Long Hours and Old Habits

Out in the real world, I work as a freelance Bid Manager - basically I sit at a desk for hours at a time, writing, doing graphics, arguing with engineers, editing, re-editing, more arguments, herd a few cats and bash my head against a wall. Most of the time this is a normal eight hour a day job. But at the pointy end, when we are about to submit a tender, it gets crazy. 12+ hour days, weekends, not seeing my beloved for more than 10-20 mins a day...you get the idea.

Now THOSE days mean that I sit at a desk, and don't move. I forget to drink enough, I don't go the loo enough. Eating habits are bad. In the past, that would also have included pizza at 9 pm as you could eat with one hand and type/scroll documents with the other.

Last Thursday I submitted a tender, well a prequalification for a tender, which is almost as painful. The last two weeks were long and grumpy, and well...long and grumpy.

The company I am doing work for at the moment is full of an amazing team, mostly Spanish, and they bring in LOTS of snacks...biscuits, cakes, tarts, tortes, Ohh carb filled treats of badness! But I have avoided them. OK, I did have one small bit of a gluten free brownie the other week...but, all things considered, that was nada!

But, I kept a stash of miso soup in my drawer, I made sure I went for walks, albeit brief, at lunch to get something to eat, mid-morning and afternoon to clear my head. And I managed to hit the majority of my liquid requirements (some days were better than others, but I have learned not to beat myself up about it).

Yes, some days will be better than others on our journey to losing weight. But if we took every setback as a fail, then we would lose hope. I know I would. Now I see bad days as just that and start each day afresh.

This is the first submission I have ever done where I wasn't drinking a bottle of wine almost every night to get to sleep nd shut my brain off. Win. I didn't resort to junk food to keep me fed. Win. So what if I didn't get 2-litres of water in a day? I got 1.5 litres in, and I did it healthily...so agan...WIN.

Now as I write this I am sitting in a gorgeous cottage deep in the heart of Cornwall, with my Hussyband snoring upstairs, friends from Oz in the other bedroom, and I have just scoffed a hard boiled egg instead of giving into the temptation of the Coco Pops on the table. WIN!

Now let us just hope we win the prequal as if we do that has me set for work for the next 12 months!