#and my brother went 'we could go check their pantry ourselves'

[rivercityrabbitsbro]

God there's a short list of things that immediately fill me with frustration-induced-rage, and one of them is how I put a lot of thought into what I'm doing almost always, and the willingness of people to immediately assume I'm just dumb/careless/inexperienced.

For example, I will often phrase an email or request in a specific way as to show that someone's request was lazy and pushing the work off on to me, and a 3rd person often comes in and goes "You know we can just [do the work that that person was trying to push on to me]" like I don't know that.

An account manager sent an email with a client name as a subject line and "We're marketing this and being asked for details on all claims over $10k" Which lines of coverage? (there's like 10) Over how many years? (we've had them for 20 years) What kind of details? (the description or how the claims played out?) Do you have a list of those claims? When do you need it by? All things I asked, in more words, copying others in the dept bc they'd be involved.

My exec responds: We could just pull up the most recent loss reports in the file and check them

Yeah I know! I literally was doing exactly that as I was drafting my email because I like to give myself ammo when I'm making a point. I am obviously not going to wait for the response bc that hinges my work on when someone else gets me something. I could also check her files to see who specifically is asking to see what specific lines of coverage they're asking about. I could never speak to this person and still find a way to get every piece of information I'd need!

But the point of my email was not "I don't know what to do", the point of my email was "You are asking me do you a favor (implicitly on a short timeline), but you can't even do me the decency of providing the information I need to do so, therefore lengthening how much time I have to spend on this favor for you"

Like, the sales side of the company does this to us CONSTANTLY, and my dept just throws up their hands and goes "it's no use fighting it they're gonna make us do it anyway" and it's like.......haven't we been trying to prove how busy we are because quantity of claims doesn't begin to show our workload? Wouldn't correspondence showing how much work is being offloaded onto us by lazy managers go toward proving that? Like yes we might end up doing the work anyway, but the exchange is important.

And not just for paper trail reasons! It's helpful for in-person communication too! Because when someone comes complaining that something's not done yet, it's not just me listing off excuses and "I haven't had time" in a vacuum, it's me going "Well you didn't say it was an urgent request and you didn't actually provide me the list of things you need updates on, so I haven't gotten to it yet because I need an hour to set aside to compile the initial list". Whether or not I sent back questions on this SPECIFIC request, a history of me going "Sure I can do that, [itemized list of questions that are almost always the same]" on requests in the past is something I can defend myself with when allegations come in that I'm not doing my job.

And wouldn't you know it! An allegation was made recently that I wasn't doing my job, and this helped me defend myself.

Oh boy oh man it's almost like I'm not paranoid or "looking for problems", I'm just trying to lay the groundwork to defend myself and maybe even improve things down the line. What a concept!!!

[smytimagine]

Avocado Toast

Plot: You are the twin’s assistant and best friend for years. One day you notice things start to change and aren’t sure what to make of it. Will things work out? Or will you lose everything in your pursuit of happiness?

Warnings: None for this chapter, just mild swearing.

A/n: This is my first try so please don’t be too harsh!

“Helloooooooo” I yelled as I walked into the house, closing the door with my foot behind me.

It was 9:30 am and the house was eerily quiet. It wasn’t totally unusual to show up and no one greets me at the door, but I could usually find someone sitting on the couch or in the kitchen making breakfast. I headed towards the kitchen.

“Hey, Guys…” I started saying but stopped when I found an empty kitchen.

I walked around the house, through the studio, down the hall towards the bedrooms, it wasn’t weird peeking my head in since the doors were open. No one.

I was standing in the empty living room when I realized I never checked the guest house. Picking up the tray of coffee I pulled my sunglasses back down over my eyes and headed outside. The California sun was unbearable on my eyes and sunglasses outside 24/7 was a must.

As soon as I approached the guest house I could hear the music blaring

Of course, why didn’t I assume they’d be in the gym, I thought to myself

Turning the knob I followed the sound of the music into the small gym they had set up in what was supposed to be a guest house.

I stood silently in the doorway taking in the scene while neither had noticed I had entered the room.

One of them was running on the treadmill in a purple hoodie and shorts, his hood was over his head and he was looking down at the screen of the machine. I could see a headband holding his hair out of his face, as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

The other was on the weight bench doing a set of chest presses. He was shirtless and had on a pair of black shorts. He dawned a red bandana over the edge of his forehead and hairline. I had assumed to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

*Cough*Cough* I cleared my throat to make my presence known

The guy on the treadmill looked up and over at me and reached up to turn off the machine, while the other guy looked over but finished his set before racking his weights.

“Hey Y/N!” The purple hoodie moved towards me with arms open

“Hey E, no please I don’t need any sweaty hugs today. Love me from a distance” I teased.

He scoffed and reached out towards the coffee tray to grab his.

“Hey Y/N, what’s up,” the shirtless figure said

He stood up from the bench and immediately I was lost in thought. He stood much taller than me, I was a measly 5′2 on a good day, while he was somewhere around 6 foot. His physique was undeniably nice to look at. And while I had seen him many times in this very outfit, the sweat beading down his chest had caught me by complete surprise today and entranced me.

“Uh, Y/N? You okay?” He broke my stare

“Oh, uh yeah, hey Gray, here’s your coffee” I felt my face flush as I handed him his coffee, avoiding eye contact. Ethan was looking between the two of us with his eyebrows raised as a smirk grew across his face.

This feeling had caught me completely off guard. I had been the boy’s personal assistant for about two years now, and up until this very minute they had been like two brothers who 50% of the time drove me completely nuts. Usually on purpose. I had been the victim of many of their pranks, but also a sounding board when they needed to bounce ideas off of a third party.

I came by every morning to bring them their coffee and go over their schedules for the day. On big event days, I had to keep them moving from place to place to make sure they made it where they needed to be on time, and I even traveled abroad with them when they went.

I didn’t have much of my own personal life outside of these two, but in a way I was lucky. They were two of my best friends outside of work and during work hours it was never stuffy or boring. I often found myself crashing on their couch after a long night sitting by a fire laughing about stupid shit the three of us had been through together.

Grayson seemed to not notice my new shade of red I was dawning, either that or he was really good at playing it off that he didn’t. I wouldn’t put it past him not to notice, that was something Ethan and I always picked on him for. His peaceful oblivion. E and I would find ourselves looking over and laughing about something while Grayson would be completely in the dark. At this moment, I was thankful for that.

I quickly turned my back and headed out of the room “I’ll let you guys finish up and I’ll meet you in the living room, we have some new things on the calendar I need to fill you in on” I spewed out before rushing away.

I walked back into the main house and closed the door behind me, slumping against it for a moment and burying my face in my hands. I was so embarrassed. Ethan was in no way nieve to what had just occurred, even if I wasn’t sure what that was just yet. I would have to prepare for the teasing that was sure to come from him later.

________________________________

I sat on the couch opening up my laptop and planner, I had taken a few deep breaths, a few sips of my coffee, and gotten my shit together when I heard the door open.

“Hey Y/N, we’re just going to shower and we’ll be right out” Grayson yelled out.

After spending so much time with them they stopped even looking like twins. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure how people could possibly get them confused. I could tell it was Grayson talking without looking up because their voices were completely different.

20 ish minutes later a soggy haired Ethan came walking into the living room. I handed him a piece of avocado toast I had made each of them while they were showering. He took the plate, looked down at the toast and then back towards me.

I knew what he was going to say before the words even left his lips

“Shut it E, I don’t know what happened okay?” I shut him down. I knew he was going to poke at me about what happened earlier. He would never say anything in front of Grayson thank God, but he wasn’t going to let it go unnoticed.

“Hey, it’s fine. I’ve been waiting for a loooooooong time for this to happen” he smirked while taking a bite of his toast.

“Waiting for what to happen E, nothing is going to happen, nothing is happening. It was a momentary lack of judgment” I answered back. I had no idea what he was talking about.

What was he waiting for? There was never any signs this was ever going to happen, or that anything even remotely close to anything between Grayson and I would ever happen.

“Yeah okay, Y/N. Listen, just know, it’s fine. Even though I’m the older, more mature, superior twin, I’m fine with it.” He said very matter of factly.

I wanted to end the conversation, I had no idea what was going on right now and I didn’t want to give Ethan any indication that he was right. He wasn’t. I didn’t feel any sort of way. Of course, Grayson was attractive. Anyone with two working eyes could see that both Dolan twins were clear winners of the genetic jackpot, but that didn’t mean I liked either one of them in any way other than what it’s always been.

“Okay E, whatever you say, pal. Can we stop now?” I rolled my eyes, avoiding eye contact.

He nodded, sat back into the couch and continued devouring his toast.

A few minutes later a much more clothed Grayson walked into the living room, head buried in his phone. As usual

“Hey Gray, Y/N made avocado toast. Holy shit it’s so good. Oh yeah, I also ate yours” Ethan said.

I looked up from my laptop, I hadn’t even realized Ethan had eaten Graysons.

“Jesus E, you’re such a pig. Gray I’ll make you another one, just give me a minute” I said play punching Ethan’s shoulder and picking up the now two empty plates.

Grayson didn’t say anything, just nodded and kept his eyes on his phone.

The boy had a phone addiction. Ethan and I often tried to guess what was so important that he couldn’t be pulled away from it most of the day. Girlfriend? Porn? We had a bet going, I had bet he had a girlfriend no one knew about, and of course, Ethan was betting on the porn.

_________________________________________

I popped a piece of toast into the toaster oven and went to the pantry to grab another avocado. I turned to go back to the empty plate when I bumped into a chest.

“Holy shit! Gray, I’m sorry, I’m just grabbing another avocado, give me a minute I’ll whip you up another toast,” I rambled. What is wrong with me today?

“Hey, I can do that. I’m sorry Ethan is a jerk and ate mine. I appreciate you making us breakfast, but I’m an adult I really can make my own” he said.

That was something I liked about Grayson, he was so genuine. Of course, he was a goof and had his moments of being an overgrown child, but I swear he was an old soul. He just didn’t think or talk like most guys his age.

“No really, let me do it. I feel like it’s part of my job anyway” I shrugged and brushed past him back towards the toaster oven.

“No, your job is to keep our heads out of our asses, not make us breakfast” he laughed.

I smiled with my back towards him. He was right. That really was my job, but I always felt like doing these extra things for them. They always went above and beyond for me, it was the least I could do.

I shrugged him off and continued making the toast anyway. When I finished I turned to find him leaned against the counter watching me. He had been so silent I didn’t even know he was there. I jumped.

“HOLY SHIT GRAY! YOU COULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING! SUPER SLEUTH OVER HERE” I yelled.

“Sorry, sorry, I was just watching the master practicing her craft” he chuckled.

“Oh yeah, that’s me, master avocado toast maker” I scoffed, handing him his plate.

“You are actually an excellent cook” He smirked taking a huge bite of his toast

“Omg, It’s just like the best. I don’t know what it is but yours always tastes the best” he said through a mouthful of toast, rolling his eyes upwards in pure enjoyment.

“It’s the extra love I put in it for you two goons” I winked as I walked back out towards the living room with Grayson in tow.

We both stopped, rolled our eyes, and laughed when we found Ethan asleep on the couch.

Part 2

[redbootsthetimetraveller-archive]

Bea and I, With The Beatles

And here’s a new chapter of this!

I do not own The Beatles, and this work is fiction.

-

‘We’re going on tour!’ she smiled. I grinned widely too, but my smile soon faltered.

‘I only have dirty clothes! We’d be leaving tonight, right?’ I gasped. Bea nodded, looking worried for me. ‘I can’t be spotted or Amy will skin me alive!’ I muttered. I stood up, and pressed my palm into my face, rubbing my eye. ‘I think I’ll try to get in…’ I sighed, and left behind my guitar. I snuck towards my house alone, and saw that the rubbish bin was still there. I ran up, jumped onto the bin and vaulted onto the ledge. I’d wedged a small piece of wood to keep the window slightly open, and I used this to force open that very window. I silently slid inside my room, and listened for anyone approaching. With nobody nearby, I grabbed out my brown leather suitcase, clicked it open and brushed out the dust. I wondered how long we would be away for. A week perhaps? We would have to be back by Christmas, but what if we were delayed? I decided that a week would belong enough. I grabbed out some underwear, some blouses, a pair of stockings and a black skirt with a red band near the bottom that only differed from the one I was wearing by a beautifully sewn white dog, I think it was called a Samoyed. My mother had sent it to me and I think she had bought it from a store. I folded up those clothes with jeans, skivvies and socks. I was very good at shoving clothes into small amounts of room, so about a third of the case was left. I put my new books mixed in with my old, but left my LPs behind because I wasn’t likely to use any of them. But I had a second thought, and put in one. I closed the case silently, and I emptied out my dirty clothes from the day before into my washing pile. I pulled on a pair of jeans as I only grabbed a skirt just because I thought I would only be going home after last night. I had another thought. My coat was downstairs and it was mid-December, there was no way I would be alright without it. I was aware of every creaky floorboard, every groaning pipe and every blind spot of the house from living there for practically all my life. I checked around, and heard that the radio was on, meaning Amy, Dad or both were in the living room, the muffling of the programme that could only mean the door was shut to keep out drafts. My brothers I knew would be out playing. I began sneaking down the stairs, and felt confident in my mission. I didn’t make a sound while passing the door, or picking up my coat. I folded it over my arm, and turned around catching a glimpse into the kitchen. I did a double take, noticing a package on the table. My curiosity was too great for my own good, so I went over and investigated quietly. It was addressed to me, and thus I checked the return address. There was no address as such, but a military installation in Korea, and the name was none other but my mother’s! I picked up the quite large parcel, about the size of a cushion and a bit, and snuck back upstairs. I must have turned too quickly, as I knocked a plastic Tupperware container of flour onto the floor.

‘What in the blazes was that?’ came my father’s voice. I froze for a moment, and hid inside the pantry. I could see through a crack in the door. My father walked into the room, and bent down to pick up the container. He stood up, brushed it off a bit, and turned towards the pantry. My breathing and heartrate spiked, and I pressed against the wall. My wishes came true when he instead put the container back on the table.

‘Amy must have left it there for cooking.’ He uttered out loud. I breathed out slowly, and relaxed. I waited for ten seconds, opened the door and ran silently out from the room and up the stairs. I tried not to laugh, and sat down on the bed quietly. I ripped off the wrapping as quietly as possible. Inside, I found a Billy Fury LP, a pair of American jeans, American sweets and chocolate, Fahrenheit 451 and Night, which were two books I’d never heard of, and a beautifully stitched black, red and white handkerchief with the same Samoyed dog on it. I smiled as I folded the handkerchief back up and placed it in my pocket. I repacked my suitcase to accommodate the new items I had gained and locked it firmly and threw my satchel over my shoulder, grabbed on tight to my suitcase, and prepared to jump out the window. To my surprise, I had Bea waiting for me at the bottom.

‘Thank God you’re here, Bea. If I pass this down to you, can you get it down safely?’ I said in the lowest voice I could so that Bea could hear me.

‘Sure.’ she said, hopping onto the bin. She waited a moment to ensure her balance, and grabbed onto the suitcase. ‘Oof! What have you got in here, bricks?’ Bea joked.

‘No, just books and two LPs.’ I said.

‘We probably won’t need the LPs but you never know.’ Bea replied, giving me a hand down.

‘Oh, and I have chocolate. And sweets.’

‘Brilliant. Still, we’ll go into Mr Bailey’s and get some more.’

‘I could really do with some pear drops.’ I agreed. I ditched my case back at the Hall’s and we wandered to the sweetshop. Bea bought herself what she could with her money, and I bought myself pear drops, chocolate, sherbet lemons and jelly babies. But then I spotted some sour gummies and decided that was an opportunity I could not pass up. I shoved my spoils into my satchel, Bea didn’t want to buy anything else, so we both went back to the Hall residence to pick up our bags. We bade farewell to Bea’s parents, and walked ourselves, our luggage and our bikes to the nearest national railway station to meet up with Ringo, John, George and Paul. I saw a group with their cases, and one of them on the right raised their hand. I waved back.

[multiplefandomfics]

Grimes sisters chapter 16

and i keep going :D have fun and don’t forget the feedback

Pairings: Shane x Fabienne; Daryl x Alex

Words: 1508

Warnings: angst, loss, fluffy goodness

Fabienne POV

Everything went unbelievably fast. We were supposed to stay inside but before we could think about what was going on the floor quaked again as another bomb hit the building. We packed the stuff we could grab in a panicked hurry. When I was walking through the common area there was suddenly another big explosion that ripped right through the wall. I only had a second of time to jump to the side and suddenly felt two strong arms engulfing me and pulling me over their shoulder.  Of course it was Shane but I could only think of my sister. “Alex!” I screamed out and hit Shane on his back to let me go but he wouldn’t. I couldn’t see any of the others either that got me worried. Again and again I tried to resist him and struggle free “Fabi! Stop it!” he growled and deep down I knew he was doing the right thing.

The prison laid behind us then and Shane had carried me through the woods for a while. I was still weak from the cold and when he couldn’t hold me anymore he put me down against a tree I could lean on and we allowed ourselves a short break.

“We gotta look for Alex and Rick and the others! Please we have to go back.” I pleaded with him. Nervously Shane ran up and down in front of me. I repeated myself over and over again until he snapped “Damn it! Don’t you get it? The prison is lost. We can’t go back!” he grabbed me harshly. I just closed my eyes, started crying and scooted down on the tree trunk. I couldn’t lose them. The only family I had left. And his behavior hurt me even more. It was seemingly the only way to make me start thinking rationally again. When he noticed how upset I was his gaze softened and he held my hand “We should keep going.”. I nodded and he pulled me back to my feet. Shane needed to save his strength so I decided to walk on my own.

“Where are we supposed to go? We never decided on a place to meet in case we were ever parted.” I remembered.

“What about the street were we waited when Rick and Daryl found the prison? Maybe the others will go there too. It’s not too far away but not too close either.” he suggested.

“Sounds like a plan.” I let on.

Again and again I started sobbing when I thought about the others. After a while I had to make another break and when Shane came over he put his fingers under my chin to pull my eyes up to his “Come on I’ll carry you for another while.” the tone in his voice made clear that arguing was pointless so I let him carry me. We knew the right path that would lead us to the street so we started our journey and prayed that the others were already waiting for us.

It had started to go dark and we had found a small hunting shed and decided to stay the night. Last days happenings had really worn us out. He went in first after letting me down to check for biters. His gun in his hands he walked through the room “All clear.” Happy to see the small oven and some leftover firewood I kindled a flame to get the warmth in. The couch was actually quite comfy and I snuggled into the cushions while Shane handed me a blanket he had found. Looking around I spotted deer and boar heads lining the walls. They were kinda creepy especially in the dim glow of the fire. I pulled the blanket tighter around me because the nights had become quite cold already.

My stomach began to rumble loudly so I fished one of the cans I had taken with me out of my bag and we had some dinner. While spooning my food down I laid my head on his shoulder as a gesture of trust and comfort. “I hope they’re all fine and we’ll find them soon.” you whispered after a moment in silence. At first he stayed silent but then he said “They’re probably gonna be fine and I’m sure we’ll find them.” He pulled me in close and I enjoyed the warmth that radiated off his body. Getting comfortable on the small couch was really hard but we managed to snuggle in together. I was laying almost directly on top of him with my head on his chest. Finally sleep found me while he was drawing small circles on my back.

“Shane?” I yelled in panic when I woke up and he was not by my side. My eyes wandered through the shed and I got up too quickly because suddenly my head felt dizzy and I had to sit down again. After the vertigo had vanished I got back up, slower that time, and went outside. When I spotted my boyfriend outside I was relieved but he had his hands full killing some walkers but nothing he couldn’t handle.

“Good morning darling.” he came over when he noticed that I was awake and gave me a passionate kiss on the lips. Before it could have gone any further I pulled away. “Let’s get going.” reluctantly he agreed and we restarted. I was already feeling good enough to walk longer pieces of the way on my own. We encountered a few walkers here and there but Shane killed them all. I was still not completely back on my feet so I was happy to have him.

Soon we found a little clean stream and refilled our water bottles. “I think we should find another refuge and rest for a few days. We’re both still a bit weak. Your cold and my foot. And before you say something the others will wait for us if they are there.” I thought about it for a while and then agreed reluctantly.

We went further upstream and found a small village where Shane picked a lock to an untouched house and we settled in. Fortunately no one seemed to be there and we could clean out the pantry and found some decent food. We could really use some relaxing time. The only thing that wouldn’t let me calm was the not knowing about my family. Even though I was convinced they wouldn’t leave without us I was still afraid we wouldn’t find them or they hadn’t made it out. I had to stay positive. We both had to.

Shane came around the corner into the living room I was occupying already. He smiled at me sitting on the sofa and pushed his forehead against mine so our noses were touching. We started kissing passionately from there. Until I pushed him away slightly “I’m tired, Shane.” he wasn’t really happy with that, it wasn’t what he’d expected but he went with it nonetheless. I pulled him down for another last kiss and whispered “I love you” something I hadn’t said to anyone in a while. He smiled at that “I love you too.” he got up off of me and walked into another room.

I must have fallen asleep after that because Shane woke me carefully some time later. “Look what I found.“ he smiled brightly and held a few chocolate bars under my nose. Oh my goodness could that really be? How long had it been since I’d seen one of those? Shane flopped down next to me and we ate in silence the chocolaty goodness's. We were gonna save the other ones for later and maybe even to share them with the others.

After going through the house some more we had also found some books and comics. I was so incredibly lucky and thankful to have him. “I think I’m gonna have a look around tomorrow through the other houses.” he suddenly exclaimed. “Good idea. I’ll accompany you.” you stated. It was incredible what had formed between us. Before the apocalypse he had been nothing more than my brothers partner and best friend. We simply coexisted and there was rarely more than a hello or an how are you? But now. We had definitely gone through some character changes. I wouldn’t wanna miss him anymore. He was the reason I thought positive of our future and that I believed the others to still be alive. Also I was sure by then that we were gonna find a new permanent place to live. “What are you thinking about?” he suddenly asked me stroking my hair out of my face. “Just how everything developed for us and that I’m incredibly happy to have you by my side.” I grinned and kissed him.

The rest of the evening was spent cuddling and reading until we fell asleep to be ready for the next day. Who knew what we were to expect then.

[cristinajourdanqp]

10 Tips for Sticking with Primal

Primal is simple, but it’s not exactly easy. At every turn, detractors and temptations appear. We have health authorities telling us we’re killing ourselves. Worried friends and family sharing news articles decrying the consumption of fat and meat and promoting wholly plant-based diets. Food companies employ food chemists to engineer delicious processed junk that hijacks our brains’ reward systems, making food that’s addictive on a biochemical level. It’s going to take a mix of concrete, tangible tactics and psychological tricks to stick with Primal.

Plan Your Meals Each Week

The modern world excels at rewarding poor planning. Its whole appeal revolves around convenience. It’s always tugging at us, leaving hints, suggesting easy ways to go astray. When you’re just starting on this Primal journey and things aren’t quite second nature…(like finishing your first 21-Day Challenge).

No time to make dinner? Grab a happy meal!

In the grocery line with your meat and produce? Hey, check out this 40 ounce sack of fried potato slices; bet you could finish half of it on the drive home!

Every week, plan your meals. Go shopping, get what you need, and have things ready to go. Keep a clean kitchen, so you can launch into cooking without fretting over dirty pots and dishes.

Look At Your “Before” Photos

You got into this Primal stuff for a reason. If you’ve seen benefits, lost body fat, improved body composition, gotten noticeably stronger and fitter, go back and look at those old photos. Look at yourself and remember. Immerse yourself in what it felt like before you went Primal.

Realize that it will all come flooding back if you go back to your old ways.

Think Of the Worst That Could Happen

A lot of things can go wrong in life. Many things will go wrong. But we don’t have to hasten the disintegration of absolutely everything. All the recommendations I make in the Primal Blueprint and on this blog are designed to reduce your chances of being reduced to that terrible situation. Read those words, feel them, and imagine yourself in that situation. Not great, is it? So, how about you stick with the program?

Imagine everything that could go wrong health-wise. Imagine you’re 20 years older than you are now. You’re on a slew of medications. Your monthly checkup with your cardiologist is the closest thing you have to a friend. You have a weight set, but it sits unused amidst the ruins of the great spider kingdoms that have come and gone over the years. Your bones are porous, your arteries are clogged, your blood sugar runs high, your heart rate stays elevated. Your muscles are marbled, your mind is foggy. Remember that each choice—including the one before you right now—has the power to determine your future scenario.

Realize That Perfect Is Not the Goal

Many people have the idea that going Primal is a life sentence of ascetic purity. That’s a big misconception. Actually, these are just guidelines. Recommendations. Modes of eating, living, and being that, from my reading of the scientific literature and experience coaching people, help a lot of people get healthier, fitter, leaner, and happier. But it all exists on a spectrum. It isn’t “all or nothing.”

Eating some rice won’t derail the whole train.

Skipping a week of training won’t dissolve your gains.

Even eating a french fry cooked in the most rancid of seed oils won’t imbue your adipose tissue with permanently imbalanced omega-3/omega-6 ratios (not that I’d recommend it, but still).

Unless you’re celiac or truly gluten-sensitive, ingesting a bite of gluten probably won’t perforate your gut lining and open you up to a month’s worth of bacterial endotoxins and allergens.

A date won’t set you back to square one on the keto journey.

Some heeled dress shoes are perfectly fine for a wedding or the office. They won’t ruin your feet or posture.

It’s not about Primal perfection. It’s about making the guidelines work for you to push your health and happiness forward.

Don’t Forget the 80/20 Rule

This dovetails nicely with the previous tip. The 80/20 rule is a built-in “get out of jail free” card. It’s not an actual, literal card, although that’s certainly an idea if an entrepreneur wants to get in on that. It’s the formal acknowledgement that if you do the right (healthy, Primal, keto, etc.) thing 80% of the time, you’ll be doing better than 95% of the population and garnering the majority of the benefits we can expect from living healthy.

What’s 80/20 look like?

It doesn’t mean eating fast food every fifth meal. It doesn’t mean eating 1/5 of a birthday cake. It means giving yourself some slack. It means realizing that you work hard, you eat well most of the time, and it’s okay if you slip up and have a beer or a few bites of pizza at the end of a long week.

The 80/20 rule helps prevent you from heaping additional guilt and stress and despair over a single bad choice onto the first order effects of the choice. It cements the reality that you’re going to be okay.

Join a Gym

If you think you hate the gym, you probably haven’t been in awhile. No longer must you do the globo=gym thing, where staff members frown at you for deadlifting and everyone’s preening for the mirrors. You can try CrossFit. You could try parkour. You could try BJJ or Pilates or kickboxing. You could find a great personal training gym, interview the owners and trainers, and find someone who melds well with your personality and goals. You can try FitWall. There are thousands of movement options out there. The point is throwing down the money and investing in yourself.

When you put down money, you put skin in the game. Rather than lose your sunk cost, you’ll be more likely to follow through and stick with it.

Buy New Cooking Equipment

Are you trying to cook incredible meals in damaged teflon skillets? Sear steaks on lightweight aluminum pans? Julienne vegetables with a blunt chef’s knife that hasn’t been sharpened since the 80s? Get yourself some quality equipment. You don’t need to drop $500 or anything close to that.

Grab a cast iron pan for searing steaks. Some heavy stainless steel pots and pans. A dutch oven for braising, if you do that sort of thing. Consider an Instant Pot. A decent chef’s knife. Maybe a small, simple food processor if chopping vegetables is keeping you from enjoying Big-Ass salads. It doesn’t take much, and it will make cooking that much more pleasurable (and effective).

Pick One Thing and Start There

Getting your entire lifestyle back on track is daunting. What, you expect a person to overhaul how they eat, move, consume electronics at night, interact with the sun, supplement, and sleep right away? Some people can do that no problem, but many people find it an intimidating prospect.

Just pick one thing, do it well, and see the dominos start to fall in other areas. Purge your pantry. Ditch grains and seed oils. Start walking every day. Get back into barbell training. Go to sleep at the same time every night. Doing all those things would be great—and not as hard as you think—but even just one will make a big difference.

Get a Friend Involved

Getting a friend to join you in sticking with the Primal way of life is a simple and effective way to keep you engaged. The hardest part is breaking through the resistance and mustering the willpower to enlist the friend. Then, once you’ve both agreed to do the thing, you have to do it. Neither of you wants to let the other person down. As social animals, we value the input and opinions of others. Especially when those others are close to us.

You could do family, like you mom, your brother, or your spouse, but in my experience those relationships can get testy real fast. Friendships are more durable, in a way. It’s usually easier to get strict and abrasive when required with your friend than it is with your husband or wife.

Go Hardcore

Some people can’t go all-in at once. They sputter and fail, and would be better served just picking one thing at a time (as I mentioned above). But some people thrive when they overhaul their entire lives. That’s how I am—I didn’t just change how I ate when I developed the Primal Blueprint. I changed how I ate, slept, exercised, and lived in general.

Maybe you’re going too cautiously. Maybe you need to go all in.

Work With a Primal Health Coach

Primal Health Coaches are well trained to help you hit your goals, work through tough sticking points, solve problems, and motivate you. This is quite literally their job. They combine motivational power with a strong knowledge base, so whether you have a motivation problem or a knowledge problem, they can help.

Hiring a Primal Health Coach also gives you that skin in the game effect—with a literal voice on the other end. For some people, that level of accountability is the linchpin.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to get yourself back on track. This is the list of ways I find most effective at getting others, and even myself, back on track after an extended hiatus, or sticking with it when doubt begins creeping in.

What are your favorite ways to stick with Primal?

Thanks for reading, all. Take care.

[fishermariawo]

10 Tips for Sticking with Primal

Primal is simple, but it’s not exactly easy. At every turn, detractors and temptations appear. We have health authorities telling us we’re killing ourselves. Worried friends and family sharing news articles decrying the consumption of fat and meat and promoting wholly plant-based diets. Food companies employ food chemists to engineer delicious processed junk that hijacks our brains’ reward systems, making food that’s addictive on a biochemical level. It’s going to take a mix of concrete, tangible tactics and psychological tricks to stick with Primal.

Plan Your Meals Each Week

The modern world excels at rewarding poor planning. Its whole appeal revolves around convenience. It’s always tugging at us, leaving hints, suggesting easy ways to go astray. When you’re just starting on this Primal journey and things aren’t quite second nature…(like finishing your first 21-Day Challenge).

No time to make dinner? Grab a happy meal!

In the grocery line with your meat and produce? Hey, check out this 40 ounce sack of fried potato slices; bet you could finish half of it on the drive home!

Every week, plan your meals. Go shopping, get what you need, and have things ready to go. Keep a clean kitchen, so you can launch into cooking without fretting over dirty pots and dishes.

Look At Your “Before” Photos

You got into this Primal stuff for a reason. If you’ve seen benefits, lost body fat, improved body composition, gotten noticeably stronger and fitter, go back and look at those old photos. Look at yourself and remember. Immerse yourself in what it felt like before you went Primal.

Realize that it will all come flooding back if you go back to your old ways.

Think Of the Worst That Could Happen

A lot of things can go wrong in life. Many things will go wrong. But we don’t have to hasten the disintegration of absolutely everything. All the recommendations I make in the Primal Blueprint and on this blog are designed to reduce your chances of being reduced to that terrible situation. Read those words, feel them, and imagine yourself in that situation. Not great, is it? So, how about you stick with the program?

Imagine everything that could go wrong health-wise. Imagine you’re 20 years older than you are now. You’re on a slew of medications. Your monthly checkup with your cardiologist is the closest thing you have to a friend. You have a weight set, but it sits unused amidst the ruins of the great spider kingdoms that have come and gone over the years. Your bones are porous, your arteries are clogged, your blood sugar runs high, your heart rate stays elevated. Your muscles are marbled, your mind is foggy. Remember that each choice—including the one before you right now—has the power to determine your future scenario.

Realize That Perfect Is Not the Goal

Many people have the idea that going Primal is a life sentence of ascetic purity. That’s a big misconception. Actually, these are just guidelines. Recommendations. Modes of eating, living, and being that, from my reading of the scientific literature and experience coaching people, help a lot of people get healthier, fitter, leaner, and happier. But it all exists on a spectrum. It isn’t “all or nothing.”

Eating some rice won’t derail the whole train.

Skipping a week of training won’t dissolve your gains.

Even eating a french fry cooked in the most rancid of seed oils won’t imbue your adipose tissue with permanently imbalanced omega-3/omega-6 ratios (not that I’d recommend it, but still).

Unless you’re celiac or truly gluten-sensitive, ingesting a bite of gluten probably won’t perforate your gut lining and open you up to a month’s worth of bacterial endotoxins and allergens.

A date won’t set you back to square one on the keto journey.

Some heeled dress shoes are perfectly fine for a wedding or the office. They won’t ruin your feet or posture.

It’s not about Primal perfection. It’s about making the guidelines work for you to push your health and happiness forward.

Don’t Forget the 80/20 Rule

This dovetails nicely with the previous tip. The 80/20 rule is a built-in “get out of jail free” card. It’s not an actual, literal card, although that’s certainly an idea if an entrepreneur wants to get in on that. It’s the formal acknowledgement that if you do the right (healthy, Primal, keto, etc.) thing 80% of the time, you’ll be doing better than 95% of the population and garnering the majority of the benefits we can expect from living healthy.

What’s 80/20 look like?

It doesn’t mean eating fast food every fifth meal. It doesn’t mean eating 1/5 of a birthday cake. It means giving yourself some slack. It means realizing that you work hard, you eat well most of the time, and it’s okay if you slip up and have a beer or a few bites of pizza at the end of a long week.

The 80/20 rule helps prevent you from heaping additional guilt and stress and despair over a single bad choice onto the first order effects of the choice. It cements the reality that you’re going to be okay.

Join a Gym

If you think you hate the gym, you probably haven’t been in awhile. No longer must you do the globo=gym thing, where staff members frown at you for deadlifting and everyone’s preening for the mirrors. You can try CrossFit. You could try parkour. You could try BJJ or Pilates or kickboxing. You could find a great personal training gym, interview the owners and trainers, and find someone who melds well with your personality and goals. You can try FitWall. There are thousands of movement options out there. The point is throwing down the money and investing in yourself.

When you put down money, you put skin in the game. Rather than lose your sunk cost, you’ll be more likely to follow through and stick with it.

Buy New Cooking Equipment

Are you trying to cook incredible meals in damaged teflon skillets? Sear steaks on lightweight aluminum pans? Julienne vegetables with a blunt chef’s knife that hasn’t been sharpened since the 80s? Get yourself some quality equipment. You don’t need to drop $500 or anything close to that.

Grab a cast iron pan for searing steaks. Some heavy stainless steel pots and pans. A dutch oven for braising, if you do that sort of thing. Consider an Instant Pot. A decent chef’s knife. Maybe a small, simple food processor if chopping vegetables is keeping you from enjoying Big-Ass salads. It doesn’t take much, and it will make cooking that much more pleasurable (and effective).

Pick One Thing and Start There

Getting your entire lifestyle back on track is daunting. What, you expect a person to overhaul how they eat, move, consume electronics at night, interact with the sun, supplement, and sleep right away? Some people can do that no problem, but many people find it an intimidating prospect.

Just pick one thing, do it well, and see the dominos start to fall in other areas. Purge your pantry. Ditch grains and seed oils. Start walking every day. Get back into barbell training. Go to sleep at the same time every night. Doing all those things would be great—and not as hard as you think—but even just one will make a big difference.

Get a Friend Involved

Getting a friend to join you in sticking with the Primal way of life is a simple and effective way to keep you engaged. The hardest part is breaking through the resistance and mustering the willpower to enlist the friend. Then, once you’ve both agreed to do the thing, you have to do it. Neither of you wants to let the other person down. As social animals, we value the input and opinions of others. Especially when those others are close to us.

You could do family, like you mom, your brother, or your spouse, but in my experience those relationships can get testy real fast. Friendships are more durable, in a way. It’s usually easier to get strict and abrasive when required with your friend than it is with your husband or wife.

Go Hardcore

Some people can’t go all-in at once. They sputter and fail, and would be better served just picking one thing at a time (as I mentioned above). But some people thrive when they overhaul their entire lives. That’s how I am—I didn’t just change how I ate when I developed the Primal Blueprint. I changed how I ate, slept, exercised, and lived in general.

Maybe you’re going too cautiously. Maybe you need to go all in.

Work With a Primal Health Coach

Primal Health Coaches are well trained to help you hit your goals, work through tough sticking points, solve problems, and motivate you. This is quite literally their job. They combine motivational power with a strong knowledge base, so whether you have a motivation problem or a knowledge problem, they can help.

Hiring a Primal Health Coach also gives you that skin in the game effect—with a literal voice on the other end. For some people, that level of accountability is the linchpin.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to get yourself back on track. This is the list of ways I find most effective at getting others, and even myself, back on track after an extended hiatus, or sticking with it when doubt begins creeping in.

What are your favorite ways to stick with Primal?

Thanks for reading, all. Take care.

[watsonrodriquezie]

10 Tips for Sticking with Primal

Primal is simple, but it’s not exactly easy. At every turn, detractors and temptations appear. We have health authorities telling us we’re killing ourselves. Worried friends and family sharing news articles decrying the consumption of fat and meat and promoting wholly plant-based diets. Food companies employ food chemists to engineer delicious processed junk that hijacks our brains’ reward systems, making food that’s addictive on a biochemical level. It’s going to take a mix of concrete, tangible tactics and psychological tricks to stick with Primal.

Plan Your Meals Each Week

The modern world excels at rewarding poor planning. Its whole appeal revolves around convenience. It’s always tugging at us, leaving hints, suggesting easy ways to go astray. When you’re just starting on this Primal journey and things aren’t quite second nature…(like finishing your first 21-Day Challenge).

No time to make dinner? Grab a happy meal!

In the grocery line with your meat and produce? Hey, check out this 40 ounce sack of fried potato slices; bet you could finish half of it on the drive home!

Every week, plan your meals. Go shopping, get what you need, and have things ready to go. Keep a clean kitchen, so you can launch into cooking without fretting over dirty pots and dishes.

Look At Your “Before” Photos

You got into this Primal stuff for a reason. If you’ve seen benefits, lost body fat, improved body composition, gotten noticeably stronger and fitter, go back and look at those old photos. Look at yourself and remember. Immerse yourself in what it felt like before you went Primal.

Realize that it will all come flooding back if you go back to your old ways.

Think Of the Worst That Could Happen

A lot of things can go wrong in life. Many things will go wrong. But we don’t have to hasten the disintegration of absolutely everything. All the recommendations I make in the Primal Blueprint and on this blog are designed to reduce your chances of being reduced to that terrible situation. Read those words, feel them, and imagine yourself in that situation. Not great, is it? So, how about you stick with the program?

Imagine everything that could go wrong health-wise. Imagine you’re 20 years older than you are now. You’re on a slew of medications. Your monthly checkup with your cardiologist is the closest thing you have to a friend. You have a weight set, but it sits unused amidst the ruins of the great spider kingdoms that have come and gone over the years. Your bones are porous, your arteries are clogged, your blood sugar runs high, your heart rate stays elevated. Your muscles are marbled, your mind is foggy. Remember that each choice—including the one before you right now—has the power to determine your future scenario.

Realize That Perfect Is Not the Goal

Many people have the idea that going Primal is a life sentence of ascetic purity. That’s a big misconception. Actually, these are just guidelines. Recommendations. Modes of eating, living, and being that, from my reading of the scientific literature and experience coaching people, help a lot of people get healthier, fitter, leaner, and happier. But it all exists on a spectrum. It isn’t “all or nothing.”

Eating some rice won’t derail the whole train.

Skipping a week of training won’t dissolve your gains.

Even eating a french fry cooked in the most rancid of seed oils won’t imbue your adipose tissue with permanently imbalanced omega-3/omega-6 ratios (not that I’d recommend it, but still).

Unless you’re celiac or truly gluten-sensitive, ingesting a bite of gluten probably won’t perforate your gut lining and open you up to a month’s worth of bacterial endotoxins and allergens.

A date won’t set you back to square one on the keto journey.

Some heeled dress shoes are perfectly fine for a wedding or the office. They won’t ruin your feet or posture.

It’s not about Primal perfection. It’s about making the guidelines work for you to push your health and happiness forward.

Don’t Forget the 80/20 Rule

This dovetails nicely with the previous tip. The 80/20 rule is a built-in “get out of jail free” card. It’s not an actual, literal card, although that’s certainly an idea if an entrepreneur wants to get in on that. It’s the formal acknowledgement that if you do the right (healthy, Primal, keto, etc.) thing 80% of the time, you’ll be doing better than 95% of the population and garnering the majority of the benefits we can expect from living healthy.

What’s 80/20 look like?

It doesn’t mean eating fast food every fifth meal. It doesn’t mean eating 1/5 of a birthday cake. It means giving yourself some slack. It means realizing that you work hard, you eat well most of the time, and it’s okay if you slip up and have a beer or a few bites of pizza at the end of a long week.

The 80/20 rule helps prevent you from heaping additional guilt and stress and despair over a single bad choice onto the first order effects of the choice. It cements the reality that you’re going to be okay.

Join a Gym

If you think you hate the gym, you probably haven’t been in awhile. No longer must you do the globo=gym thing, where staff members frown at you for deadlifting and everyone’s preening for the mirrors. You can try CrossFit. You could try parkour. You could try BJJ or Pilates or kickboxing. You could find a great personal training gym, interview the owners and trainers, and find someone who melds well with your personality and goals. You can try FitWall. There are thousands of movement options out there. The point is throwing down the money and investing in yourself.

When you put down money, you put skin in the game. Rather than lose your sunk cost, you’ll be more likely to follow through and stick with it.

Buy New Cooking Equipment

Are you trying to cook incredible meals in damaged teflon skillets? Sear steaks on lightweight aluminum pans? Julienne vegetables with a blunt chef’s knife that hasn’t been sharpened since the 80s? Get yourself some quality equipment. You don’t need to drop $500 or anything close to that.

Grab a cast iron pan for searing steaks. Some heavy stainless steel pots and pans. A dutch oven for braising, if you do that sort of thing. Consider an Instant Pot. A decent chef’s knife. Maybe a small, simple food processor if chopping vegetables is keeping you from enjoying Big-Ass salads. It doesn’t take much, and it will make cooking that much more pleasurable (and effective).

Pick One Thing and Start There

Getting your entire lifestyle back on track is daunting. What, you expect a person to overhaul how they eat, move, consume electronics at night, interact with the sun, supplement, and sleep right away? Some people can do that no problem, but many people find it an intimidating prospect.

Just pick one thing, do it well, and see the dominos start to fall in other areas. Purge your pantry. Ditch grains and seed oils. Start walking every day. Get back into barbell training. Go to sleep at the same time every night. Doing all those things would be great—and not as hard as you think—but even just one will make a big difference.

Get a Friend Involved

Getting a friend to join you in sticking with the Primal way of life is a simple and effective way to keep you engaged. The hardest part is breaking through the resistance and mustering the willpower to enlist the friend. Then, once you’ve both agreed to do the thing, you have to do it. Neither of you wants to let the other person down. As social animals, we value the input and opinions of others. Especially when those others are close to us.

You could do family, like you mom, your brother, or your spouse, but in my experience those relationships can get testy real fast. Friendships are more durable, in a way. It’s usually easier to get strict and abrasive when required with your friend than it is with your husband or wife.

Go Hardcore

Some people can’t go all-in at once. They sputter and fail, and would be better served just picking one thing at a time (as I mentioned above). But some people thrive when they overhaul their entire lives. That’s how I am—I didn’t just change how I ate when I developed the Primal Blueprint. I changed how I ate, slept, exercised, and lived in general.

Maybe you’re going too cautiously. Maybe you need to go all in.

Work With a Primal Health Coach

Primal Health Coaches are well trained to help you hit your goals, work through tough sticking points, solve problems, and motivate you. This is quite literally their job. They combine motivational power with a strong knowledge base, so whether you have a motivation problem or a knowledge problem, they can help.

Hiring a Primal Health Coach also gives you that skin in the game effect—with a literal voice on the other end. For some people, that level of accountability is the linchpin.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to get yourself back on track. This is the list of ways I find most effective at getting others, and even myself, back on track after an extended hiatus, or sticking with it when doubt begins creeping in.

What are your favorite ways to stick with Primal?

Thanks for reading, all. Take care.

[cynthiamwashington]

10 Tips for Sticking with Primal

Primal is simple, but it’s not exactly easy. At every turn, detractors and temptations appear. We have health authorities telling us we’re killing ourselves. Worried friends and family sharing news articles decrying the consumption of fat and meat and promoting wholly plant-based diets. Food companies employ food chemists to engineer delicious processed junk that hijacks our brains’ reward systems, making food that’s addictive on a biochemical level. It’s going to take a mix of concrete, tangible tactics and psychological tricks to stick with Primal.

Plan Your Meals Each Week

The modern world excels at rewarding poor planning. Its whole appeal revolves around convenience. It’s always tugging at us, leaving hints, suggesting easy ways to go astray. When you’re just starting on this Primal journey and things aren’t quite second nature…(like finishing your first 21-Day Challenge).

No time to make dinner? Grab a happy meal!

In the grocery line with your meat and produce? Hey, check out this 40 ounce sack of fried potato slices; bet you could finish half of it on the drive home!

Every week, plan your meals. Go shopping, get what you need, and have things ready to go. Keep a clean kitchen, so you can launch into cooking without fretting over dirty pots and dishes.

Look At Your “Before” Photos

You got into this Primal stuff for a reason. If you’ve seen benefits, lost body fat, improved body composition, gotten noticeably stronger and fitter, go back and look at those old photos. Look at yourself and remember. Immerse yourself in what it felt like before you went Primal.

Realize that it will all come flooding back if you go back to your old ways.

Think Of the Worst That Could Happen

A lot of things can go wrong in life. Many things will go wrong. But we don’t have to hasten the disintegration of absolutely everything. All the recommendations I make in the Primal Blueprint and on this blog are designed to reduce your chances of being reduced to that terrible situation. Read those words, feel them, and imagine yourself in that situation. Not great, is it? So, how about you stick with the program?

Imagine everything that could go wrong health-wise. Imagine you’re 20 years older than you are now. You’re on a slew of medications. Your monthly checkup with your cardiologist is the closest thing you have to a friend. You have a weight set, but it sits unused amidst the ruins of the great spider kingdoms that have come and gone over the years. Your bones are porous, your arteries are clogged, your blood sugar runs high, your heart rate stays elevated. Your muscles are marbled, your mind is foggy. Remember that each choice—including the one before you right now—has the power to determine your future scenario.

Realize That Perfect Is Not the Goal

Many people have the idea that going Primal is a life sentence of ascetic purity. That’s a big misconception. Actually, these are just guidelines. Recommendations. Modes of eating, living, and being that, from my reading of the scientific literature and experience coaching people, help a lot of people get healthier, fitter, leaner, and happier. But it all exists on a spectrum. It isn’t “all or nothing.”

Eating some rice won’t derail the whole train.

Skipping a week of training won’t dissolve your gains.

Even eating a french fry cooked in the most rancid of seed oils won’t imbue your adipose tissue with permanently imbalanced omega-3/omega-6 ratios (not that I’d recommend it, but still).

Unless you’re celiac or truly gluten-sensitive, ingesting a bite of gluten probably won’t perforate your gut lining and open you up to a month’s worth of bacterial endotoxins and allergens.

A date won’t set you back to square one on the keto journey.

Some heeled dress shoes are perfectly fine for a wedding or the office. They won’t ruin your feet or posture.

It’s not about Primal perfection. It’s about making the guidelines work for you to push your health and happiness forward.

Don’t Forget the 80/20 Rule

This dovetails nicely with the previous tip. The 80/20 rule is a built-in “get out of jail free” card. It’s not an actual, literal card, although that’s certainly an idea if an entrepreneur wants to get in on that. It’s the formal acknowledgement that if you do the right (healthy, Primal, keto, etc.) thing 80% of the time, you’ll be doing better than 95% of the population and garnering the majority of the benefits we can expect from living healthy.

What’s 80/20 look like?

It doesn’t mean eating fast food every fifth meal. It doesn’t mean eating 1/5 of a birthday cake. It means giving yourself some slack. It means realizing that you work hard, you eat well most of the time, and it’s okay if you slip up and have a beer or a few bites of pizza at the end of a long week.

The 80/20 rule helps prevent you from heaping additional guilt and stress and despair over a single bad choice onto the first order effects of the choice. It cements the reality that you’re going to be okay.

Join a Gym

If you think you hate the gym, you probably haven’t been in awhile. No longer must you do the globo=gym thing, where staff members frown at you for deadlifting and everyone’s preening for the mirrors. You can try CrossFit. You could try parkour. You could try BJJ or Pilates or kickboxing. You could find a great personal training gym, interview the owners and trainers, and find someone who melds well with your personality and goals. You can try FitWall. There are thousands of movement options out there. The point is throwing down the money and investing in yourself.

When you put down money, you put skin in the game. Rather than lose your sunk cost, you’ll be more likely to follow through and stick with it.

Buy New Cooking Equipment

Are you trying to cook incredible meals in damaged teflon skillets? Sear steaks on lightweight aluminum pans? Julienne vegetables with a blunt chef’s knife that hasn’t been sharpened since the 80s? Get yourself some quality equipment. You don’t need to drop $500 or anything close to that.

Grab a cast iron pan for searing steaks. Some heavy stainless steel pots and pans. A dutch oven for braising, if you do that sort of thing. Consider an Instant Pot. A decent chef’s knife. Maybe a small, simple food processor if chopping vegetables is keeping you from enjoying Big-Ass salads. It doesn’t take much, and it will make cooking that much more pleasurable (and effective).

Pick One Thing and Start There

Getting your entire lifestyle back on track is daunting. What, you expect a person to overhaul how they eat, move, consume electronics at night, interact with the sun, supplement, and sleep right away? Some people can do that no problem, but many people find it an intimidating prospect.

Just pick one thing, do it well, and see the dominos start to fall in other areas. Purge your pantry. Ditch grains and seed oils. Start walking every day. Get back into barbell training. Go to sleep at the same time every night. Doing all those things would be great—and not as hard as you think—but even just one will make a big difference.

Get a Friend Involved

Getting a friend to join you in sticking with the Primal way of life is a simple and effective way to keep you engaged. The hardest part is breaking through the resistance and mustering the willpower to enlist the friend. Then, once you’ve both agreed to do the thing, you have to do it. Neither of you wants to let the other person down. As social animals, we value the input and opinions of others. Especially when those others are close to us.

You could do family, like you mom, your brother, or your spouse, but in my experience those relationships can get testy real fast. Friendships are more durable, in a way. It’s usually easier to get strict and abrasive when required with your friend than it is with your husband or wife.

Go Hardcore

Some people can’t go all-in at once. They sputter and fail, and would be better served just picking one thing at a time (as I mentioned above). But some people thrive when they overhaul their entire lives. That’s how I am—I didn’t just change how I ate when I developed the Primal Blueprint. I changed how I ate, slept, exercised, and lived in general.

Maybe you’re going too cautiously. Maybe you need to go all in.

Work With a Primal Health Coach

Primal Health Coaches are well trained to help you hit your goals, work through tough sticking points, solve problems, and motivate you. This is quite literally their job. They combine motivational power with a strong knowledge base, so whether you have a motivation problem or a knowledge problem, they can help.

Hiring a Primal Health Coach also gives you that skin in the game effect—with a literal voice on the other end. For some people, that level of accountability is the linchpin.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to get yourself back on track. This is the list of ways I find most effective at getting others, and even myself, back on track after an extended hiatus, or sticking with it when doubt begins creeping in.

What are your favorite ways to stick with Primal?

Thanks for reading, all. Take care.

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[mayardsale]

"And where might we find these 'likeminded' couples?" I questioned my husband, even though he'd dropped the subject. Freshly-minted emptynesters, we were struggling with all of this alone time. Communication was never our best skill. Neither was spontaneous sex. We were the 1% of teen couples that got pregnant in high school and made it last this long. But now we were without the 2 people that defined our every breath for 20 years. Cisco was following his brother's path to boarding school for his senior year before deciding on a four year school. We were expecting him to be bumming around our house for another 9 months and now he's gone. Antonio is studying and playing in Argentina this year, so he's beyond gone. Cisco's decision caught us off guard. Don't get me wrong. We were far from helicopter parents. Our parents forced us take on the responsibilities of parenting, though school was our job for the first five years. We just didn't know how to enjoy a relationship without little eyes on us. What we ate, what we wore, how we traveled, everything driven through their needs. Example: we never made noise during sex. Ever. "You'll wake the boys," I'd say when they were little. "You'll traumatize the boys," he'd say when they got older. So we were silent. It was all we knew. Now it was like we were dating. The first 3 months were a whirlwind of sex in the morning and dancing at night. No more cereal or soda in the pantry. Laundry every other week. Zero dirty dishes. The next 3 months we did nothing but focus on the boys. "Let's Skype Tony," I'd say. "We better get some food in the house for Cisco at Christmas," he'd say. We were constantly planning for the three days they'd be home. Now we've settled into blah. First we'd binge watch shows together. Then we'd binge watch shows next to each other. I knew we needed to change directions when I caught him binge watching the same History Channel shows as my father. "One more episode," he'd say before bed. "Your pops is only two ahead of me." But it didn't hit me until we both got home from work and had our comfy sweat pant couch moment before 6PM. He only worked a 1/2 day at the hospital and it was down time in my office, so I wasn't stressed. We weren't tired. We were tired! "We should be naked or dressed up," I noted as I watched him reading his Twitter feed. I was no better as I repinned one of his mother's recipes on Pinterest. "That's quite the range, my love," he acknowledged. "Let's ask the internet." Our phones danced in our hands while we crowd sourced our way out of this rut. Yoga. Cooking class. Hiking. Scrapbooking. Skydiving. An hour later we came up for air. Nothing. "Other than work, we either make kids or raise kids," I sighed. "Well, I got a job, ain't changing no more diapers and I'm kinda bored of fucking you," he smirked as he braced himself for a punch to the arm. "Your dick hasn't fucked my brains out yet, so I'm guessing I can stop wishing for that one, huh?" I responded, still punching his arm. He just laughed as he went to the kitchen to get us some water. "We need some friends like us to hang out with," I shouted. "Give us reason to go out." He returned with our water and put his arm around me. "No problem. I'm sure there's other 30-something emptynesters ready to hang out to watch," he paused to check my phone. "Al Jazeera." "So what are people our age doing in this city?" I pushed back. "What we did in high school: fucking until they decide to have kids," he imagined out loud. "So let's go fuck with them," I pleaded, though I wasn't quite sure what I meant. "An open relationship?" he responded with curiosity. "Fucking people other than us?" His body language was unreadable at this moment. I couldn't tell if he was offended or totally game. He always had a better poker face than me. "I just don't want to be playing shuffleboard on cruises for the next 50 years, baby," I sputtered as I sunk into the couch. "You are bugging right now," he insisted as he placed his warm hand on my knee. "Likeminded couples are waiting for us to chat right now!" he joked before the doorbell rang with our Chinese food. After dinner we went for a walk and texted the boys. Soon we were back in bed checking the DVR for new recordings. "And where might we find these 'likeminded couples'?" I opened. He rolled his eyes and pulled his laptop from our desk. I couldn't tell if his apprehension was based on not wanting to do it or not wanting to see me go down a path I wasn't ready for. "There's Craigslist . . . ," he offered as he scrolled down his search for 'likeminded couples'. "Ewww!" I protested. "That how we got the boys' bikes. What else?" For an hour he humored me while we laughed at the idea of us swinging and the scary people out there looking for 'likeminded couples'. These folks might have had the right idea, but there was no way I'd date them single, much less married. One couple wanted to meet the the Barney & Betty to their Fred & Wilma - which they were dressed exactly like. Then we landed on a site that rated other sites that connected singles and couples. By now my husband had lost interest and was checking out his Fantasy Football Team on his phone. But I fell down the rabbit hole. "Okay, we're signed up," I announced 10 minutes later. He was still making some last minute trades, so I started shopping without him. "You like tall women, right?" "Yeah. What? What are we signed up for?" he jumped. "Whoa! She's hot," he nodded, finally impressed with my internet shopping skills. "She likes them brown, sugar," I joked. "Save!" I announced as though I'd just made a purchase. "Her husband looks okay, but I'll take one for the team," I shrugged. Now, he couldn't tell if I was serious. And neither could I. Certainly it was fascinating seeing people that probably were in the same boat we were in. But I also wondered if every man's dick felt like my husband's. I know they didn't but I didn't personally know. And I wouldn't know how I'd react to seeing another woman enjoying my husband's dick too much. That might be a bit much. "So who is in your shopping cart, you freak," he asked with a curiosity I hadn't seen in years. Without blinking I opened the shopping cart to the five couples I'd already saved. There was a range from preppy to punk, urban to country. I've had one song in my playlist for 20 years. Genre was not about to filter my exploration. "I had a few criteria - funny and witty write-up, thought given to their photo, not too porny and proximity to our house," I explained. "Looking for a quick delivery," he sheepishly joked. "Opposite, hon," I continued. "Don't need any one recognizing us. A discreet hotel between our lives might be enough to entertain us between dinner and dancing." "So you are seriously going to let this . . ," he began as he scanned my cart, "Ann ride my dick while you let . . . Craig fuck you from behind?" he asked with a devilish look on his face. His warm hand was on my knee again. "Actually," I started as I took my glasses off and placed my hand on his bulging boxers, "I was thinking Ann and I would start slowly by sucking our own husband's dick in the same room. Then you and Craig could work your tongue on our damp pussies. The first date doesn't have to go all the way." I put his laptop on the nightstand and headed for second base. "If we enjoyed their company after the first date, we might try fucking on separate beds - still keeping to ourselves," I said as I pulled my husband's boxers down. "But you might not be able to clear Ann getting fucked from your daily thoughts," I punctuated as I leaned into his mouth. "And I might have visions of pushing Craig down like this," I followed as I pushed my husband back onto our bed, "so I can taste Ann's cock before I let him fuck me from behind." By now my tongue was licking my husband's dick and he was in heaven. "Ann, you are amazing!" he grunted. He pulled my top over my head and cupped my breast like it was our first time. I crawled up next to him on all fours while I rubbed his dick. "Craig, please fuck me from behind like you fuck Ann," I responded. My husband quickly got behind me, threw his tongue between my legs to get me wet and then proceeded to fuck Ann while I screamed Craig's name. His balls were slapping my ass. The bed was shaking the walls. Craig and Ann were animals. And then he said, "I'd love to watch you suck Craig's dick while I'm fucking you!" I wasn't sure if I was Ann, but my pussy didn't care. She erupted at the thought and then he came inside me. We were panting like we'd finished a 5k for charity. Then a beep came from his laptop. He mustered enough strength to open it and found two responses. "Responses to what?" I said as I laid kicking my legs up and down. "To your messages from your shopping cart, fat fingers," he laughed. "Oh shit," I jumped. My trepidation was enough to convince my husband that I was still full of shit. That was until I said, "Was it Stephanie & Isaac?"