit also takes a long time. I’ve been working on breaking the habit of eating potato chips. (I’m happy to say that I’m being successful, and I’ll have an update on how I feel about it in a future post!)

Keep on going. Celebrate the successes. Understand the roadblocks, and understand how you feel about both the successes and the roadblocks.

Healthy habits & routines are totally doable!!

Cheers! Here’s to your health!

Wine & Wellness Wednesday: When Routine Makes Me Happy

I’ve previously posted about changing up routines to avoid boredom, and how great it felt to get back to routine after a wonderfully lazy vacation. Today I want to talk about routine again, and this time it’s from the perspective of getting back to routine after being ill and (or) injured.

I was recently diagnosed with another avulsion fracture, this time on my right foot. (Now I have matching fractures; one on each foot! Am I super talented or what?) I’ve been oh-so-slowly getting back to regular activity. I took about a week away from my part-time job at a greenhouse and sat around doing not very much. (I did get a lot of reading and cross-stitching done!) I limited my hours when I did go back to work. I followed the doctor’s instructions and things are slowly returning to whatever it is that passes for normal in my life. (I have hopes that within a week or two I will need neither a walking boot nor a brace on that foot!) At the same time, I had my second round of a troublesome intestinal bug. It was a rough month!

Needless to say, for a while I lost track of my routines.

I really love my mornings. I wake up, meditate, journal, and exercise. At least that’s what I usually do when I’m not ill or injured. Of course, rest is one of the most important factors in healing, and I needed lots of it. My mornings were not routine for a while. I finally got back my meditation & journal routine. I started back with limited exercise that I could do while wearing the walking boot. Then I moved from wearing the boot to the brace. Then I moved from the brace to doing my exercises barefoot and I did a little dance, but not enough to aggravate the foot. Then I started adding reps to the exercises and gradually adding back more and more of the exercises I like doing in the morning. This morning, even though it had been almost a week since my last round of deliberate morning exercise, I repeated last week’s success and added a little more.

I felt fantastic!!! I felt as if the patience I’d tried to apply to the healing process was working. And since it’s working, I’ll keep doing it. And as I keep being patient and keep adding things back slowly, I’ll get healthier and stronger again.

I still feel as though occasionally changing routine up is useful, particularly to avoid getting bored, however, getting back to what I enjoy in my morning routines? It’s pretty awesome.

What healthy routines make you happy?

Cheers! Here’s to your health!

Wine & Wellness Wednesday: Getting Back to Routine

Routine is a wonderful thing. I was a bit lazy and very relaxed while on vacation, which is really rather the point of being on vacation to begin with! I am delighted, however, that after three days of being home from my vacation, I’m back in the swing of things. I started that on day one of being home, and it felt (and feels) great! Here’s a look back at an old #winewellnesswednesday post about routines. :)

Cheers! Here’s to your health!

Wine & Wellness Wednesday: March 23, 2016

Routines are good things. Healthy routines are even better things.

Changing your routine can be an even better thing. (An even better, better thing?) :)

Say what?

Do you get bored? Do you feel stuck? Switch stuff up! I’m not talking radical changes, such as suddenly waking up on a Tuesday and deciding to run marathons. (Although that would totally be awesome if you do it!) I’m talking about modifications to things like your exercise routine, or “I always have ___ for breakfast.”

I thought about this a few weeks ago when I switched the order in which I always do pieces of my exercise routine. Whoa. My muscles were very differently sore and tired when I was done, and I felt great! It was as if I’d done an entirely different routine, and yet all I’d done was rearrange the order of the exercises.

I do the same thing with breakfast, actually; most of the time my marvelous husband makes scrambled eggs (usually with goat cheese). That loaded-with-protein breakfast does a great job of getting me through the morning with minimal snacking. J But sometimes I want something different, so I’ll have hard-boiled eggs or sunny-side-up; you get the point. A small modification makes all the difference. It saves me from getting completely bored with eggs every day.

Making a modification to part of your routine can also help you get unstuck, whether it’s from a plateau for weight loss, or boredom, or whatever!

Cheers! Here’s to your health!