In the middle of January 2017 Sean and I took our nephew to a basketball game at the college by our house because they were playing the University of Redlands where we both went to school. Our nephew loves basketball, so Sean wanted him to get to see his college team play.
As the teams were warming up I realized seeing a bunch of sweating players that I had not sweat (on purpose at least) in longer than I could remember. The previous four years I pretty much sat at my desk...making power points for lectures, planning classes, making worksheets for group work, answering student emails, answering Mac's cheer team booster emails, answering all the emails. I had gotten a FitBit the year before and I got about 6,000 steps on an average day.
So the morning after the basketball game I exercised. Just an aerobics video, but it was something. Then I kept it up for about 20 minutes a day before showering and heading to work. In addition had already set a 2017 goal with Sean of 150 walks for the year since the past years we were getting about a hundred.
I kept exercising in the morning...I kept walking at night. I started eating a little better too and the weight I'd put on over the last few years started to come off.
Then July 2017 came and I decided to set what seemed like a lofty goal of half a million steps in a month. Which I kind of crushed.
Then in August I decided to start using weights everyday for a month. I think I missed two days out of thirty-one but overall it made such a difference.
I kept it up throughout this past school year. Thirty-minutes of aerobic exercise in the morning before work. An evening walk. At least 12,000 steps each day. Weights three to four times a week.
I am incredibly thankful that I now weigh fifty pounds less than I did sitting at that basketball game. I have a few actual little muscles. My posture feels like a different person altogether. I actually like exercise. May I say that again? I actually like exercise.
So now that I have some more time this summer, I got back to setting monthly goals in May. I wanted to do 1,000 sit-ups in the month.
I ended up doing 1,500.
There really might be something to this goal setting thing.
Now the one thing that has been missing in my new "active person" life, is stretching. I have never been remotely flexible, so I pretty much hate it. But then again, I used to say that about exercise. So this June it's a little yoga everyday. I have had the Yoga Studio app for a couple of years now and would use it sporadically (I love that you can make up a custom class for yourself), but now I am going to use it everyday this month. And mark it off on a calendar to help with the seeing the goal be accomplished.
I have made calendars for the rest of summer (that are blank, so you can fill in your own goal) in case you would like them...
Download June // Download July // Download August
Thanks for letting me share about this. When I think about it, it's one of the reasons I have blogged less this year. I just don't sit down at my computer for hours as much. Hopefully I'll have more time for that this summer too.