30 Day Challenge Progress

Week 1 – April 8. The first week has been fairly easy. My motivation is high and resolve is strong. As far as food goes, it is more a matter of convenience than cravings. It was a chaotic week with a lot of time away from home, so it was a pain in the butt to plan out my meals or make sure I had healthy snacks readily available. Day 4 I was very tired just felt drained. Maybe my body was adjusting to the carb deprivation. Maybe it was the 35 degrees and rainy, gray day. My only real temptation was when I took the kids to Bojangles to use a gift card. The berry biscuits drizzled in frosting were hard to resist because I knew how good they were. I just had my coffee and let the kids enjoy their treat. The kids were on spring break this week and my gym has no day care, so I did not get to the gym. I did make sure to take long walks of about 2 miles every day. I only got one weights workout in this week. My excuse – the weekend weather was beautiful so I decided to go for a long hike at Tallulah Gorge instead. The hundreds of stairs going up and down the gorge were more challenging than doing squats anyway. I still feel a little bit guilty and will make up for it by doing 3 days of weights next week. While reading one of my favorite health websites,  Mark’s Daily Apple, I found an amazing article about Health Integrity: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-health-integrity-matters-or-the-power-of-being-honest-with-yourself/#axzz2PSJWsZ6N

  He summed up exactly what I want to accomplish with this challenge.

Week 2 – April 15. OK, halfway through. A strange thing is happening – I don’t even think about junk food any more. Healthy eating is becoming a habit. Yes, it is still an inconvenience to wash and chop raw veggies for a snack instead of grabbing a bowl of Cheerios, but I am getting better about being prepared and having healthy food on hand. I make sure that I have lots of fruits and veggies and nuts available for meals or snacks. In a pinch, I just grab my shaker cup and mix up a quick shake with protein powder and water. The lesson this week is mindfulness. I have become painfully aware of how little thoughtless actions can add up in a day or week and have an impact on my weight. Things like snacking while cooking or taking a bite of the kids’ food to test the temperature can really add on extra calories. Watching my diet carefully has brought attention to the little habits that I hardly even noticed before. The only thing that was hard this week was when I took the girls out for ice cream on Friday and couldn’t have any with them. That has been our Friday tradition since they started kindergarten and I did feel like I was missing out on something. The scales have been all over the place this week – up, down, up, down. And I don’t even care. In the past, when the scales would smack me in the face with the cold truth, I would beat myself up over every little cheat and treat that I had indulged in. The guilt and self-loathing would set in and I would feel horrible. Not this time. I know I have done everything right. My diet and exercise have been consistent. I feel great. The skinny jeans are fitting nicely, with room to spare.  My energy levels are high, I  no longer have the afternoon slump and I have been able to drastically reduce my caffeine consumption. That alone is a miraculous achievement and one that I will celebrate. The other thing that I have become mindful of is that I need to cut back on my weekend drinking if I really want to make the maximum progress. When I started this challenge, I didn’t plan on cutting out alcohol, I decided that I would just choose healthier drinks – no more pitchers of beer or Jack’n’Cokes. I still allowed myself some light ciders, red wine or paleo margaritas. Well, when I really paid attention this week, I realized that one day I consumed five ciders and another night I had three margaritas. Not good. 120 calories for each cider doesn’t seem like much, but indulging in five of them added 600 calories to my day. There is no way I would have eaten an extra 600 calories worth of food, but it was so easy to drink them away throughout the day. From now on, I will limit myself to 1-2 drinks once or twice a week.  I am also going to track my calories through an app on my phone. I’ve never been disciplined enough to be a calorie-counter, but it’s worth a try.  Three weeks until my next mud run and one month until I am on the beach. No time to waste!

 

Week 3 – April 22. Ok, this is getting tedious. What a pain in the ass this is becoming. Calculating and recording every single thing I consume is not much fun. Maybe I am just feeling grumpy and overwhelmed by work, kids and the upcoming move and it feels like this is just one more annoying chore to keep up with when my time and energy are already stretched so thin. Annoyance aside, it has been a week of interesting revelations. After a few days of using the calorie counting app My Fitness Pal, I realized that I was not consuming enough calories to make up for my workouts. I adjusted my intake to meet what the app recommended and finally broke through the plateau on the scales. That was very rewarding, so I guess it is worth the effort. I have also seen a couple of other amazing health developments. For the first time in years, I had no PMS this month. I actually went all month without really wanting to smack somebody.  My sprained hand has shown more improvement in the last three weeks than in the previous three months, so the anti-inflammatory benefits of this diet are proving themselves in a tangible way. I am having some pretty intense cravings for good dark chocolate and I hate not being able to have ice cream with my girls on Friday. Other than that, I don’t really miss anything and I feel great. Exercise is starting to become a habit, although I have to accept that if I am devoting the time to diet and exercise, other things are going to suffer. That is just part of the balancing act. I guess I can deal with the dog hair on the floor, mountain of laundry and huge stack of papers and receipts to be filed. Maybe someday I will discover the magical secret to getting it all done. I do have a lot more energy lately, but still not enough to finish the never-ending to-do list. One more week to go.


May 1st - 

So, my 30 day challenge ended and I came to an important realization – that my life is so chaotic and out of control that I will probably need a new 30 day challenge every month for the rest of my life. Taking the time to focus on changing one thing at a time, 30 days at a time is a great concept. The first 30 day challenge was great. 30 days was a doable amount of time. When I was tempted to give up, I just kept telling myself “It’s only 30 days. I can do it” And I did. I made health my priority for an entire month. I worked out regularly and paid close attention to my diet. I guess the most important lessons I learned from this experiment were discipline and mindfulness. I had to stop and think about things. I had to plan – I had to think ahead to make sure I had what I needed to succeed. I had to think about and plan my grocery list. I had to schedule  my days more carefully so that I made time for workouts. One day a week, the kids had an after-school program at the community center, so I would leave an hour early and do interval runs on the little track around the soccer field. I had to make a schedule and stick to it. Yeah, I had to do all the things I should have been doing for a long time. Oh well, better late than never I guess. It is kind of hard to measure the results of the challenge. The scales fluctuated quite a bit, so I guess I lost about five pounds. And I quit using the scales as a measurement of success or failure. I am getting stronger, my clothes are fitting better and I feel amazing. So to heck with the scales. I’ll still check in with them once in a while, but they will no loger be the focus of my health journey. The intangible benefits of discipline and mindfulness were the real prize from this experience. I am hooked on the idea of a 30 day challenge, but what to tackle next? Maybe getting more organized,  filing papers and receipts as they come in rather than letting them pile up, being a better friend, keeping in touch with those I don’t see regularly, remembering birthdays, not procrastinating, reading the books that are piled up on my bookshelf beside the bed, getting back into making my herbal medicines, being a more patient mom, being a better driver. It seems the list of my faults and flaws is quite extensive.  Well, that gives me a lot to work on. My 30 day challenge for May will be to just survive the month, then in June I will re-evaluate and see which of my issues will be the next to tackle.