Everyday Systems

I've had more "failures" than usual of late, and have noticed that most of them occur when I'm "off-routine" in other ways. Traveling, on vacation, etc.

And one particular thing I've noticed is that my normal routine is that work days are N-days and home-days are S-days. Which seems to be translating to my wanting to eat anytime I'm at home before supper.

I am not liking that trend. I want to be able to follow N-day rules at home.

(Maybe I should have titled this "location-specific routines.")

Anyone else noticing this relationship? Any ideas?

KCCC,

When I started No S I made the decision to have my S days on Friday and Saturday for 2 reasons: 1) If we go out it's almost always on friday nights, and 2) I wanted to establish N Day habits on a home day. In the beginnings, Sundays were definitely the hardest day of the week, but now I take them in stride. And since I live in Europe and have 6 weeks of vacation a year, not including bank holidays, I really needed to have the at-home N day habit.

On the other hand, when I'm on vacation I do tend to have more failures than I'd like, but I still think it's been good to organize my week this way.

Someone also recently added a post about having more failures now that the weather is getting nicer. I feel this inclination too. It's funny how just little changes in your environment can throw our habits out of whack.

Good luck,

Z.

I thought someone did that.

May try the same... but not this weekend, b/c we're celebrating a big family birthday.

Still, I agree that I need to make this work at my house.

I hear you KCCC! With me, I can't bring personal temptations into the house. Not even if I justify them by saying they're for my husband, kids, guests, or for S days! I know if I bring them in, I will eat them - and usually overeat them. Ice-cream is the bad one for me. I can't keep it in the house. So if I want ice-cream, we go out and eat it. This is what helps to keep me straight at home. Maybe it will help you too!
mimi

I have some trouble too with N days at home. I find that it works better if I am busy that day (if I am not then I try to make myself busy...), and if I reproduce my workday routine (get up at the usual time, take a walk/go out shopping/go to the movies at the time you would go to work usually, eat at the usual time etc). Also preparing the menu in advance helps.

Edit: preparing in advance helps for any day which is not routine. For instance these last weeks I have had to take a few day trips for works (wake up 2 or 3 hours earlier than usual, no time for morning routine exercise, 8 hours of travel and 4 to 8 hours of meetings, get back home at 10pm, eat in the train etc.) The first day trip was a disaster habit-wise and I felt soooo guilty that I was not able to follow my usual exercise and eating habits - plus I almost missed my train because I had tried to exercise even though I had no time to do it. Then I gave myself some slack over things I can't help (like having no time for formal exercise), and I used the experience of this first failure to build an alternate routine for day trips (which include taking the underground - lots of stairs - and lugging my bag around and so on). This way I have this advance idea of how my day will go and which habits I can reasonably maintain or alter, and which I will have to give up for the day - without guilt.

In recent weeks I've noticed that the biggest thing that helps me with both N days at home and much more ordered and reasonable S days at home is to eat breakfast the way I normally do on N days at work. It seems easiest if I eat the same kind of thing at near the same time, but even just eating a reasonable and real breakfast of any kind makes a major difference. I think this first step in the daily eating pattern signals my body that that's what we're doing and it much more easily falls in line. I've managed to have a couple successful N days this way in the last month and my S days have been able to consist of meals with a couple snacks/sweets instead of a day of snacks and sweets with one meal thrown in.

Julie

Oh, gosh, that's way too much thinking about it for me. I usually start the weekend (S days) Friday evening at dinner and extend it through Sunday at 9:00 PM. If I have any treats left over at that time, they go in the trash and I take the trash out. Temptation removed.

As far as any other part of my routine, I do the my best and don't worry about it. Most days my best is pretty good -- occasionally it's not. I'm not trying to be perfect.