I've already made a lot of healthy changes in 2017. I've made a lot of progress with my weight loss, with keeping myself sane and healthy mentally through to process and keeping things sustainable. Although the month of December was a big wash as far as my nutrition goals, I am okay with that. Some big things came up that were unexpected and I didn't handle them as well as I should have (and I apparently eat out of anxiety more than anything else! Learning every day!) but that is okay as well. I can be better prepared in the future if I learn from my 'mistakes' now!
Going forward, I want to make more healthy habits and really get into more fitness-centric habits to help me stay strong and injury free.
In the past, I've been GREAT at going whole hog with fitness and diet. I could do that for about 6 months before I started to flag or give up or get injured or... whatever. I was never working on keeping it sustainable. I was always going for the quick fix. This year I want to change that.
Another, maybe even more important thing that I want to do is to challenge myself in NON-Physical ways... in things that are totally and utterly unrelated to how I look or what size clothes I wear, or even how strong I am.
Thus, this challenge. I don't want to go nuts in January and give up by March. I do, of course want to continue some of these as habits throughout the year, but I figure making each one a particular focus for a month will help me figure out what each of these mean to me and I also think it will be good to see how even one month of any of these causes changes in my life, in my attitude, etc.
I am going to start with planks. Mainly because I'm having a lot of back issues lately because of poor posture, lack of strength and the fact that I've spent WAY too much time in a car this year... and this last 9 hour trip (each way) in my daughters highly uncomfortable car has left my back screaming at me. Thus, a physical challenge will be my first.
I want to blog about my experiences on a weekly basis. Probably on Wednesdays most weeks, but who knows? I am making it my goal to write about how each of these challenges affect me, because writing is like therapy for me. I feel like I release so much stress by writing about things AND I learn a lot by it as well.
Who wants to join me?
If you'd like to join me with your own definitions of these challenges, here is one without all the writing on it if you'd like to print it off and use it for your own goals!