Diet, Training, Cooking, Rest, where's LIFE?

This has nothing to do with the post, I just thought it was cute :)

The past few nights I have not been getting my regular 8 hours of sleep like I normally do so last night I did all of the things that usually relax me and clear my head to make me pass out around 9pm on work days. I settled down, turned on a lamp, read for a little bit, did some praying, etc and had a little bit of a harder time falling asleep, but was out by 10pm. This morning I began to kind of mosey awake and got up to use the bathroom thinking "Yes, finally I got 8 hours of sleep it's gotta be almost 6:00am" so I lay back down in bed and pick up my phone to look at the clock anddddddd it's 3:50am! WHAT!?? As soon as I saw that, I was just annoyed at why my body decided it was ok to be awake at that time and why it couldn't just sleep till my alarm which by the way just turned into frustration and made it impossible to go back to sleep so here I am around 5:00am starting out today's blog!

It is two days out from my photo shoot and I have been training even when I've been exhausted and on a crazy eating schedule with a breakdown of times to eat, macro-nutrients, when to work out with eating, etc. and it's driving me nuts. Right now, 90% of my time is spent either cooking, eating, training, or trying to catch up on rest. Fortunately, I have understanding friends and family who know that this shoot pretty much consumes my life right now. However, I have learned so many lessons through all of this and had so many great experiences. 

Your body is extremely important, if your body goes down then you go down with it there's no way around it. Your life and the enjoyment of your life is also extremely important...if you aren't enjoying life then what's the point? I started ABS Wellness and started training because so many of my clients wanted to just dive right into weight loss and nutrition (which is great!), but were wanting to just put the rest of life on hold or the sidelines in order to make it happen. How does that work? What are you going to do when life your so called "diet" is over and life is still going on around you and you have to find time for family and friends? I am not for "diets" because they create the idea that this nutrition you have started incorporating into your life has a time line and a stopping point. For me, right now this DIET does have a stopping point. That stopping POINT is this Saturday, thank you GOD! Not stopping in regards to as soon as the shoot is over it'll be bring on the junk food, bring on the ice cream and pizza for the rest of my life and now I'm just going to eat myself into a coma. The diet has a stopping point as in I will eat what I feel like my body needs/wants to eat and not because I have to eat, I will train because I love the challenge and love pushing my body to new levels not because I need to tweak certain areas and try to be perfect, and I want to sleep because my body needs rest and not because I have to worry about missing a training day because I'm too exhausted. (I'm at the point now where I am going to look however I'm going to look. If I look like a regular average girl then I am fine with that just get me back to living life not revolved around food!)

When you truly make health and wellness a lifestyle you will look forward to your workouts, to your next meal or recipe, to everything! It becomes fun and you try out different things while still enjoying life and still enjoying new foods!

I truly do enjoy working out and I love when people give me ridiculously insane workouts that at first you feel like "THERE IS NO FREAKIN WAY!" and then you finish the workout thinking "HOLY CRAP I JUST DID THAT!". It's an amazing sense of accomplishment and definitely a confidence boost showing that you are much stronger and more capable than you think you are. I love trying new recipes and I love trying new restaurants. I love wine and trying out new vineyards. I also love sleep and I love my social life. Through this training the past few weeks, almost all of that has been put on a hold. I did and am doing all of this to prove a point that your body is an amazing piece of work to be taken care of, but there is so much more to you and your life then your body so don't miss out on all the other things you love just to enjoy a certain body fat percentage,  attention, or any other vanity. Do the things you love and leave the rest alone...that's all that matters in life anyways are our friends, family, passions, goals, and dreams...all the things we love and what makes us the happiest! 

Re-evaluate your motives behind why you do what you do...do you do it for attention? Out of insecurity? To "fit in"? To "cope" with things? Do you do it out of fear of getting fat or any other fear? OR do you do it because it drives you? motivates you? pushes you to be better? brings you happiness? Don't get so caught up in your training and eating that you completely forget about anyone and everyone else around you. It's ok to have goals and to be pursuing them as long as you are keeping life in balance! :)