Our team Craig's Angels consisting of Janeen, Gail, Sommer and Craig logged an average of 3360 minutes of exercise over the course of 56 total days . Basically the competition only allowed us to log a maximum of 60 minutes a day and many of the days we went over our minutes but only 60 minutes a day counted for the competition.
As for me, I've actually kept up the exercise EVERY day since January 23rd.Yes, you've read that right! I've continued exercising for a total of 13 days AFTER the competition. As you can tell I'm pretty pleased with myself.
What is interesting to me is that even though I've consistently exercising for 69 days straight, it is STILL HARD. I can tell I've gotten stronger and recover a lot faster but it still takes lots of effort and personal motivation. Getting up at 5 am still sucks and deciding to walk home after a long day at work is still hard. Every day I want to quit and at the beginning of my exercise I have to remind myself why I'm doing this.
Now that the competition is over, I'm left to ponder Why AM I doing this?.... For me, it's the little things that I'm hoping are going to add up to real results one day. My perspective has changed and for the first time in my life I am exercising for ME.
I want to be stronger, live longer, feel healthier, and feel better about myself. And ultimately I want to look HOT! but obviously being "Hot" hasn't been a big enough motivation. So what are the "little" things keeping me going? Well:
- I have LOTS more energy- My pants are fitting a little looser
- My body is feeling more firm
- My legs are more toned (I hate how I ALWAYS loose weight in my legs first thanks to my Navajo skinny legs genes but I'll take what ever I get).
- My face has slightly more definition.
- My double chins are a little smaller
- I love how I feel after exercise...after all you NEVER regret exercising!
Most of all I am feeling pretty proud of myself for keeping with it. My main motivation at the moment is to not break my record so far. My next goal is to hit 100 days of exercise- wouldn't that be awesome?!
Some of the challenges to continue exercising everyday are:
- Not loosing TONS of weight (I've been excercising EVERY day! shouldn't I be skinny by now?! - I know....I also need to not pig out, eat healthy foods etc...)
- Keeping myself motivated in spite of non-weight loss results
- Being more hungry
- Pushing myself to exercise when it's easy for me to make excuses
- Being committed on my most busy days or when I'm not feeling well (especially now the competition is over)
- not knowing what to do next- I'm kind of doing the same things over and over and want to make sure I'm still challenging my body.
- My Achilles tendinitis still flares up and I seem to keep getting shin splints which causes me to slow down...so frustrating!
This week I started implementing light weights and more stretching. What I want to do is complete some sort of cardio exercise for 30 to 45 minutes a day. 15 minutes of strength training and 15-20 minutes of stretching. 1 hour of exercise a day is definitely do-able. The problem is now keeping myself motivated to do other exercises as I tend to think I'm all done when my cardio is done. Eventually I want to work up to jogging, but my Achilles isn't having it at the moment.
Other other change that I need to make is to EAT LESS! ugh since exercising a little more than I did before, I feel like a hungry monster most of the time. But the problem is I am feeding myself a bunch of junk. Why?
- I don't plan out my meals or my "plan of execution"
- I buy fresh fruits and veggies but forget to grab them on my way out the door.
- I don't make a lunch and end up buying yummy but not-good-for-you food downtown where I work
- I'm so sick of salads after doing my weight watchers stint....need to find some new things to change things up.....
Possible solutions:
- Banchan!!! I LOVE Korean food, not only because I start to drool when ever watching my TV friends who live int he kdrama world eat on my shows but because it is SO GOOD! I've started pinning my favorite Korean side dishes (called Banchan) on pinterest, now to get my Korean friends to teach me to make them myself.
- Try new new fruits and veggies- growing up we didn't have a whole lot of variety of fresh fruits and veggies on the Rez, so moving to Hawaii has opened a whole new world for me. I LOVE exploring Chinatown and my favorite Korean Markets for stuff I've never seen before. I need to start learning to make new dishes from my found treasures.
- Plan my meals- whenever I plan my meals I feel so good. I save money and i don't have to worry about what we are gonna be eating. Plus Scotty is great at getting things started (or completely made most of the time) when I work late.
- Look up streches and exercises for strengthing my shins and achillies.
- Stop eating out so much
In the meantime, I'm still taking it ONE DAY AT A TIME....
