Daily routines

It never occurred to me until today but I believe, in general, it's easier for people who are naturally creatures of habit to change their lifestyle and lose weight than it is for people who tend to be just the opposite. The reason I thought of this was because I almost began this entry by getting on my soapbox and telling you how important it is to replace bad habits with good habits if you want to get healthy and lose weight. But then I thought to myself, what if someone is not like me? If they don't have daily routines they follow how can they change them?

Now I'm not saying you can't lose weight if you're not as anally retentive as I am. Seriously, I'm pretty bad. It's disturbing. I'm not OCD, but I do like things the way I like things. I think the difference between me and someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder is I can still function in a fairly normal manner when I'm taken out of my comfort zone. I'm grumpy when it happens, but I get by.

While it's true you don't need to be a creature of habit to lose weight, you do need to develop some daily routines. If you don't get yourself on some type of schedule it's a heck of a lot easier to fall off the diet and exercise wagon. To give you an example of how bad I am, I generally eat the same thing every day. Kristi thinks it's disgusting as do most of my coworkers. But it's easy for me because this way I don't have to think about it. I know that my breakfast every day is going to be eggs, oatmeal, grapefruit, and coffee. I know that I'm going to eat cottage cheese before I go to bed every night. Obviously you don't have to do things this way to be successful. You can have a number of different foods and meals that you mix and match, weekly. The key is getting into a routine.

The same goes for exercising. I've been surprising myself for the last year by getting up before 4:00 AM several days a week to hit the weights. For me, it works. And since getting up that early has become a routine, it's almost never difficult to get out of bed. It also helps that my internal clock is set to get up at that time.

So get yourself into a routine. Force yourself to pick up some good habits and you'll be well on your way to success before you know it.