Importance Planning vs. Planning Importance

Matt and I are planners.  We plan for everything (or as much as we get advanced notice for).  We make to-do lists. We have calendars (both virtual and paper).  We are rarely spontaneous when it comes to planning for the day, the weekend, the month, even sometimes for the year. Let me give you an example – we started planning for our wedding 18 months in advance, even before we were engaged (details, schmetails).  I knew the day would come that he would realize I was the one, lol.  I didn’t need him to ask officially we both knew it was right for us.  Although, he planned the best proposal a girl could ask for!! (He sent me on a journey to find his location through notes and clues starting with a 5-foot teddy bear, stops along the way, he even included my kids, his sisters, and a surprise dinner with family all in the same night.)  Well worth the wait.

These last few months have been busy for us, but as we start to look at the last two months of the year it got me thinking.  If we plan so well and make time for the things we find important how come planning and making time for what we fuel our bodies with seems like such a chore?  When I think back about why I was the larger version of myself it was because I made excuses for grabbing a bag of chips, instead of preparing a meal or going through a drive thru to pick up something to satisfy my hunger in the moment to eat a meal just a short time later.  It’s all mindless thinking.

With Moxifit we are required to keep log of what we consume for the day – both food and water intake.  We also track our sleep, our physical activity, stress level, our output (yes, we track that as well) and we rate our daily effort from 0-100% each day. For me having a calendar and having my day planned out help me stay on routine. Most days I’d like to say I am at a 100%, but I have had days in the 60-90% range.  Most often it’s the days I failed to plan (again excuses) or things out of my control took over.  I recognized that when I get out of routine I struggle.  I struggle to get my water in, or I eat late in the day or don’t move enough throughout the day or get enough sleep. Sometimes all of it. It just becomes a ripple effect.  I have to remind myself that my health should always come first, and my day should revolve around it versus my health revolving around my day.

We tend to look forward to doing things that are fun, being with people that make us happy, or buying things that we just have to have.  We all have the same number of hours in the day to do something.  How we choose to spend those hours is always up to us.  We make priority the things and people that we choose.  I’m in a different time in my life that I take the time to look at my calendar and really make sure that of all the activities and to dos I have on it and what I chose to do with my days brings value to myself or my family.  Logging and tracking and rating each day has provided me the opportunities to reflect on not only the quality of time I am spending on my health, but also on my life.

I ask you all to reflect on how you are spending your days.  How would you rate the level of effort you are putting into yourself? Into your health?  If you have a calendar look at it with fresh eyes.  Don’t just fill it up just to have something to do, make sure it’s bringing you the quality of life you deserve.