The Willpower Challenge-False Starts

Tired.  Headache.  Don’t feel like cooking.  Especially don’t feel like cooking what’s on the meal plan tonight–roasted pork.  “I have enough points for Taco Bell,” I tell my husband.  He agrees that it sounds good.

Two nights ago, it was Pizza Hut.

Even before New Year’s when I was planning my goals for the year (while downing fudge and other goodies) and deciding what challenge would be the first challenge, I knew that the Willpower Challenge should be first.  Willpower is the basis for everything, and as I looked at each day for the challenge, I knew it was onto something.  It hits on the main things like lack of sleep, lack of planning, too much screen time, etc. that often make us lose our willpower and feel like “What the heck?  Screw ____.  I’ll get back on track tomorrow.”

And that’s where I am right now.  I was supposed to start this challenge on January 2nd.  It’s written on my calendar:  Willpower Day 1.  I developed a horrible cough on January 1st.  Instead of going to midnight on the 1st like I had been used to doing for the last week or so, I went to bed early in order to prepare for the first day of the challenge which focuses on going to bed 8 1/2 hours before you need to wake up.  I went up at 11:00, laid in bed for over an hour, fighting the urge to cough, trying not to wake up my daughter, before I finally got out of bed, went downstairs, and played Candy Crush hoping the cough would go away.  I had taken Mucinex earlier like I had been for the last couple weeks of being sick, but it hadn’t helped the cough.  I eventually decided that I had to search online and see if I could take an antihistamine with it, and thankfully, I could.   I took it, and I fell asleep…but not until around 1:00.  So much for going to bed earlier.

The next several nights were similar, though I now knew to take the antihistamine instead of Mucinex at night.  I finally decided that I just needed to wait until I got over this cough.  I waited and waited.  On the 6th, I saw a doctor online who said it’s probably bronchitis and prescribed antibiotics.  Based on my previous experience with Augmenti,n I figured that by the weekend, I’d be feeling much better, so again on my calendar, Saturday, January 9th, I wrote “Willpower Day 1.”  I was ready to get this started.

Ha!

Here I am, Sunday, January 10th.  I was up late again last night.  No medicine was helping.  I had to stay up until I was too tired to stay up any longer before going to bed.  (I had gone to bed but had to come down again because I was back to fighting the urge to cough.  All the more important since my daughter woke up at 5:00 the morning before, and the day before that was up between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m.  I wasn’t going to dare waking her up and being up for two hours again!)

So I’m tired.  Tired of coughing.  Tired of not sleeping when I want to sleep, and therefore, I have no willpower to start the Willpower Challenge (or to do a lot of other things I want to do).  It will just have to wait until the cough subsides.

On the bright side, I’m still drinking my glass of water every morning. I still do some pilates/yoga in the morning, and I’m still working through each day of the declutter calender…so I haven’t been completely useless.

Anyway, try to be patient with me.  No challenges to report on yet, but hopefully by the end of the month, I’ll be able to try one and report back.  And for some of them, I’ll have a bonus freebie like a checklist so that you can try the challenge, too, if you want.  Here’s hoping your New Year is starting off better than mine…at least in the health department!