Tag Archives: planning

Mixed Up Workouts (or Not Knowing What To Expect)

Posted on August 21, 2017 | Comments Off on Mixed Up Workouts (or Not Knowing What To Expect)

This past week of workouts was an interesting one for me. I usually know what to expect with my workouts because I know which classes are 2 group classes and what classes are 3 group ones. I also have a good idea of what the workout will be each day because I have found an online forum where people post it each day. I like knowing what the workout will be so I can prepare mentally and physically for what I’m going to be doing. But this week things didn’t go as I thought they would and maybe that was a good thing for me.

Monday’s workout was an endurance run/row workout. I was expecting it to not be a run/row because it’s supposed to be a 3 group workout, but it ended up being a 2 group class instead. I think even though it’s posted as a 3 group one, it’s not going to be that way that often. I know some people aren’t coming to that class anymore because they don’t like the 3 group classes and because of that we don’t have enough people in class to make it 3 groups. But it was nice to have the run/row and I was happy that I was able to do it.

We started with a 1,000 meter row which I did without stopping but not in that great of a time. Next was supposed to be a .5 mile run on the treadmill. But my body wasn’t up for running. It was a combination of being tired and my hips hurting from sitting at Hamilton the night before. So I did the power walk version of .25 miles at 6% incline. Next was back to the rower for a 750 meter row and then another .25 miles power walking on the treadmill. I was on the rower doing the 500 meter row when time was called to switch to the floor.

Once I got to the floor there were 3 blocks and it was mainly arms and core focused. The worked out well for me because my legs and hips were pretty done after the run/row. The second block was interesting because we had 30 second intervals with plank work and running man and that was pretty tough. 30 seconds isn’t that long, but when it’s back to back it gets hard. And the last block was tough too because we had a core blast but had to do 3 burpees in-between each exercise.

Wednesday’s workout was a strength day, so I went into it thinking it would be a walking day for me. But that ended up being the perfect plan because half of the treadmill workout was designed to be power walking only. The first 2 blocks on the treadmill were normal strength ones. I run the 90 second push paces because they weren’t on an incline but I walked all the incline work. But the second 2 blocks were power walking blocks where everyone was walking. The inclines were supposed to be a bit higher than I normally do, so I was at a lower incline, but it was still everyone walking and I didn’t feel bad about not trying to run on inclines that day.

When I went to the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block was bicep work on the straps, chest work with weights, and ab work. We also had a 300 meter row which I did in 1:15. Not a great row time for me, but if I’m being honest I wasn’t trying that hard on the rowing. The second block was tricep work, biceps with weights, and shoulder work. And we had a 500 meter row which I did in 2:23. Again, not a great time but I know I wasn’t working as hard as I probably should have.

Friday was an endurance day and I wasn’t planning on running because of that. But then when I got to class I realized we were going to do the 3 group format which meant less time on the treadmill. So I decided to try running and see what happened. We had 2 blocks on the treadmill and they all had the same format with a 1 minute push pace, base pace, 90 second push pace, base pace, and a 2 minute push pace to a 30 second all out pace. But the difference between the 2 blocks was that the base paces had different times. But to run all the push and all out paces was pretty awesome for me since I really expected to be walking the entire workout.

Next I was on the rower which was one long block. It was timed rowing with squats in-between each row. We started with 30 seconds and increased things by 10 seconds each round. Normally I love sprint rowing because I can do really well with it, but doing the squats in-between the rowing was tough and I wasn’t rowing as hard as I usually could. But it was a great block of work and was nice and challenging for me.

And I ended on the floor which was also one long block. It was deadlifts and work on the straps and then we had increasing numbers of exercises on the BOSU. Each BOSU thing was core work and while core work sometimes feels like a bit of a break and time for me to catch my breath, this time it was just constant work so I felt like it was just as tough as any other block I had done that day.

And I got my 4th workout in this week again. Saturday was a power day which usually means a running day for me. But that wasn’t going to be the plan for me this time. My legs were pretty dead from Friday’s workout and I ended up not being able to start on the treadmill like I usually do. I started on the rower, then went to the floor, and finally was on the treadmill. So by the time I was at the treadmill my body was not feeling like running would be happening.

There were 2 rounds in the 3 group workout so I spent 2 blocks on each section. With rowing, we had some distance rowing challenges. They were sprint rows but in the first block I wasn’t doing too great with them. They were decreasing distances with decreasing breaks between each round. But with the second block, we had 150 meter distance rows with some squats in-between. I was on my 2nd or 3rd 150 meter row when my coach came by. She normally gives me a challenge on the rower to do and she likes to make them pretty tough. I was averaging 40 seconds for 150 meters so she challenged me to do it in 30 seconds. I asked her to hold the rower because I knew I was going to go hard and I didn’t want it to move. She stayed there and I flew on the rower. I didn’t focus on the timer but watched the distance go down. And when I got to 150 meters, not only did I hit the goal my coach set but I beat it!

28 seconds is way faster than I ever thought I could do the row in! And I think my coach was pretty blown away by it too! It was a pretty high note to end my rowing with.

On the floor, everything was pretty quick. We had a variety of upper body, lower body, and core work. But the craziest thing we had to do on the floor were burpees with palms to elbows. But burpees and palms to elbows are tough enough on their own. But to combine them was almost just evil! I totally struggled with those, but I did my best.

And when I finally got to the treadmill, I started with trying to run the first push pace before realizing that it was just not safe for me to run. When I’m tired I can have sloppy running form and I didn’t want that. So I ended up walking on a day that I really was hoping to run. I felt a bit bad about walking because I knew I wasn’t getting as good of a workout as I would have liked to, but I just kept reminding myself that I was there and not sitting at home. Walking is better than nothing. And it was also my 4th workout of the week which is still something I occasionally struggle with.

No matter how much I try to prepare for my workouts, I guess the unexpected can always happen. Fortunately my fitness level is at the point where I can adjust and adapt as needed and my workouts don’t suffer too much. But I think I’m still going to prefer when I know what I’m in for when I walk into the workout.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailThanksgiving Workouts (or Getting My Family Involved) Default Thumbnail3 Workouts In A Row (or Using Fitness To Beat A Cold) Default ThumbnailA New Year Of Workouts (or Finally Starting To Feel Like Myself Again) Default ThumbnailBack To My Normal Workouts (or Another Challenge Switch) Default ThumbnailA Short Workout Week (or 3 Workouts In 3 Different Locations) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Normal Workouts (or Balancing Hard Work And Taking It Easy)

Comments Off on Mixed Up Workouts (or Not Knowing What To Expect)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , , , ,

My Version Of Back To School (or I Need To Get Out Of My Summer Mindset)

Posted on August 18, 2017 | Comments Off on My Version Of Back To School (or I Need To Get Out Of My Summer Mindset)

Most of the schools in LA went back this past week. It was cute to see all the first day of school photos from my friends with kids and most of my friends are pretty excited to have some free time back in their lives. It’s crazy to see some of my friends’ kids in school when it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that they were born. Especially since I don’t feel like I’ve aged as much as those kids have!

Back to school time used to mean so much to me. When I was in school it was a great way to reset things in my life and get them back on schedule. Even when I was working as a substitute teacher it had that effect on me. There’s something about knowing that school is back that triggered a sense of seriousness in me and I’ve realized that I don’t have that anymore.

I don’t miss school. I do a lot of learning through various things on my own every day so I don’t need a set class that is fall to summer. But I do miss the feeling of resetting things and getting back on track. And getting back on track is something that I do struggle with at times and yet again I’m going through that.

I have to feel lucky that I have my fitness stuff down and that doesn’t need to much work. I think things would be so much worse for me if I didn’t have that in place. But food is still a struggle and I know that things have gotten a bit out of control again. It’s a combination of my schedule being crazy, having lots of adventures and outings, and just being lazy because of the heat.

I’ve said this so many times before, but I really need to get back to my meal planning. Or at least having better options in my house to choose from. There have been far too many days where it’s 3pm and I’m done with work and I’m going to the grocery store because I’ve got nothing to have for dinner. And unfortunately, when I do that I will sometimes buy things I don’t need because they seem good to me in the moment.

I’m working on getting back to the way I was meal planning earlier this year, but it’s not exactly what I think I need right now. So I’m back to experimenting with what things will work and what will help to make me as successful as possible with not having problems with having the right food in my house. I know that my schedule is still a bit crazy and will continue to be a bit crazy, but that can’t be an excuse for me anymore. Life will always have moments of craziness and that can’t be stopping me.

I also need to refocus on work and time management. For the next month things are extra crazy for me because I’m doing the temporary job for an old boss of mine. I have to manage when each day I’m doing each job and I really need to focus on it because I need to get it done when I plan on getting it done. It would be so easy to let time fly by and not have the chance to do what I need to do a certain day. I make sure that it doesn’t happen, but I also see where there are cracks in my plan and where I can improve things.

It will be so nice when one day I don’t have to stress about these things as much. Maybe one day food will come as easy to me as the workouts do now. And maybe one day I’ll only have one job (or one job with a few side jobs that are related to that job) so I don’t have to color coordinate my schedule to know when I need to work each job each day. Fortunately with work, I am an organized person so it’s not too horrible to manage things. But I do look forward to when things are simpler in life and that I can focus on one thing at a time instead of multitasking every single hour and day.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailNot Wanting To Wait Until The New Year (or Managing The Crazy Times) Default ThumbnailScheduling Conflicts (or Maybe I Should Stop Planning) Default ThumbnailBack To School (or Getting Prepared For Another Of My Day Jobs) Default ThumbnailUnemployed Again (or Trying To Not Make It Feel Like Summer Break) Default ThumbnailBack To School (or Another Round Of Improv) Default ThumbnailBuilding Momentum (or Remembering High School Science)

Comments Off on My Version Of Back To School (or I Need To Get Out Of My Summer Mindset)

Posted in Fitness, Food, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss, Work

Tagged , ,

My August Challenge (or Being Selfish To Be Happy)

Posted on August 1, 2017 | 1 comment

Another month is here! I can’t believe July is over and it’s already my birthday month! And as always, a new month brings the recap of my last month’s challenge and announcing what my challenge will be this month.

Last month, I wanted to work on practicing more mindful breathing. More specifically, I set a reminder to work on breathing and staying calm at 2 of the times that I commonly feel like I want to binge eat. This was a challenge idea I got from therapy and I was curious to see how it would go for me. Doing things like this have been tough for me in the past because I get super focused and forget to do it. Or I get distracted by something else and forget. But having a reminder on my phone does help since I have to dismiss it to make it go away.

While I didn’t always do the 10 slow breaths that I planned on doing, this still was a successful challenge to me. If I was feeling like I wanted to binge, this alarm stopped me and made me think. It didn’t always stop it, but at least I was not in the trance that I’m used to being in when having an episode. I was more aware and even if I didn’t always make the right choice I knew it was my choice. Because this gave me so much more awareness, I will be doing this beyond just last month’s challenge. I think that the benefits will continue each month that I do it and it is a helpful thing for me to have.

But doing challenges beyond the month that they are for brings me to this month’s challenge. I really struggled to figure out what I wanted to do. I’ve added so much to my days between my happiness checklist and all the monthly challenges that I’ve continued to do. I’ve continued almost all the monthly challenges beyond the month that I did them for and that’s a lot of stuff for me to remember to do.

So this month’s challenge isn’t necessarily something I will be doing every day but instead something that I want to have as a focus for the month in general. I want to focus on figuring out what makes me happy and what I want to continue to do. I have to do so much out of obligation or responsibility and I want to make sure all the stuff I add to my life are for fun and not because I feel like I have to because I’ve been doing that for a while.

On my happiness checklist, most things are things that I want to keep on there. They do make me happy and when I haven’t done something for a while I’m reminded to do so. But the ones I’m thinking about taking off are the ones that I do every day and I don’t have to focus on doing. This mainly is about reading and eating disorder recovery research every day. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t read at least a little bit. I read every single night before bed and I read a lot in my down time too. And I do recovery research every day because I read 10 pages of a recovery book every day. While these things make me happy, I think maybe I should add 2 other things to my list that I don’t do every day so I can challenge myself to keep focusing on my happiness.

And with my monthly challenges, most of the time I want to continue doing them when the month is over. But I’ve been noticing that some things are either stressing me out or I’m not doing them. I need to start removing those reminders from my phone so they don’t remind me that I’m not doing something. It can make me mad when I get a reminder to do something that I know I won’t do. But my idea of wanting to try to be perfect has prevented me from just deleting those reminders. I’m going to go through them this month and figure out what I want to keep, what I want to delete, and what I might want to add.

And when I’m figuring out what I want to edit and add, I have to work on being very honest with myself and not worrying about not being perfect or caring what other people think. That’s not easy for me, but that’s why this is a good challenge for me. It’s my birthday month and I want to make this an amazing month! And I think focusing on exactly what makes me happy is the perfect way to make the month the best it can be!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMy First 2017 Monthly Challenge (or Working On My Tumors) Default ThumbnailA Challenge For A Weird Month (or French And Deep Breaths) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailFirst Monthly Challenge Of 2018 (or Time To Be A Bit Selfish) Default ThumbnailAnother Monthly Challenge Down (or July and August Challenges) Default ThumbnailIs This A Year Of Being Selfish? (or A Month Of Saying No)

1 Comment

Posted in Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , , ,

A Challenge For A Weird Month (or French And Deep Breaths)

Posted on April 4, 2017 | 3 comments

Another month brings another monthly challenge! It’s crazy to think that it’s a quarter of the way through this year already. It seems like it’s been flying by so far and that March went by so much faster than I ever expected!

My monthly challenge for March was to work on learning French every day. I was using the app Duolingo which I had tried to use before and just couldn’t get into. But I decided that I was going to go all out for the month with trying to learn French and if I hated it that I wouldn’t force myself to continue doing it. I did 2 lessons each day (each lesson took less than 5 minutes) and I really did make an effort to take it seriously and work hard at it.

It wasn’t easy to learn French just through the app (that might have been my problem the first time), but I was able to get through the entire month and have continued to work on it each day. I do go back and review past lessons often and the way the app is set up they do have words that seem to be the toughest for you in each lesson to work on. Some of the stuff is hard to understand because I don’t know why things are one way versus another or the different way to use various verbs. But I am understanding much more French than ever before and I am looking into other ways to work on learning the language. Overall, I think it’s another very successful monthly challenge.

When it came to planning what my challenge for April would be, I struggled with it for a while. There are several things I would love to use as a monthly challenge, but with surgery and the recovery coming up I knew there would be a good chance I wouldn’t be able to do it each day of the month. I don’t want to set myself up for failure when I know that it might be impossible for me to do something while in the hospital or while I am restricted in what I can do.

I probably thought about this for almost all of March, but I finally thought of what I could do every single day in April that would benefit me even though it is an easy challenge.

This month is going to be a stressful month and I don’t need to do anything that will add more stress in my day-to-day life. Taking deep breaths is something I don’t do that often but when I do focus on it I notice a benefit in my day. Taking time to take some deep breaths allows me to take a moment to just focus on that and not what else is going on around me. It allows me to center myself again and then get back on track with whatever I need to be doing.

There will be a lot of things that will be benefitted by deep breaths. I’ve got my MRI coming up this week and dealing with the IV needle is always tough on me. And the time inside of the MRI machine is very stressful and I know that if I use that hour inside the machine focusing on my breathing that I won’t be thinking about how small the MRI tube is or how loud the noises are. And after my surgery I’m sure I’ll have moments of pretty bad pain and taking deep breaths can give me something else to focus on instead of waiting for painkillers to start working.

I know this is a simple monthly challenge, but I’m taking it as seriously as I have with any of the past challenges. I am taking time each day to work on deep breathing and just a few days into this month I’ve already noticed a difference. And I think knowing that I have a challenge this month that will be able to be accomplished before surgery, after surgery, and while I’m recovering has made me relax a bit because I won’t be worried about trying to get something else new done while dealing with recovery. I am hoping that I will be able to continue with all of my monthly challenges while recovering, but I also know that I have to be lenient and forgiving with myself if I can’t do it. All I can do is to stay calm, take deep breaths, and focus on being the best me possible through this entire crazy month.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMeal Planning and Learning French (or Monthly Challenge Time) Default ThumbnailI’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailHaving My Patience Tested (or Taking Deep Breaths) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailFailing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailTime For Some Planning (or Trying A Challenge Again This Month)

3 Comments

Posted in Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , , ,

Adding Gadgets To My House (or Tools To Help Me Out)

Posted on February 8, 2017 | Comments Off on Adding Gadgets To My House (or Tools To Help Me Out)

While I’m trying to cut back on my spending and bringing more things into my house, sometimes you need to break that rule to make things better. It’s a hard balance to figure out because I’m sure I can justify spending for stuff I really don’t need. So I’m trying to be very picky and making sure that it’s something that I really need and not just something that I want. But there were two gadgets that fit into that rule that I ended up buying this week.

The first thing I got was a lamination machine for my house. Usually when I need to laminate stuff, I go to Staples and pay to get it done. I normally only need one thing or one page so it never seemed worth it to me to have my own lamination machine. But my mom has had one for a while and loved it, so when I was thinking about getting stuff laminated this week I looked into buying one for myself.

I did manage to find one that was heavily discounted on Amazon that would arrive that day at my house (thanks Amazon Prime)! And it was perfect because I have been working on my meal planning and wanted to create a nice reusable meal planning guide.

The machine I got is really easy to use and it came with a bunch of the laminating pages so I don’t need to buy any for a little bit. And I have been able to use the meal planning page I created each day (although I’m still trying to figure out how I can write on this without ruining it). And it’s small enough that it fits into a shelf on my desk so it is out of the way when I am not going to be using it.

The other new gadget I got this week also has to do a bit with my challenge to work on meal planning. I’ve thought for a long time that my kitchen was perfectly set up for me to cook, but I’m aware that I set it up based on what most people need and not what I need. I’m a pretty decent cook and my knife skills are ok, but when I have to cut up a bunch of stuff I’m not so great at it. So I have been looking casually at ideas to make chopping stuff easier and decided I needed to invest in a new cooking gadget. So I went out and got the Vidalia Chop Wizard.

I got it yesterday and used it last night to cook dinner. I made meatloaf muffins and this was perfect for chopping the onions and mushrooms I use it in. It was so much easier than chopping things by hand and everything was uniform so I didn’t bit into a huge piece of onion while eating dinner. I know that this can be used for a ton of stuff and I have a feeling that I will be discovering ways to use it on a regular basis.

And besides the new stuff I bought this week, I’ve been rediscovering stuff in my kitchen to help me with my food goals. I’ve been using my slow cooker (and I found my slow cooker liners so I don’t have to do much cleanup) to make easy meals and I’ve found recipes that don’t require browning food or getting another pan dirty to make the meal (my slow cooker pet peeve). And I’ve been using my food processor regularly the last few weeks and have started to think that maybe I need to buy another food processor bowl and blade so it will be easier to use it multiple times a day.

I know that I can do a lot of the work I’ve been using these gadgets for by hand, but why should I? This is making cooking easier and seems like I could be more likely to keep things up in the long run. The only downside is that I do need to go through my kitchen now and figure out what I really want to keep and what I can give to others because my kitchen is super tiny and lacking storage space. I don’t know where to put everything just yet (there are things all over my house that could live in the kitchen if there was space), but that will be something else I need to work on with organizing my house.

But for now, I’m just so glad that I was ok spending a bit of money to try to make things better for me with figuring other things out in my life.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailPinning And Not Doing (or The Hazards Of Pinterest) Default ThumbnailRoutine Time Again (or Getting Back On Track) Default ThumbnailTime For Some Planning (or Trying A Challenge Again This Month) Default ThumbnailCooking Routine (or Adding Flavor) Default ThumbnailAdding Variety (or Trying To Be Adventurous With My Food) Default ThumbnailWorking On Priorities (or Adding And Taking Away)

Comments Off on Adding Gadgets To My House (or Tools To Help Me Out)

Posted in Crafts, Food, Fun Stuff, Shopping

Tagged , , , ,

Time For Some Planning (or Trying A Challenge Again This Month)

Posted on February 1, 2017 | 1 comment

It’s a new month and time for a new challenge in my Ink+Volt Planner! First, I want to reflect a bit on my January challenge. I set my challenge to be to work on tumor visualization every day. I set an alarm to remember to do this each morning and most of the time I would be able to do this before the alarm went off. Many mornings, I put my tumor visualization in my morning pages for “The Artist’s Way”. And if I didn’t write about it in the morning, I spent some time sitting quietly and thinking about my tumors getting smaller.

I won’t know if this worked until I have my next MRI in March, but I’m going to keep doing this until my surgery and then after surgery I will be doing liver visualization to work on getting my liver to regenerate quickly. I know that in the past, the power of positive thinking has worked really well for me so I’m looking forward to seeing how well it will work for me this time.

I’ll admit that my January challenge wasn’t too challenging for me. It was something I wanted to do, but I didn’t have to work too hard to do it. So since I did something easier last month, I’m doing something that has challenged me multiple times this month. My February challenge is to work on meal planning again.

I’ve attempted meal planning more times than I can count. I’ve tried doing it with bulk cooking, delivery diet meals, meal replacements, and just trying to cook more at home. They have all had moments of success, but none of them have really lasted that long. So this time, I’m attempting another method to see if this time it will be one that sticks. I believe that eventually, a method will be the one that I connect with and I can’t find that out until I try different ones.

I’m doing a pretty basic meal plan set up. I don’t have a specific diet or plan I’m trying to follow. I’m just trying to plan my meals so I don’t have to think too hard about what I’m going to eat that day and to be better and only getting what I need at the grocery store. I found a pretty basic meal plan printable and I started using that this week.

Originally, I typed in what I was planning to eat but because things keep changing I’ve been crossing things out a lot. I’m thinking about printing a blank template, getting it laminated, and using a dry erase pen or post-its to plan so it is easier to switch things around. There is also a grocery list printable that matches this, but I’m used to writing grocery lists on envelopes (if I’m using coupons) or on scratch paper so I don’t feel the need to use a fancy grocery list.

My ultimate goal would be where I could plan things out on Sunday and do my grocery shopping for the week and be done with it. If I don’t have to go to the grocery store to find something for dinner, maybe I won’t be tempted by all the things I shouldn’t be eating. If I plan things out, I can know exactly how many of each thing I need and then I can make better grocery lists. This could potentially save me money too, but that’s not the focus right now.

My main goal with meal planning is to be successful with following the plan for at least 2 meals a day. Breakfast should be pretty easy, but I do struggle with lunch and dinner a bit. But by having a plan, I can look forward to what I will be eating that day and hopefully it will take my mind off of thinking about what I should go to the store and buy after I’m done with work. I’m also hoping that it will help me with eating a better lunch on days that I’m working out. Sometimes, I don’t make the best food choices on workout days and my workouts do suffer because of that.

I’m not expecting a miracle. I know that there will be a lot of challenges with this and that there is potential that I will not be as successful as I like to be with my monthly challenges. But I have to try because I know that I need to make a change in my life to get into recovery and to lose weight. And if nothing else, this will force me to be more aware and a more conscious participant in my food choices and help to limit the lack of mindfulness that I do struggle with.

This won’t be an easy challenge for me to do, but it’s an important one for me. I’m going to do my best to plan and to figure out the best way for me to do the planning, and hopefully in a month I’ll be able to share with you all that this worked really well for me!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailFailing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailA New/Old Challenge (or Using An Idea From Therapy This Month) Default ThumbnailI’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailA Challenge For A Weird Month (or French And Deep Breaths) Default ThumbnailMeal Planning and Learning French (or Monthly Challenge Time)

1 Comment

Posted in Food, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , , , , , ,

My First 2017 Monthly Challenge (or Working On My Tumors)

Posted on January 4, 2017 | 6 comments

It’s a new year and I’ve got a new year of monthly challenges! I did buy the Volt Planner for 2017 and I’m very happy that it’s a similar set up to what the 2016 planner was like. There are still the weekly and monthly goal setting pages as well as the monthly challenges. And I plan on doing a new monthly challenge each month just like I did last year!

I think that having the goals and challenges really did help to keep me accountable and focused on doing things to better myself. It’s one thing to say that I’ll be doing something, but to have a list in a planner where I can see what I set out to do is another. Having it on paper makes me want to make sure I don’t slack because I hate to see unchecked boxes on my goals and challenges pages in the planner. It’s the perfectionist in me that makes me want to get something done if I write it down in a planner.

I’ll admit that January 1st got here much quicker than expected so I didn’t have as much time dedicated to planning out my challenge for the month as I would have liked. There are some big ideas for challenges that I have for this year, but some of them involve planning or setting things in place that I didn’t have time to do for this month. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some of my big ideas later this year, but it will have to wait. But there was one thing that I started doing at the end of the year that I knew I wanted to continue to do this year and dedicate time to working on it.

While I know that I will need to have liver surgery no matter what, there are things that I can do to hope that the surgery and recovery will be easier. And one of those things is to have the tumors shrink. There is no medical way that I can do this (they aren’t cancerous tumors so I don’t need chemo or radiation to shrink them), but I can still work on doing it on my own. I’m a believer in the power of positive thinking and I’ve been trying to think that my tumors are shrinking every day.

My mom did the same thing when she had cancer, and her journey to being cancer free went much easier than most people thought it would be. She imagined her body healing every single night and I believe that doing that helped her so much. So I’m doing the same with my tumors. I had been doing this before the new year, but I still decided to make it my monthly challenge to make sure that I do this every day.

Like most of my challenges, I’m using the reminder app on my phone to alert myself every day to dedicate time to doing this. I’m not using my mediation app for this, but I’m thinking about doing that because there is a silent timed mediation option within the app. But for now, I’m just focusing on how I imagine the tumors getting smaller for a few minutes every single day.

It’s not a huge thing for me to do, but I know that doing it will only benefit me in the long run. And making sure that I do dedicate time every day for this will help me not to slack off and forget. I really do love having all the reminders in my phone going off throughout the day so I don’t zone out and then realize the entire day has gone by without me getting anything done. I feel silly that I hadn’t been taking advantage of those prior to the monthly challenges because they are so easy to set up. But at least now I have them and I am always adding more to my reminder list.

While this challenge is a smaller one, I’m really excited to have another full year of these challenges. From the ones that I set up last year, most of them are still things that I do every single day. I have slacked off on a few (mainly the yoga and mindfulness before eating ones but I’m working on that), but most of them have become habits and my day doesn’t feel complete until I accomplish them. And I know that building a few new good habits every year will add up and be something really great for me for the rest of my life.

Here’s to another year of monthly challenges and hopefully using my mind to get my tumors to shrink before my next MRI and we make my surgery plan!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailAlmost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Default ThumbnailDecember Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year) Default ThumbnailA Challenge For A Weird Month (or French And Deep Breaths) Default ThumbnailMonthly Challenge Update Time (or One More For 2017) Default ThumbnailFailing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge)

6 Comments

Posted in Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged , , , , , , ,

December Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year)

Posted on December 1, 2016 | 1 comment

It the last month for my monthly challenges for 2016! I’ve had a lot of amazing monthly challenges and they have really changed me for the better! But before I get into my December challenge, I want to do a quick recap of last month.

Last month, I set the challenge to drink more water. More specifically, I wanted to try to drink 80 oz of water a day. I picked that amount because the cup I use to drink water at home is 20 oz. So it was easy to say I wanted to drink 4 cups a day. I managed to accomplish this almost every single day last month. I was able to get the timing down to where I knew when I needed to finish each cup. The only time I really didn’t meet my goal was when I was out-of-town. This was mainly because I wasn’t focused on how much water I drank (plus I didn’t know how big the cups were at the rental house). But overall, I’d consider the challenge a big success!

I had some really big ideas for my December challenge, but after some consideration I decided to scrap that idea. I’ve already ordered a new planner for 2017, so I can do some of the big ideas next year. And there are some really big ideas (like having a month completely binge-free) that I’m very excited about. But for December, I decided that this monthly challenge is a time to do some reflection.

So I’ve decided that my December challenge is to rededicate time to the challenges I set throughout the year. Most of them have been easy for me, but I’ve totally been slacking on a couple. And being at the end of the year is the perfect time to make sure these challenges become habits and I make sure that I start 2017 in the best place possible.

The ones that I’ve been able to keep with pretty much no effort have been properly tracking my food intake (although there are some improvements I’d like to make), doing daily gratitude lists, not ordering delivery food (although I may get delivery Chinese food for my Christmas dinner), weighing myself every day I’m home, working on self-submitting for acting jobs every day, meditating every day (but there is improvement I can focus on), reading 10 pages of a recovery focused book daily, and my water intake.

While those have come easily to me, I know that I’m not doing them 100% all the time and I have taken notes on steps I want to take to make these new habits even stronger and better for me. I think those steps should be pretty easy since they are small tweaks versus starting from scratch. But I think improvement and progress with habits is a good thing so I’m happy to work on making these better.

The ones I’ve been struggling with have been practicing mindful eating, a yoga class online (or at least a yoga pose) every day, and doing a daily task sheet. The mindful eating one has been very tough. I have an alarm to remind me of it, but because my eating schedule isn’t the same day to day, sometimes the alarm is too early or too late. I need to work on a different system, but I’m not totally sure what that is yet. But I’m happy to be working on it this month. Yoga was working really great for me for a while, and then time just got away from me. It’s another thing that I have an alarm to remind me of, but I need to make it more of a priority in my life again. It was a good thing and I know I need to work on bringing it back. And while the daily task sheet was a challenge I didn’t end up liking, I know that having a daily to-do list is good and I’m seeing how that could be most productive for me.

I think spending the month working on the year’s challenges will put me in a place where I’m ready to take on 2017 head first. I know that 2017 has the potential to be a very rewarding yet very challenging year so I want to be in the best head space possible. And getting back to my challenges will be a great way to accomplish that.

My new planner should be arriving in the next week or so, and I’m so excited for it! Buying this planner really was one of the greatest things I’ve done for myself and I’m so excited to make next year’s planner even better!

And because the team at Ink+Volt know how much I have loved my planner this year, they gave me something to share with you all! This is a link to the entire 2016 planner that you can download and use! Even though 2016 is almost over, you can use the December pages to make sure you also end 2016 the best person ever! And if you love it, you can still buy the 2017 planner and hopefully get it delivered before the new year starts!

I’m really excited for this month’s challenge/reflection/rededication and seeing how I am able to solidify my challenges in my life. My next monthly challenge post will be my first challenge for 2017!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMy First 2017 Monthly Challenge (or Working On My Tumors) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailGetting More Productive (or More Monthly Challenges) Default ThumbnailMonthly Challenge Update Time (or One More For 2017) Default ThumbnailAlmost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Default ThumbnailFirst Monthly Challenge Of The Year (or Setting Up For The Year And Self-Improvement)

1 Comment

Posted in Fun Stuff

Tagged , , ,

Almost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November)

Posted on November 1, 2016 | 2 comments

I’m on to my 11th monthly challenge! I’m still so happy that I have my Spark Planner this year (and I already ordered my Volt Planner for next year) and while it’s not always easy to think up of monthly challenges I know they are good for me. But before I talk about my challenge for this month, I want to recap my October challenge.

I had decided that creating daily to-do lists would be a great challenge and I really though that they would help me stay as productive as possible. And at first, they were working well for me so I wouldn’t forget random things that I knew I needed to get done that day. Also, once something it written down I feel obligated to get it done. The first few days were great to remember weird things that aren’t a part of my normal day that needed to be done.

But after that, I discovered that these to-do lists really weren’t changing that much from day-to-day. I’m pretty set in my schedule most days (I’m still working on scheduling my afternoons better, but that’s another issue) so I was just writing the same thing each day. Those lists ended up being something that seemed more like an obligation that I had to do to complete the challenge instead of something that helped me. I don’t love that I didn’t have the best experience with this challenge, but I guess I had to do the challenge to find that out.

I still think that writing out a to-do list on my busy days is a great idea. There are times that I have a bunch of random things I need to get done and I don’t want to forget anything. So those lists can help me remember things that I can easy forget. But to do it every single day isn’t looking like being the best use of my time or focus. Toward the end of the month, I even started to get out of the habit of looking at what I had written so I was starting to forget what I had planned. But I tried and that’s all I can do.

Even though I’m not continuing with the challenge I had done last month, I’m excited about the challenge that I’m doing this month. In the past, I had no issues with drinking enough water. I actually had issues with drinking too much water so I started to track water to make sure I wasn’t drinking too much. But I’ve noticed lately that there can be days where I only drink half of what I know I really need to drink for the day.

So my challenge for November will be to drink at least 80 oz of water every day. I have a tumbler that I drink out of at home that is 24 oz and my workout water bottle is 20 oz. So my plan is to drink 4 full tumblers or water bottles a day. That will get me a bit more than 80 oz a day, but it won’t be too much water either. On the days that I seem to be drinking water endlessly, I do try to keep it under 100 oz of water, but if I go over that by a bit it’s not dangerous. When I used to drink too much, it would be more like 200 oz of water or more in a day.

I used to think that since I had issues with drinking too much water that I’d never have an issue with drinking enough. But I think that thinking made me a bit lazy and got me to where I’m not tracking water or making sure I’m getting enough. And with all the random health issues I have, drinking enough water is important. So I’m glad that I’ll be focusing on it this month so I can get back on track and help to my hydration a non-issue with my health.

I’m looking at how to best track water in my planner. I’m thinking maybe checkmarks or making some stickers at home so I can mark each glass down. I know it will be easy to forget if a glass of water is my 2nd or 3rd for the day, so I want to make this as error free as possible. But no matter what, I know that this is going to be a very positive step for me and my health so that I can focus on more important things regarding my health.

Almost a full year of monthly challenges is done! I feel like I’m going to have to do something huge for my December challenge (originally that was going to be my yoga class a day challenge, but I’ve already accomplished that!). Fortunately, I’ve got an entire month to decide what December will be! Then after that, it will be an entirely new year of monthly challenges to take on!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMy First 2017 Monthly Challenge (or Working On My Tumors) Default ThumbnailStill Trying To Get Back To Normal (or Isolation Monthly Challenges Really Are Not Easy) Default ThumbnailDecember Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year) Default ThumbnailFirst Monthly Challenge Of The Year (or Setting Up For The Year And Self-Improvement) Default ThumbnailAnother Monthly Challenge Down (or July and August Challenges) Default ThumbnailMy Monthly Challenge To Finish Out The First Half Of The Year (or Sleeping And More Organizing)

2 Comments

Posted in Fun Stuff

Tagged , , ,

Getting More Productive (or More Monthly Challenges)

Posted on October 4, 2016 | Comments Off on Getting More Productive (or More Monthly Challenges)

I’ve completed 9 monthly challenges so far this year and I have to say that each one that I set for myself has made such a huge improvement in my life! It’s so crazy to me that I haven’t been doing these before because they aren’t hard for me (which makes me wonder if I’m picking challenges that are too easy) and I’ve pretty much been able to keep up with every single one.

I’m not 100% perfect, but I’m learning to be ok with that. But for the ones that seem to make the biggest difference, I’ve had no issues continuing with them. Reading recovery books has been one of the best ones for me so far and I’ve been learning so much with each book I read. And I think after that challenge is when I felt more inspired to push myself more and more.

Last month, I challenged myself to do 1 yoga pose a day. I really wanted to challenge myself to do 1 iPad yoga class a day, but I had been having so much trouble doing those classes on even a semi-regular basis. I had been making those classes part of my weekly goals for so many weeks, and most of those weeks were not successful.

Even though I set the bar really low for myself and I decided to do the best I could to do one iPad yoga class most days of the month. If nothing else, I’d learn more yoga poses I could do as my pose for the day. With the app that I have, there are a bunch of classes but you can also create your own class. Since I’m new to this, I stuck with the pre-made classes. They ranged from 5 minutes to an hour and I started with a short class.

It quickly became a habit to do one of my classes in the morning. When I couldn’t do one in the morning, I was feeling off and was missing how good I was feeling when I did the class before breakfast (which was most days except Mondays which I didn’t do since I have an early workout).

And wouldn’t you know it? I managed to do one iPad yoga class every single day in September!

yoga-challenge

I plan on continuing this, but I’m not sure if I’m going to stick with just this app. There are so many yoga classes on YouTube and I think I might try exploring those. This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while and for some reason when I set it as a challenge it finally kicked in!

And that helped to inspire my challenge for this month. First of all, the Volt Planner (the planner I use that has these challenges in it) is on Kickstarter again for the 2017 planner. They are way beyond their goal, so the new planner will be printed. And while they do try to sell them outside of the Kickstarter, those are limited so I recommend buying one on the Kickstarter if you want to join me in all the challenges next year!

I became a backer of the Kickstarter within the first few hours that it went live. I had no doubts that I needed to get a planner for next year, and I’m so excited to continue doing amazing with my goals. As a backer, I get updates on the campaign from time to time and one of the recent updates had a nice perk in it! It was a daily task sheet with a to-do list along with space to write notes, write where you need to follow-up, and set daily priorities.

I make to-do lists from time to time, but they usually are just on a post-it with a few random things that I don’t want to forget. I don’t plan out my day, especially since things are pretty consistent from day-to-day. But that also makes it where I will have a day and wonder what I actually got done outside of work. Sometimes I finish work and just don’t do anything else. And I need to make sure that I’m not slacking on things outside of work and being as productive as I can.

So I’m setting my monthly goal to be to use the daily task sheet every single day. I printed them out so there are 2 on a sheet and I’m not sure if I’m going to keep them together or just grab one each day. I’m not sure if setting up my tasks the night before of the morning of will be best so I’m going to play around with both options. Whatever I end up doing, I have a feeling that this is going to make October the most productive month for me!

I’m lucky that I got inspired by the Kickstarter for this month’s challenge since I was really drawing a blank on what I want to work on. There are a couple of fitness related challenges that I want to try, but I don’t want to do 2 fitness ones back to back. I think this is going to be a great way to start getting ready to close out 2016 and help me get even more productive than I ever could have imagined!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMy First 2017 Monthly Challenge (or Working On My Tumors) Default ThumbnailDecember Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year) Default ThumbnailRecapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself) Default ThumbnailAlmost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Default ThumbnailRecapping My June (or Still Thinking Up New Monthly Challenges) Default ThumbnailAdjusting Monthly Challenges (or Books And Happiness)

Comments Off on Getting More Productive (or More Monthly Challenges)

Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged , , , ,