The Ordinary Tuesday
I know Monday. Super well. Monday and I are close.
I’m talking about the Day 1 Monday. The wake up bright eyed and excited kind. The promise of a brand new me kind.
Perfect plan. Fridge freshly stocked. New workout clothes laid out the night before.
If you've met that Monday, we are destined to be friends.
And Day 1 usually went fine. Day 1 has excitement behind it. Big motivation.
But then real life happened.
And slowly but surely parts of the plan started falling apart. The perfectly planned, pre-measured and pre-logged meal became a chocolate Premier drink and Fritos on the run. The workout hour got swallowed by a meeting that ran long.
Before I actually realized it, the big overhaul started to feel like one big failure. And somewhere around 4pm on the second Tuesday, standing in the kitchen trying to do 6 other things at the same time, I was blaming myself for my lack of willpower.
Then a new Monday would roll around and I'd commit to starting over.
For real that time.
I was one of you: the diet cycle, the yo-yo, always the next Monday. For years I took that loop personally.
But look at what I kept handing myself: plans built for Day 1 energy and motivation, then asked to fit the days when my life had the least space for them.
That’s what I mean by an Ordinary Tuesday.
Day 1 can start a habit. The Ordinary Tuesday tells you whether the habit fits your real life.
A habit that fits is small enough to repeat when the day gets crowded or unexpected. Movement might be a 5-minute walk. Taking care of yourself might be filling your water bottle before you leave the house.
Small enough to hold in your real, messy, ordinary life. Repeated long enough to become part of it.
A year gives you 52 Mondays and a few hundred ordinary days. The math was never close.
So that’s what this is.
The Ordinary Tuesday.
I’ll write about habits and stress. I’ll put the science into plain words and check it carefully. I’m a certified nutrition, menopause, and stress coach, and I take that part seriously.
Real life belongs here too, mine included.
And I’ll keep coming back to the question I’ll probably spend the rest of my career on: we know what to do, so why don't we do it?
I have a feeling we’re going to spend a lot of Tuesdays figuring that out.
I'm glad you're here.
Alex
Alex Maxwell is a nutrition and stress recovery coach, a certified menopause coach, and the founder of Rise Unstuck. She helps women build the habits that hold when life is full, so a hard week stops meaning another Day 1.
She drinks her water before her coffee. Most days.
