Humpty Dumpty Packed a Suitcase—and the Routine Came Tumbling Down

Dear Body,

Boy, oh boy.

What happened?

One minute, we were celebrating our most consistent week yet, wearing our Consistency badge with pride and behaving as though we had finally figured this fitness thing out.

Then I packed a suitcase.

And Humpty Dumpty came tumbling down.

At first, I wondered whether the previous nine weeks had finally caught up with me. Perhaps all those steps, squats, lunges, swimming sessions and newly discovered body parts had taken their toll.

But wait a minute.

This was also a travel week, and you know how edgy I get before long-haul travel. Lately, whenever I have to board a flight lasting more than eight hours, I seem to need an entire week just to wrap my head around it.

It is like pre-travel jet lag.

Is that a thing?

You know the feeling: brain fog, tiredness and general lethargy brought on simply by thinking about packing, airport transfers, security queues and the many hours you are about to spend folded into an aeroplane seat.

Then there is the pleasure of being “randomly selected for additional screening.” Sometimes it happens so consistently that it becomes rather clear there is very little random about it.

But that is a story for another day, when we can discuss travelling while Black outside Africa and America.

For now, back to the suitcase.

Week Ten was our slowest week yet. After the previous week’s glorious performance, Garmin Dearest must have assumed I had handed the watch to somebody else.

One Barre session valiantly attempted to hold the entire fitness programme together.

One.

Poor Barre.

It did its best.

I thought this would be one slow week: a little travel disruption, followed by a triumphant return to the programme.

But one week became two.

Then three.

Then four.

For four weeks, I travelled, attended conferences and meetings, networked late into the night and allowed the exercise routine we had worked so hard to build to vanish.

Not slow down.

Not become slightly inconsistent.

Disappear.

One minute, I was confidently discussing deltoids and exceeding my daily step goal. The next, I was looking at hotel gyms as though they were decorative facilities provided for somebody else.

Now, I could tell you that I did not have time to exercise.

But that would not be entirely true.

The truth is that I simply did not prioritise it.

There is a difference.

A big difference.

I prioritised conferences, meetings, dinners and late-night networking. By the time I got back to my room, I was exhausted, and morning arrived far too quickly.

The routine became:

Wake up.

Shower.

Breakfast.

Conference.

Network.

Dinner.

Sleep.

Repeat.

Exercise did not make the itinerary.

I kept telling myself I would work out when I found the right gym.

Or the right pool.

Or a free morning.

Or sufficient energy.

Apparently, I was waiting for the moon, the stars and the hotel fitness facilities to align perfectly.

They did not.

And neither did I.

The strange thing is that I did not need a gym or a pool.

Most days, I had a fancy hotel room. Even when I stayed with family or friends, I had a room of my own, Wi-Fi and enough floor space to move.

I could have done a short aerobics video.

I could have packed resistance bands.

I could have done squats, lunges, stretching or one of those innocent-looking YouTube workouts that introduces itself as “low impact” before trying to kill you.

I could even have danced around the room for twenty minutes.

Instead, I did almost nothing.

There was some walking—and that one lonely Barre session.

Structured exercise?

Wueh.

Week Eleven briefly perked up because conferences involve more walking than you might imagine. Then the numbers slid back down.

Garmin Dearest watched the decline—and not entirely quietly.

At one point, it informed me that my average steps were lower than my four-week average and suggested that I plan to move a little more.

A little judgement.

The occasional lecture.

But numbers do not lie, and mine were telling a very clear story:

Madam was not moving.

You can probably imagine what was happening in the eating department.

There were dinners.

There were drinks.

There were conference meals and restaurant discoveries.

There were probably several things eaten simply because they were there.

I even had a waiter in Jozi—Johannesburg—ask how I wanted my steak:

“Blue, rare, medium or well done?”

Excuse me?

Blue?

Apparently, a blue steak is introduced to the pan for a few seconds and sent to your table while you can still hear the cow mooing.

I consider myself fairly well travelled compared with the average Kenyan, but I was today years old in Jozi when I first heard a steak described as blue.

Movement had left the chat, but my appetite remained fully committed to the programme.

The annoying thing is that I knew better.

I knew regular exercise helped me sleep better, gave me more energy and made me feel stronger. I knew how good it felt to finish four workouts in a week and hit 10,000 steps every day.

And yet, the moment my normal routine disappeared, the exercise disappeared with it.

These four weeks taught me something important:

My fitness routine is not yet travel-proof.

It depends too heavily on having the right gym, the right pool, the right trainer and the right schedule.

That works beautifully at home.

It is much less useful when I am living out of a suitcase and returning to a hotel room late at night.

Twenty minutes can fit into most days—but only if I protect the time before somebody fills it with breakfast meetings and networking dinners.

Discipline is not only doing the workout when the circumstances are perfect.

It is planning for the days when they are not.

So, the next time I travel, the plan travels too:

• Pack resistance bands
• Save two or three short workouts before leaving home
• Schedule movement into the itinerary
• Aim for twenty minutes rather than waiting for the perfect hour
• Use the hotel room when there is no suitable gym or pool
• Remember that something counts, even when it is not the full programme

This is not me punishing myself for four slow weeks.

It is me learning that consistency needs a backup plan.

There will be no glamorous workout photographs this time because there were very few workouts to photograph—glamorous or otherwise.

But I do have some lovely travel pictures.

Consider them visual evidence of where I was while my fitness routine was filing a missing-person report.

The old me might have quietly disappeared from this blog until I had better numbers to share.

But that would defeat the purpose of making this journey public.

The weeks when I fall out of routine are part of the story too.

Perhaps they are the part from which I have the most to learn.

Dear Body, I am sorry I left you out of the travel itinerary.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together again.

But I suspect a resistance band and twenty minutes a day might.

Main activity

Travelling, conferencing, meeting and networking

Average daily steps

Week Ten: 5,697 | Week Eleven: 8,968 | Week Twelve: 7,291 | Week Thirteen: 6,292

Structured workouts

One lonely Barre session—wueh!

Exercise equipment used most consistently

My suitcase

Hotel-room workouts completed

Let us move swiftly along

Most important discovery

My routine needs a travel version

Current status

Recalibrating, not quitting

Four weeks away from my routine do not erase the progress that came before them.

But they do expose what needs fixing.

The goal now is to build a routine strong enough to survive the next suitcase.

Yours—slightly humbled, thoroughly travelled and preparing to begin again, Me