Game on Boys!!!
I think one of the best ways to invigorate one’s fitness and diet plan is by shaking it up with a challenge! Though I think that I’ve been doing pretty good these past few months, and have been fairly active and eating better, surely it won’t hurt to allow my competitive self to step forward again and reignite my daily motivation.
Meet the Competitors, Daniel McOiler, Brown Vin Diesel and myself CSBG
The challenge is the person to lose the most percentage of weight in 99 days wins the $99 pot. Another aspect of our competition is a weekly add of a Fit Bit challenge. Every week, whoever has the most steps gets a dollar from the others, which we’ll accrue until the end of the 99 days. This takes us to July 27, 2015 GAME ON!!
My own personal goal with this challenge (outside of KICKING THEIR BUTTS) is to focus on vitality. To continue eating better and staying away from quick fixes and fast results. Since I started this blog, my focus has definitely shifted from dieting to developing a sustainable and good lifestyle, and it continues to be a work in progress for me.
There are different tools that I rely on now to support my goals and lifestyle – when I first started, I went it alone (well other than being accompanied with useless diet books and quick fix programs), but the truth of the matter is, the more meaningful support I have around me, the easier time I have in keeping this momentum flowing.
My FitBit Charge HR: it is such a useful tool to monitor how many steps I take in a day, how many calories I burn, my heartrate and distance travelled. There are so many generic programs out there that so objectively, without any personal attention, dictate how many calories a person should take in. Generically, I always get “1200”as the number of calories I should be consuming from these online programs – but in monitoring my FitBit which is personalized to myself and my daily expenditures, 1200 calories for one day is often too low.
Myfitnesspal.com: HUGE! Huge tool for calorie counting and monitoring. Until using my fitnesspal I had no idea how many secret calories I was consuming, but myfitnesspal is a great way of keeping track of what I’m taking in.
Yoga: As I’ve been blogging about, yoga at Lahari has been life changing for me. It’s important for me to be around health minded people in that same space of awareness, energy and vitality; each time I go I feel more secure in what I’m doing, like they take my fine print and hit the BOLD key.
Michelle “Cha-Cha” Krause Weightloss Transformation Support Group: I’ve joined a 5 week program being led by Michelle who had amazing success in weightloss and life experience gain (you can find her on facebook to see her ridiculous weightloss results, she was up to 150lbs in less than two years). Her support group is a fantastic time of information sharing once a week about overcoming challenges, identifying triggers and habits, meal planning, recipe sharing and understanding nutrition. Her transformative content is about tweaking our insides as well as adjusting our outsides, which to me, is not only valuable information, but information that is necessary for long term sustenance.
Activity: I enjoy running and working out, getting my body moving feels good to me. Once my mentality shifted from weightloss to movement, working out stopped feeling like such a chore. Instead of just solo workouts, I’ve been running with friends at work or my dog after work. I also joined a volleyball league that plays one night a week. Team sports has been the perfect way of making activity feel natural and fun again. Now that it’s warming up outside, I can get back into walking and biking again.
For the past few months, I have really just been monitoring my daily intake, my daily outtake and seeing how my body works without harsh manipulation or rules. I’ve been trying to listen more and understand my own cues and what my triggers are, what feels good to me and what doesn’t– I’ve been trying to figure out where I can create safe room in my week for guilt free indulgences and what types of food I do enjoy eating that are nutritious for me and sustainable. I’ve been trying to focus more on pleasing myself than punishing myself. Slowly, I’ve been cutting stuff out that isn’t aligned with my healthful goals, like diet soda and sweetener or processed foods with too many ingredients; but like I said, it’s all a work in progress. I take daily pictures, journal and pray often. For me a shift has happened that really speaks to a better sense of acceptance, happiness and well being…over everything else; but I feel like I’m only at a starting place with so much space ahead of me to continue to learn, grow and bloom.
With this challenge with Daniel McOiler and BVD, my goal is to focus on vitality and movement. I want to play, I want to move my body, I want to break the molds of typical challenges wherein I solely focus on weight loss and allow this competition instead to refuel and re-inspire my lifestyle goals. I want to continue being more like who I was before I fell asleep and went into cruise control years ago. I want this daily accountability to breathe life into my spirit again and remind me that I want to be really engaged with my life each day and not fall into the habits of complacency or negativity.
It’s all good, and IT’S ON!!!!