The Priority of Exercise

I can't believe it has almost been a week since I posted here. Not that I don't have things to share with you, it's more that things like my upcoming fantasy novel going through editing, writing the sequel to Beyond the Fifth Gate and keeping up with my freelance work is time intensive. This is one of the reasons it's easy for me to gain weight and keep it on. The writing life can be very sedentary if you let it. I'm over that. Between last month and this month I've actually made time to exercise...l have it on my schedule. If it isn't a priority, it won't happen.

I've been walking almost daily for about an hour. It's a great time of reflection but also a time of temptation. Temptation you ask. Yes, because I live in a very tiny subdivision with only two streets. I walk the whole thing and it is one mile...not enough. So I actually walk past by house on each lap coming and going. When I started this I was always tempted to cut things short and get back to work. That's why I've given myself the one hour time slot. Not one mile, two...or three. I'm not done until I put an hour in. That has more or less reduced the temptation. :)

So far this challenge, I've been able to stick to my goals. Last weigh in, I've lost 6 pounds since the first of the year. Slowly but surely, I'm inching toward my ideal weight!

Day 1: February 21 Day Challenge

Here we are, another new month and a brand new start. The January 21 Day Challenge went well for me, and for the days between challenges, I actually continued with those same goals. The end result for January was that I'm down 5.4 pounds. That surpasses my hopes. So here's to February!

The Way the Challenge Works

It is said that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. The 21 Day Challenge starts the 1st of the the month and goes through the 21st. The challenge is to set goals for those 21 days in hopes you will gradually establish new habits. The days "off" between challenges will show you whether or not your new behavior has become a habit, whether it needs work, or perhaps needs tweaking to work for you.

I set goals for many different aspects of life, but for this blog the focus is losing weight. If you don't need to lose weight the same technique can be used to maintain weight, work toward a healthier lifestyle and even for gaining weight. Before year's end, I hope to be maintaining rather than losing.

My February 21 Day Challenge Goals

• Exercise 3-5 days a week
• No S Diet
• Drink water

How to Set Goals

When setting goals, be sure to make them achievable. For example, if I set a goal to lose 5 pounds and only lose 4, then I have not succeeded. Failure can send me into a tailspin. I don't really have control over exactly how much I lose so that is not a practical goal. However, if I set a goal to exercise 3-5 days a week, THAT I can have control over. It's measurable and achievable. The result will be weight loss. How much weight loss, well that's in God's hands.

Don't set yourself up for failure, but success! Set attainable goals.

Life Between Challenges

Here I am in the week between the January 21 Day Challenge and February's challenge. The idea behind the 21 Day Challenge is to set goals that help to establish new habits. While I employ this strategy to many areas of life, this blog focuses on weight and health. For me that means losing weight, and hopefully this year learning to maintain the weight loss.

The time in between challenges is eye opening. For one, you'll know soon enough if the things your practiced during the challenge have stuck or not. It reminds me of making a New Year's resolution to lose weight. Without smaller goals to help reach the big goal, we usually we get off track and most of the time we stay off track. The problem with a New Year's resolution is that when we fail, we tend to think..."There's always next year." But who wants to wait until next year? I want to lose weight now!

With the 21 Day Challenge, each new month is a clean slate. This works two ways. First, for people who failed to stick to their health/weight goals in one month have a new start the next month. Not only that, we can set the new goals based on what worked and what didn't. I mean there's no sense continuing to do what didn't work! Secondly, it offers the opportunity to tweak our goals. For example, if you had a goal to eat no snacks but learned you were so hungry at dinner time you tended to eat more than you should, you can change that no snack goal to eating only small healthy snacks.

For me, in these days of life between challenges, I've continued to do what I did on the January challenge. I'm feeling good, exercising regularly, eating right and I see it motivating people around me to do the same. Now that's a bonus!

Now's the time to think about the February 21 Day Challenge. Not only is summer on the way (in terms of weight loss it is just around the corner), but today is the best day to make plans for better health. Come on and join us!

If you're looking for inspiration, here are a few articles you may find helpful:

Natural Detoxification Diets

1200 Calorie Diet

10 Step Diet Interview

January 21 Challenge Results

Hard to believe we are fast approaching the end of January, but this January I'm happy to say that I have stuck with my health and exercise goals. Most people fall away from their weight loss resolution goals by the middle of the month! The 21 Day Challenge approach works for me because I set goals for the first 21 days of the month. It breaks things down to smaller manageable pieces. Instead of a whole year, I focus on 21 days. It is said that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. The days in between the 21st and the start of the new month let me see how well the new habits stick, and it also gives me the opportunity to tweak my goals for the next month. That flexibility helps me stay on target.

My January 21 Day Challenge goals were to:

Follow the No S Diet

Drink 64 ounces of water daily

Exercise 3-5 days a week

These goals worked and I plan to continue them in February. Overall, I'm going for slow healthy weight loss and as of the end of the January 21 Day Challenge I have lost 5.2 pounds. I was hoping for 3 pounds, so I'm happy.

Over this week I'll talk about why it is working for me and the new habits that are helping me move to a healthier weight.

21 Day Challenge: Day 19

Hard to believe we are already on day 19 of January's 21 Day Challenge. Life has been full of things to do including birthdays to celebrate. I still have two to go. Those kinds of special occasions used to derail my weight loss plans every January. I'd make an "exception" and before I knew it the exception became my way of life. So far, that's not the case this January. My 21 Day Challenge goals are really making a difference.

I'm following the No S Diet which basically means no sweets, no seconds, no snacks except on days that start with S. That includes "special days" like birthdays. The flexibility of this diet has really worked for me, plus I've been walking an hour a day 3-5 days a week. The thing that I've noticed is that I'm learning to know when I'm hungry and it is time to eat. With the no snacks rule, I wait to eat until my stomach tells me it is time. Even on the weekend when I can snack, I'm paying more attention to my hunger. Hopefully this is a habit that will carry me through the days off between this challenge and the February challenge!

The weight is coming off slowly and I'm hitting my target goal. I can eat what I want for my meals, just no seconds. I'm trying to include healthy choices that actually feed my body which helps me stay satisfied longer. All in all, this 21 Day Challenge has made a difference on a number of levels! I hope you can say the same.

21 Day Challenge: Day 14

This week is just whizzing by! I have more work to do than I have hours, technological bugs that have made life interesting, and a few out-of-the-ordinary things to fit into an otherwise tight schedule like a surprise birthday party. Plus remember I started the week in a funk?

Today marks two weeks into the January 21 Day Challenge, so I had to be sure to at least stop by and post here. Fitting an hour walk into my schedule 3-5 days a week is a priority and guess what? I've stuck with it. I've walked 4 days so far. Both my eating and exercise have stayed constant! I didn't succumb to the stress that in the past would send me into a feeding frenzy more commonly known as binge eating. I weighed in today and I'm just .2 pounds short of losing 4 pounds this first two weeks. My goal is 1 pound a week so I'm ahead of the game.

One week to go on this challenge and then we have the rest of the month to evaluate how things went, what we need to change and what we want to accomplish for the February 21 Day Challenge! One day at a time, we can establish new habits that will change our lives.

21 Day Challenge: Day 12

Yesterday I woke up with the blah Monday blues. Doesn't happen to me all the time, but when it does, I feel it before my feet hit the floor. I don't want to do the things I need to do, and that leaks over to the things that I should do like eat right and exercise. Days like this used to send me on a eat-what-I-want binge. But it didn't happen yesterday!

Instead, I focused on my diet goals. No sweets, no snacks, no seconds (except for days that start with an S--and it wasn't Smonday). The blah feelings might be linked do the fact that I was able to eat what I wanted over the weekend and Monday marked an end to that and back to the weekly restrictions. The fact is that I am totally satisfied physically during the week without snacks or desserts, and I think my blah feeling was tied to my mental and emotional connection to food. I often used it to help me through boredom or stress, not just to feed hunger. Mondays are busy and I didn't have food to pacify me.

Once I got past breakfast and lived until lunch without snacking, I regained my momentum. Losing weight certainly isn't about eating what you want when you want. Once I got my head on straight I changed my focus to the benefits I'll see down the road. My weight is dropping along with my BMI. I even went out for my hour walk in our balmy 40 degree weather. That's huge progress for me! I'm heading in the right direction!