Well even though I promised myself I would blog every week in 2018, I broke that promise last Sunday. I had 3 out of 4 wisdom teeth removed earlier that week so I was still recovering. I had them removed on the Tuesday prior and honestly had a way better experience recovering during the week than I anticipated. Once the weekend hit, however, I was having a little more difficulty. Sunday evening came around and I honestly just did not feel great. I put off really all of my usual Sunday chores just to rest up. Along with that I made the decision that it would be better if I just skipped writing that week. I am sure you can guess where I am going with this...

 I am a pretty big fan of my routines. As I have mentioned before, Sunday is the day I meal prep, do laundry, and write for this page. I go to the gym Monday thru Thursday and have a pretty specific routine with my workouts. I even eat my meals on a pretty tight schedule as well. I am not one to usually stray from this often. Having wisdom teeth surgery and recovering from that completely threw off my routine in all aspects. Like I said I didn't do my typical Sunday activities last week. I haven't been to the gym since the Monday before my surgery because I wanted to be sure I was healed enough and fully comfortable with going back. I obviously had to totally change the foods I ate as well since there were a lot of foods I couldn't eat for a while. Cutting back on sugar basically went out the window seeing as I ate a lot of ice cream and pudding. Needless to say I haven't been on a set routine in almost two weeks now. 

Recovery was my biggest focus during these two weeks. I personally see nothing wrong with this at all. I would highly encourage you to do the same if you need to spend some time off of your typical routines. I needed to do this for a more obvious reason, but there are plenty of things that can prevent you from staying on your steady routine. Maybe you are going through something emotional. It isn't the same as a physical need to stray away of course, but sometimes we need to give ourselves a mental rest. Maybe you have been really killing it at the gym and your body just needs a bit more recovery time than you are used to. I have skipped the gym here and there on weeks where I feel a bit run down and that I could use the extra rest day. There is absolutely nothing wrong giving your body a little extra TLC.

Sometimes when we do this though guilt will follow. I know there have been weeks that like I mentioned I have skipped the gym and I immediately felt guilty about it. That I should have just sucked it up and went anyways. That is only natural I would imagine, but as long as it is a rare occurrence and you are doing it because you genuinely feel you need the rest there is no reason to feel bad about it. Am I a bit sad I had to take almost 2 weeks off of the gym? Absolutely but I know I needed to do it to allow my body to recover from surgery. Realize that you are doing what you need to do to recover yourself and make you even more ready to get right back into your routine!

I am hoping to get back to the gym tomorrow. I have a training session scheduled with my personal trainer at the new gym location. I unfortunately pulled a muscle in my lower back earlier today. It was a totally random thing, but if the muscle still feels like this tomorrow there is no way I can do all that weight training. I will play it by ear but if I do need to cancel I will not beat myself up. My body once again will need a bit of recovery time. It is also Thanksgiving week so my meals wont exactly be where I want them to be all week either. I also am not going to beat myself up over this. It is the holidays and I 100% believe that you should not deprive yourself during the holidays. It just means that next week I will be at the gym (2 training sessions scheduled for that week) and my meals will be right on point. Allow yourself to recover and jump right back in, that is fully what I plan to do as soon as I can!