Momentum Monday: Drop the guilt

Hello Monday...we meet again.  Anyone else have terrible sleep like me last night?  Not fitfull but so light that I feel like I didn't sleep at all.  Oh well. 

This week is a short week for many of us with Thanksgiving on Thursday and most businesses closed on Friday (not mine, I'll be doing my Black Friday shopping then going straight to work. I know...Black Friday shopping, don't judge, you do it too.)  This week is usually packed at work full of things to do and get accomplished before everyone leaves for the holiday, making this week that much more stressful for all.

Then we get to Thanksgiving and most of us go on autopilot with our eating.  Grazing during the day on snacks sitting out while watching football, extra helpings of your favorite dish(es) during the big dinner thinking "hey, I only get this once a year, I can have more", indulging in dessert(s) even when your belly is already stuffed full of the dinner feast and promptly falling asleep due to our food induced comas.  Then the next day we get a giant old helping of...

guilt.

Why did I eat all that?  Why did I have more stuffing and gravy?  Did I really eat a quarter of the pumpkin pie...WITH whipped cream?  Ugh... 

It's the same song and dance we tend to do every year, we are excited and happy and social on this day of Giving Thanks, then we inevitably have the day of Feeling Guilty afterwards.  Vicious cycle, no?  How about we change it up a bit and do something for ourselves to keep our day of guilt as a day of Thanksgivings past.

If you know yourself, like I know myself, I will indulge on this day, not to the extent I illustrated above, but I will eat things I normally would not.  So my plan is to make my run a bit longer on Thanksgiving morning to help curb my feelings of guilt on Friday.  I will rise earlier and add another mile or two to my scheduled run for that day so I will not feel guilt about eating these items and not doing my job to exercise.  So that is why today's Momentum Monday is this:

I'm not saying that you should reward yourself with food (I believe in rewarding yourself with other things so you don't attach triumph to food products), I am saying that your reward for working out that day or adding just a bit more to your normal workout is to let yourself not feel guilty for having this short lived indulgence.  Leave the guilt on the road when you run, on the floor of the gym where you lift, on the mat where you did yoga or wherever you worked out that day.  Allow yourself to enjoy your workout and enjoy the holiday goodies, and kick the guilt to the curb.