Today is Saturday.

I know this because I was shocked yesterday to find out that it was Friday when we thought it was Thursday.

That is the effect of the holiday season. No work, no routine and no reason to know what day it is. It’s easy to feel a bit lost during this time and even easier to lose momentum on self goals or routines.

The sudden change from an organised, predictable lifestyle to one that involves special occasions, special meals and in general a completely different way of living can be more than a little disorienting. Over the last few days I have been wading my way out of the fog of delicious Christmas treats and preparing myself to get back on track with my priorities, specifically my health.

I don’t feel like I’ve let it all go this holiday season though despite the fact I’ve eaten enough sugary, cream filled desserts to last me for the rest of the year and my Christmas mince pie quota has been more than filled. Unlike other years, where I would have combined this treat fest with long spell of as much inactivity as possible we have been really active.

It seems like the habits I have been building since September have started to stick. I have been out walking with the dog multiple times, run on the beach, done shuttle sprints in the school playground while the kids rode their bikes, played golf and done my weights routine at least once. I also discovered you can burn a lot of calories and destroy the muscles in your legs endlessly climbing the water slides with your kids.

Earlier in the week I was feeling a bit down on myself, mostly due to the amount of holiday food I have consumed lately which is way outside of my normal eating habits. I’ve also been too distracted and disoriented to even think about writing. It was while I was walking the dog one evening that I realised that not all of my priorities had suffered over the last few weeks. Here I was, still walking, still being active. The pain in just about all my muscles quite clearly said that I was still living quite intentionally in terms of my fitness priorities.

Intentional living is just that. You can do it anytime and you can reset time and time again. I realised that I hadn’t been writing because I hadn’t made it a priority amongst all the busyness of the days around Christmas. In some ways, I had said no to sitting down and writing so I could say yes to getting out and being active with my family. All I had to do to refocus was to sit down and write something.

The next area to reset will be getting back to a healthier eating plan. There’s time for that though. It’s New Year’s Eve and my daughter’s birthday tomorrow and I’m making it a priority to eat a big piece of cake with her!

photo credit: Infomastern <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/55856449@N04/15151202920″>Cheesecake</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Published by the lean minimalist

Donna Sherriff is a New Zealand based improvement and operations management specialist. Seeing a need for simple, no fuss, improvement advice she started The Lean Minimalist blog in 2017. Donna writes articles offering advice and tips for rapid and sustainable business improvement based on over 15 years in Senior Management roles. Passionate about sharing the lessons of over 20 years on the high performance track Donna offers coaching services to professionals. She also writes about her own personal improvement journey, minimalism, and her life long struggle against the tyranny of cookies and sugar which she overcame in 2020. These days, Donna is pursuing a journey to earn her black belt in Taekwondo after a long hiatus of 16 years away from training. On the side she is an amateur but passionate musician and poet. View all posts by the lean minimalist