Day 9 - Adjust Your Lifestyle

Today's blog is a little bit of a personal update for me, but also a lesson to some of you on how you need to adjust your lifestyle from time to time to meet your health and fitness needs.

Some of you may know that my wife and I had our first-born (a boy) back on December 6th 2011. Today marks my wonderful wife's first day back to work. Well, we call it work because she works long hours and gets paid, but it could also be considered school as she is a few short months away from completing her PhD in Microbiology.

Anywho, while she is off finishing her education (I am beyond proud of her by the way!), I have been given an absolutely amazing opportunity to take some parental leave from work for the next 4 months to stay at home with my son (he's the one in the picture above).

Now, I consider myself to be one of the luckiest fellas in the world right now because of this fantastic opportunity that I have been given, but there is definitely a slight change in my lifestyle and priorities in the coming months.

The way my weekdays used to be structured would go something like this:

6am - Alarm goes off

6-7am - Have coffee while watching the news, spending time with my son

7-8:30ish am - Workout

8:30ish - 9am - Shower, dress, breakfast

9am - onward - Work

The change that comes into play here is that my wife now needs to be out of the house by 6:30-7am. So, what that means is that I like to have my workout done by then so that I can watch, feed, change, and entertain my son. For those of you who have/had kids, you know how it actually is like a full-time job!

So, instead of throwing my hands up in the air and saying, "That's it, I quit!" I now wake up at 5am, have a quick cup of coffee, and into my home gym to do my workout starting at 5:30am. If the workout runs a bit past 6:30am, then my boy sits in his monkey bouncer where he gets a perfect opportunity to smile and laugh at his old man sweating and working out like a madman!

I choose to wake up even earlier than what I am used to for a few reasons. One, watching young children can be tough, and they don't necessarily follow a regimented schedule every day where I know that at 2pm I can do my workout, for example. Two, this way, I like to get my workout done and out of the way so that no matter what comes up during the rest of the day, I know that my workout has been done and completed.

There are many of you out there reading this that may even wake up earlier than me, or some of you may stay up to impossible hours of the night to do your workouts. What I say to you is congratulations, keep on going! On the other hand, for those of you who let 'life stuff' get in the way of achieving your goals, I think you may need to reassess your reasons for motivation in life. I certainly know why I make the time to workout as hard as I do!

Quote of the day:

"Difficulties mastered are opportunities won."
~Winston Churchill