Non-habit forming, alternate title, It doesn't take much

In an effort to not succumb to jet lag while on my too short trip to Norway, I took sleeping pills each night of my trip and for the first night upon my return home. The packaging is clear that the pills are habit forming which has me thinking about habits. Why is it that certain habits, usually bad ones, like smoking, drinking, biting nails, taking sleeping pills, etc are easy to start, easy to maintain, and hard to quit and yet other habits, the good ones like eating right, exercising, etc are hard to start, harder to maintain, and easy to quit? It always amazes me how little it takes to get out of a routine and fall back into bad habits.

I wasn't gone that long and only missed 2 days of working out, and one of those days that I missed I spent walking all over Oslo, I'm certain I had well over 10,000 steps for the day, although I can't prove it. I took my Shred video with me and used my laptop in the workout facility so I could "get my Shred on" while I was gone. But, my heart wasn't really into it.

(As a quick aside, I think I'm the only person who has ever used the workout facility at the hotel where we stayed. It was a very small facility with only 2 pieces of cardio equipment and a few weight machines, to my dismay there were not free weights, so I had to do my video without weights. The way the facility was set up made it seem like it used to be two hotel rooms that were converted. While I was working out, the housekeeping staff kept using the walkway as a cut-through to get from one side of the hotel to the other. Everytime one of them would see me, they would give me that "startled look" of "what are you doing in here" and apologize for interrupting.)

Back to my point, I've been exercising consistently (5-6 days per week) since February. I've made a concerted effort to eat right over the same period of time. In my opinion, that's long enough to establish routines and to call those things habits. Yet, since I've been back from Norway, I have not been eating as well as I was before I left, and I have had to fight with myself to get back into an exercise routine. Sure I exercised this weekend, but it was more of a struggle than it should have been. I have had absolutely no desire to workout. I made it through double sessions of the Shred on Saturday and Sunday (Level 2 followed by Level 3 both days), but I have never hated Jillian more, not even when I first started doing the Shred.

I took Monday morning off back, and I'm back with the trainer later this morning, so I'm really hoping that I can get myself back into gear.