Fitness Challenge Wrap-Up

The last 2.5 weeks of January were a bit of a whirlwind.  I was thrown off path a bit due to my last-minute planning for my birthday.  Overall, I stayed committed to my fitness goal and was active four days per week, except for the last week of January/first week of February, where I scheduled in a bit of birthday prep after work every day.  I worked out at home for the remainder of January – mostly with the Fitness Blender team.

Even though I was fully aware that I was exercising in preparation for a special event for my birthday, there were still a few days during the last half of the month where I had to really p u s h myself to get active, and simply remember my WHY.  So, I had some shorter workouts of 35 – 45 minutes on those days. 

My ultimate goal is to break my cycle of starting and stopping my workouts after two or three weeks of doing it consistently.  My constant pattern of doing that has been extremely annoying!

So, I’m proud of myself for actually sticking through with it consistently over the past 4.5 weeks of January.  I used my Apple Watch to track my activity.  I saw an Achievement Award pop up on my watch at the end of January, and noticed that I exercised 19 times throughout the month.  Over the past 6 months, I’ve never even surpassed 12 workouts, so to see that number was a bit surprising.  Exercising 19 out of 31 days isn’t bad, and I’m definitely going to keep it up!

         

In addition, I loved seeing all the marks on my calendar, and feeling/seeing the progress that my body is making.  I didn’t take any blog-appropriate photos, but will be more conscious to do so in the future.

When it came to my eating habits, I still did my best to eat within my 10AM to 6PM window, but there were a few days that I was either out late and forgot to bring a snack, so I opted for whatever was available OR I just wanted some home-made guacamole at 10PM, and I justified it by saying it’s made of a healthy fat.

  I used an Intermittent Fasting calendar from NerdFitness to track my eating hours.  It didn’t take up much time – it literally took just one minute/day to fill it in.  But, I noticed that it didn’t have any slot for the type of food you’re eating.  It’s pointless to make sure I eat within my window, but then solely eat junk food.  I’ve been using a Food App called YouAte to track my food.  You simply take a photo of your food and answer a few optional questions if you want.  It logs in the image, time between meals, time since you last ate, and tells you whether you’ve eaten well or not.  I’ve actually been using it for a few months now and I love it – I like it better than MyFitnessPal or any other calorie counting app because I’m not into counting calories.  I’ve always made sure to read the nutrition label of all the products that I consume, and eat according to the serving size (for the most part). 

This was the first time that I really branched out and cooked different types of meals than what I normally would.  I’ve always had a decent, somewhat healthy, yet boring diet that consisted of a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs with fruit and nuts or a green smoothie; a lunch of either bulgar wheat or quinoa or sweet potatoes with either grilled chicken, salmon, or catfish; and a home-made salad for dinner or quick vegetable stir-fry with shrimp.  The only time I would stray from this is if I went out for lunch/dinner or ate my mother’s food (which is also healthy, but less boring).

I made eggplant parmesan, different ground turkey recipes and baked panko-crusted salmon for the first time.  Of those recipes, I absolutely fell in love with the panko-crusted salmon!  I also tried oatmeal for the first time, and I am officially HOOKED!!  My mother gave my siblings and I porridge once when we were younger, and I thought it was the most disgusting thing ever – I hated the texture of it and never ate it or anything that resembled it ever again, thus oatmeal fell into this category.  

Over the past few weeks, I began to read more blogs geared towards living a healthy lifestyle, joined some fitness-related FB groups, and watched a ton of YouTube videos.  I thought about what I could realistically incorporate into my life that wouldn’t make it feel like a burden.  In testing out the new recipes each week, I found that it was actually more fun than I thought it would be.  So this is something that I will be keeping around.

Now for this water…

My water goals are still a dub.  I was more conscious to drink more over the last 2.5 weeks (which sent me to the restroom rather often), but didn’t make any major strides in hitting my 80 oz per day goal.  I’ve been using the water app, but only when I remember to do so.  Although the reminders pop up, it does nothing for me.  I look at it, and then proceed with whatever I was doing.  I’m sure the labels on my bottle may have helped if I had actually made them.  I didn’t create the labels because I told myself that I would buy a new water bottle since my current bottle is having some clasp issues.  But, that new water bottle of mine is still sitting on the store shelf somewhere because I never got around to buying it.  SMH 

Real Estate Challenge Wrap-Up

I linked up with a few ladies from one of my real estate groups during the latter part of the month.  It’s always a great time getting together with them, as we are all able to learn from each other’s experiences and share different resources with each other.  

I completed the second module of my course as planned and began with the third module.

Although, I met my monthly goal to complete my module, I didn’t keep up with the overall goal to spend an hour and a half doing research every day.  I’m not entirely pleased with my progress in this area.  Focusing more on my birthday plans caused me to do less research on real estate.  No excuses though.  Just going to be more conscious going forward.

What did I learn?!

It’s pretty much ‘mind over matter’.  Your mindset is important, and faith is crucial.  You are what you think you are.  I don’t know if I’ve ever really BELIEVED that I could have the body frame that I desired.  I would always say it, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually put my faith to practice and declared that it would happen.  In the back of my mind, I would say “Do you REALLYYYYY think that this could come to pass?”  And that was clearly a lack of faith on my part because OF COURSE IT CAN!!  You better believe my belly and I had some conversations throughout the month, and I pushed myself on the days when I didn’t want to do anything.  I think this was a great way for me to challenge my faith, DO THE WORK, and actually see some progress.  I actually DO believe that it can and will come to pass.

This applies not only to fitness, but every area in my life.  Either way, I’ll continue to enjoy the journey as I achieve my goals towards building consistency in my life.

How was the first month of 2018 for you?

Did you challenge yourself to do anything you’ve been having trouble with?