I’m coming to the end of my two week holiday, and it is fair to say it took me a LONG TIME to wind down. I’m not entirely sure why, but I really struggled with being on holiday! I’ve managed it eventually but it took me a while.

But now I find myself in that well known holiday dilemma – how do I relax but stay active! I’ve caught up on TV, I’ve been busy cross-stitching, I’ve done the odd bit of school work (not enough but hey), caught up with friends but… I didn’t feel relaxed, and I actually didn’t feel like ‘myself’. I thought it was because I was missing school, or routine but then it clicked…

This week there was a sudden addition on my fitbit app. That addition was the “number of hours with 250+ steps”. When I looked back over the last couple of weeks, I saw that although i may have met my 10000 steps goal for the day, I wasn’t active throughout the day, just on massive spurts every now and again. For example on Saturday I went for a 7.5km walk to the supermarket which is 0.6km away. On Tuesday I had met my 10000 steps by 10:30 in the morning because I had walked to the gym, spent an hour there, gone for a 30 minute swim and walked back again. The rest of the time I was stationary!

Today we went to the cinema (more sitting) and we saw this advert Free the kids it’s very powerful and so so true. In case you don’t watch the advert it is encouraging kids to spend two hours outside every day. As the husband said “I’m not sure I spend two hours outside every day”.

Yesterday we spent the day in London with our 7 year old nephew – it was an EPIC day, we walked all around London and realised we’d done about 7.5 miles by the end of the day! We were constantly on the move and it was fantastic – apparently he slept amazingly (as did I). But today… walk into town, go to the cinema, walk home, sit on sofa, do work, go for a run and STRUGGLE!

In London I was chasing our nephew up and down stairs, giving him piggy backs, racing along the river, and although I was shattered I probably could have gone for a run when I got home. Today barely anything and struggled to run. That’s happened before I’ve done very little throughout a day and then gone for a run, and struggled.

To be fair, this time last year, any of that activity would have been miraculous, but I think my lesson this week has to be… that I need to be active throughout the day. Its all very well meeting a goal, but it needs to be constant. I’ve got no idea how I’m going to manage this, but I’m sure the addition to my app will help somehow! Once again I recognise how lucky I am with my job, that I get to walk there, but then I am active throughout the day in lessons as well. Now just to master the hive of activity when on holiday!