6/3/17: The Case of the Absent Blogger - This is an unedited ramble.

Post-script - It's been too long since I blogged.  The following paragraphs are just a dumping of my thoughts.  I don't have time to edit it. I guess if I'm going to blog it'll be messy.  Read it if you want, but please forgive the poor sentence structure, any misspellings, and the lock of cohesiveness.  It is what it is.  I'm going to start blogging again, but I'm sure it won't be pretty.  Such is life as an innkeeper.  😊


I hired a trainer, Alexis, about a month ago to help me get back on track.  This whole innkeeping thing, it is not for the weak or faint at heart.  It is also exceedingly difficult if you happen to have a sugar addiction. I'll get into that more in the following paragraphs, but first I am going to ask the question, "Why am I starting to blog, again?"  The answer is simple, Alexis told me to.

I am struggling with food.  I've gained way too much weight since I started this gig at the Bernerhof Inn Bed and Breakfast.  There is food everywhere all the time.  At first, there was no really good food, just crap.  I have changed that by changing the menu.  I know have good, healthy, Whole 30 food available to eat most of the time, right in the walk-in.  But I am still eating too much sugar laden crap.  Mostly I am eating it because it is right in front of me most of the time.  Homemade muffins and made from scratch biscuits are available every morning at 7:00, chocolate chip, oatmeal, or peanut butter cookies every afternoon at 3:00.  Strawberry rhubarb pie and brownies every weekend.  You get the idea.  It's just here.  On top of that, a normal work day is 12 hours, 14 hour work days are common, and 16 hour workdays happen at least once a week.  When you're on your feet all day, going from one thing to the next, it's way to easy to grab a leftover muffin.  I eat when I'm not hungry and when I eat, 50% of the time I eat crap.  That has to stop.

When Carla and I arrived on December 19th of last year, we hit the ground running.  In spite of Carla's insistence that we needed to take time off each week from the beginning, I just couldn't do it.  There was so much to do, there was so much I didn't know how to do; it was impossible for me to stop working until I was so tired I could no longer stand up.  Then I would go to bed so that my body could recover a little bit and get up early the next morning and start over again.  The impact that had on my body was predictable.  With too little sleep and too much stress (mostly physical stress), I was overeating all the wrong foods and I gained weight fairly quickly.  My knees and feet hurt in the mornings.  I spent very little time this year outside playing.  My prominent form of exercise this winter was shoveling snow.  I did go downhill skiing twice.  That was fun!

Alexis and I have been working on achieving balance within my life as an innkeeper.  I have told Carla, Jack, and myself that if I cannot be an innkeeper and take care of myself, then I will not buy an inn.  That is part of the experiment.  It makes no sense to own an inn for the rest of my life if I cannot be healthy and truly enjoy growing old.  That is exactly the opposite of what I want to achieve.  Now, in all fairness to the noble profession of innkeeping, this is not all the fault of the profession.  If you ask the people that know me, they will tell you that this has been my pattern for my entire life.  Every time I make a major work/life transition, I throw myself into it completely and lose my ability to take care of myself for about a year.  It seems like it takes an entire cycle (a year) for me fully learn a business, after that year, I can relax a little, work less, sleep more, and take better care of myself. I just can't afford for this to go on for a year.  I need to stop the cycle, now.

The first thing Alexis and I focused on were exercise (physical activity outside of work) and sleep.  I have not been getting enough sleep and the impacts everything.  I was not getting any physical activity outside of work.  Both of those things have improved with Alexis's coaching.  I am wearing a Fitbit now.  For the record, on a normal day I hit 10,000 steps at about noon.  The only days that I don't hit 10,000 steps before noon are on days that I don't wear the Fitbit because I am charging the battery or on the occasional day that I have to do bookwork.  I am having a hell of a time getting my targeted 8 hours of sleep.  Last night I did pretty good though, I slept 7 hours and 27 minutes, plus I had 52 minutes of awake time.  I consider any night that I get at least 7 hours of sleep good, though my goal is 8 hours.  Yesterday was a day off and I went on a hike.  According to my Fitbit, yesterday I walked 16,606 steps, went up 96 floors, walked the equivalent of 6.96 miles, burnt 2,603 calories and exercised for 103 minutes.  Thursday was a normal workday.  I did not exercise on Thursday but per my Fitbit I walked 15,662 steps, went up 6 flights up steps, walked an equivalent of 6.72 miles and burned 2,787 calories. 

Working with Alexis has been effective in getting me more physically active.  I am making the decision to exercise much more often.  I am lifting weights sometimes, but I am also walking and hiking a lot more often.  If I don't squeeze anything else in, I often manage to get out in our fairly extensive gardens to do some aerobic gardening.  I am not kidding, either.  A few evenings ago I attacked some shrubs that were blocking the view coming out of our parking lot.  I worked on those shrubs for about an hour and a half and I was sweating the entire time.  In addition to severely cutting back the bushes, I had to haul the branches into the woods.  My heart rate, per my Fitbit, was in the "Fatburn" zone for 76 minutes and in the "Cardio" zone for 10 minutes.  My average heart rate was 106 BPM during this time, and my high heart rate was 136 BPM.  Taking care of this property is real work, but it is fun work.  When I work in the gardens, I make a conscious effort to alternate which sides of my body that I am working with.  It is natural to let my right side take over, but I go back and forth, from left to right to try to train my body more evenly.  I also make an effort to work hard when I am in the garden, first to make good use of my limited amount of time, and second to get my heart rate up.

So, since I started working with Alexis I am exercising more, spending a lot more time outside, and I am sleeping more.  I still don't have control over my food.  I am more aware of my food, but I still am not tracking it, which she really wants me to do, and I am still overeating.  Oh, and I am drinking alcohol a little, too.  Not a lot, but an evening or two a week, I will have a beer or a glass of wine at the end of my workday.

The point of starting to blog again is that this tool helps me stay accountable.  I am going to make an effort to blog every day.  There is a lot to talk about.  I need to get control of my food.  I hope this helps.  I think I should go 100% Whole 30.  I started the day that way yesterday, and fell off the wagon around noon.  I will start that way again today.  My plan is that in my blog post tomorrow, I will tell you that I was successful at that.

See you tomorrow.  Have fun today!