Moving Induced Break in Routine

I suppose it's fair to think that I love moving house considering that I do it so frequently.  For one reason or another it just seems that I move every 2 or 3 years.  Trust me - I can explain each move.  They all make sense at the time. 

After all these moves, you would imagine that I have moving down to a system by now, and you would be correct.  That doesn't change the fact that routines get thrown out the window, bodies get injured, and nerves get frazzled.

The Nerd and I moved from our cool - but seriously overcrowded - St. Lawrence Market-area multi-storey condo unit to a rowhouse in Corktown near the river valley.  Because it's a house, the new place has 2 bedrooms plus a den plus a finished basement plus storage space plus a small back yard, all of which combine to alleviate the overcrowding issue we had in the old place.

But no matter how good your movers are (and ours, Collins & Greig, were amazing), moves are still exhausting.  Between the packing, planning, lifting, unpacking, and multiple trips up and down stairs both of us were completely knackered for weeks. 

On the good side there is, at long last, a light at the end of the tunnel.  We are virtually all unpacked (all that is left to do is organize our crawl space storage and back porch storage a bit more), and all of the main areas - living room, kitchen, bedroom, weave-ateria, and gym - are all finished, with furniture in place and pictures hanging up on the walls. 

This is the first weekend in about 3 weeks that we are no longer packing or unpacking, but merely living in our place.  We had guests over to watch the UFC fights last night and the place showed like a charm.  The Nerd and I are slowly discovering the traffic flow and process flow in the new place (for example, our desks / office space are in the basement rather than in the living room), but that's a fun discovery.

As an example of how fractured our routines were, this Thursday was the first time in three weeks that Mr. Fitness came to kick my ass.  Between his schedule and ours we had to cancel two weeks of sessions in a row.  I still worked out with weights a couple of times on my own, but it's just not the same as when he enthusiastically pushes me beyond what I thought I could achieve.  I missed that, and was frankly very nervous about getting back into our training sessions.

It turns out that the new gym space (in our upstairs den) worked just fine, although it was a little bit of a pain in the butt to move the dumbbells from the linen closet where they are stored when not in use (the new gym has less floor space than the old gym area, and there's not as much free space to leave dumbbells laying about).  As far as the workout went, however, it was just as intense as always, and I felt wonderful when it was done.  Completely done in, as well, but then that's kind of the point, isn't it?

 

With some minor adjustments there is more than enough room for one person to work out, and even enough room for me and Mr. Fitness to go through our routines.  The space is not quite as large as the old gym, but overall the new place has so many benefits that a slight reduction in gym size is worth it in the big scheme of things.

For example, now my view from the elliptical is a pleasant look into our back yard, as well as our neighbours' yards.  The old place looked out onto an alley where the garbage bins for our building were stored.  Ambiance central, not so much.

On the downside, I now have "closet weights".

So we're still working out a solution for those...

On the good side the move is essentially complete, the house is amazing, our neighbours are wonderful, and I can still walk to work in the morning (my commute is now a 15 minute walk instead of a 10 minute walk). 

On the bad side, I have managed to undo almost a year of progress with all the chinese food, burgers, and pizza we have been eating during this transition period.  I don't blame anyone - I certainly was too exhausted to even think of cooking most nights, and ordering in was just too tempting.  Add the emotional eating on top of that, and ... let's just say it's a good thing that I am back into my routine. 

I am counting today as official post-move Day 1, and the Nerd and I had a healthy day together.  We both worked out, we stuck to our delicious homemade meals, and we went for a long walk today.  The walk happened to end at an ice-cream truck, but that's kind of the point.  I tracked all the food (including the ice-cream!), as well as my exercise, and it was a good balanced day. 

That's 1 down.  13 more to go to re-establish my good patterns.  364 to go to see big improvement. 

But step 1 is done, so I've got that going for me, which is good.