My husband and I are two months in to goal-getting! Here’s an update on how we’re doing:
Becki
Goal #1: Lose 7 lbs to return to my usual body weight
How I’m doing: As you may have read in this post, I put on about 3 lbs throughout this month and I have since lost them again. So overall, this month has been basically a wash as far as weight and I’m still about 1.8 lbs above my previous normal. I’m thinking a couple things: 1) I may switch temporarily to a more detailed form of tracking intakes (like My Fitness Pal), just to make sure I’m not missing my goals without realizing it. 2) My body may be happy at this new weight. I won’t try to force it, and my weight is in a healthy range and not negatively affecting my health. If it doesn’t want to go down any more, that’s okay with me!
Goals #2-3: Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure to normal ranges and increase cardiovascular fitness from “fair” to “good”
How I’m doing: Pretty well overall. I haven’t been missing days, but I’ve had a couple of days of workouts that have been cut short by a tighter time schedule. I recently had my blood pressure checked and it was normal! Yippee! I can definitely tell that my cardiovascular fitness is improving because I’m having to increase the intensity of my workouts to hit my heart rate goals. Plus, I made it up and down “the stairs” 10 times the other day! I had hoped to do that by the end of the three months, but I hit that over a month early! I’m so happy with the
improvements in my cardiovascular fitness.
A few months ago, it snowed here and my family and I went out to have a snowball fight. I had only run around for a few minutes and my chest was tight and I was pooped. Three weeks ago it snowed again, and this time, I snowball fought with the best of them (my family is just a tad competitive) for 20-30 minutes with no trouble at all! That was very rewarding and a sign that I’m heading towards my “end game” of never having my fitness (or lack thereof) hold me back from anything I want to do.
Goal #4: Improve posture by stretching chest and hip flexors, and decreasing anterior pelvic tilt, while strengthening back muscles
How I’m doing: I’ve been consistent with my yoga and I’ve been also completing some yoga challenges on Instagram that have been a fun addition to my normal practice.
My before-and-after pictures were really fun this month! I noticed primarily a HUGE difference in the position of my shoulders between February and March. Look how much less rounded they are! I’m so pleased with that. You can also see that each month my back is slightly less arched and my pelvis is slightly less tilted forward. It’s so crazy how you don’t notice the differences in your posture until you line the pictures up side by side.
Charlie
Goal #1: Lose 20 lbs/Button wedding pants without “sucking it in”
• Track intakes with My Fitness Pal, aiming for goal of 2000 kcal per day.
How he’s doing: Charlie continues to track every day. He finds it gets easier as time goes on to stick with using the app to track. It became a habit for him and he never forgets. Occasionally he intentionally decides to eat more than his caloric goal, but it is not very often and he still tracks it for awareness, accountability, and consistency. Tracking is definitely not right for everyone, but it’s working for him. He lost another 4 pounds this month for a grand total of 14 pounds. He hasn’t tried the pants yet – he’s saving those for the end of the goal-getter package!
Can you tell he had just woken up in the last photo? Haha!
Goal #2: Increase cardiovascular fitness from “Excellent” to “Superior”
• Follow the P90X workout program to do 60 minutes of exercise daily.
How he’s doing: He is doing well and staying consistent, but definitely ready for the P90X program to be over. He is finding the P90X videos to be very time-consuming and don’t leave enough extra time for other activities like weight lifting.
Goal #3: Improve flexibility from “Good” to “Excellent”
• Do some yoga each day.
How he’s doing: Charlie has compromised to doing yoga three times weekly, and says his flexibility is WAY better than it used to be, which makes him feel better all the time and improves his workouts, posture, and the feel of his joints.
We’ve got one more month of our goal-getter package before we run all of the fitness and body composition testing again to see how far we’ve come! Check back to see how we did!
Want help meeting your own goals? Visit www.impowerednf.com for more information about meeting with me to set up your wellness plan!
In honor of National Nutrition Month, I thought I’d give you a few thoughts on how to put your best fork forward this month (and every month)!
As a special bonus for National Nutrition Month, I’m offering 10% off an initial appointment! If you’ve been thinking about getting started with an empowered, healthful lifestyle, this is a great month to start! Click here to schedule an appointment!
I hear this from clients all the time: “It doesn’t matter what I do! My weight goes up and down and up and down. I’ll lose a few pounds and then I’ll gain two back and I just want to give up.”
Ahhh the scale…a mean mistress. It’s a rare person who has not noticed that, whether trying to lose weight or not, his or her number on the scale tends to fluctuate. This is true for just about everyone for a variety of reasons.
If you’ve been tracking my goal-getting journey, you know that one of my goals was to get back to my normal body weight by losing 7 lbs. If you haven’t been following along, well…now you know. So the first 4-5 came off in the first month or so. After that, things slowed to a screeching halt and began climbing…1 pound, 2 pounds, 3 pounds. I was sticking with my nutrition and workout goals for the most part, but it was still climbing.
How could this be, you ask? It’s actually very common. Read on and I’ll run you through a few reasons that your weight is not the “end all, be all”…or even necessarily a good way to measure your overall progress. It’s part of the equation, and it is certainly linked to health outcomes, but it does not warrant or deserve the intense focus we tend to put on it. Here are 7 reasons your weight may fluctuate that have nothing to do with eating too much or not exercising enough:
For these reasons, I try to encourage (and beg and plead) clients to focus on their overall health and fitness, their habits, and how they feel, as well as assessments like weight, circumference, or body fat to assess their overall progress. Given the things listed above, going up a pound or a few every so often is normal and should be expected. Don’t let it stress you out or discourage you! If you feel like you’re likely to quit on improving your health if the scale goes up, I have a strong recommendation for you – don’t get on the scale!
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Wellness is about so much more than nutrition and fitness. Wellness includes your mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness on top of your physical wellbeing. That’s why today, I’m going to feature a book that helped me find direction, make some major life changes, and thoroughly enjoy the life I’m living!
I came across this book while listening to a podcast and read it for a 2016 reading challenge. It inspired me to examine my life and think about how my current lifestyle was affecting all aspects of my wellness. It prompted me to consider how I could be more intentional about building a life that supports my goals, rather than letting life take me wherever it may while my goals lay well-intentioned and sadly, unmet.
Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want
Living Forward begins with taking you through the interesting exercise of writing your own eulogy. Sounds strange, I know, but it was actually very eye-opening. By starting at “the end,” you get to determine what will really matter in your life after you’ve gone and what you want others to remember about you. Starting from there, you work backwards to build a life that perpetuates those desires. First, you create a list of “Life Accounts” for each priority in your life. For example, mine include God, health, husband, kids, family/friends, career, generosity, financial, home, and self-development. You assess the current status of each account, write a detailed description of your desired outcome for each, and set specific quarterly goals to gradually move the current status toward the end goal.
Finally, you take these goals and create your “ideal week” schedule. This helped take me from goals – which I have often made in the past and found no time to achieve – to actual implementation of my strategies to get there. You start with a blank calendar. You review your goals for your most important life account, and schedule whatever time you need to complete those. You move on to your next important life account, and do the same. So on and so forth until you have created a schedule that is reflective of what matters most to you. It reminds me of one of my new favorite quotes:
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
– Stephen Covey
Going through the life planning process helped me realize that spending 40 hours per week in an office working for someone else was keeping me away from what was more important to me and ultimately came in higher on my list than my career – God, my health, and my family and friends. That realization led me to the decision to change my career path so that it worked around these priorities instead of against them. Now I have plenty of time to achieve my goals in my most important life accounts, and that has been a huge boost for my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellness. Who couldn’t use one of those?
The realizations you make might not be so drastic (or maybe they will be more!) but regardless, they will help move you towards the life you want. Go for it!
Have you read this book? Let me know what you think!
This is not a sponsored post and I have no affiliation with the producers or manufacturers of this product. As an Amazon Associate, I receive compensation for any purchases of this product through the link on this post; however, I never feature or support products that I have not tried myself or that I do not believe to be useful, ethical, and worthy of recommendation.
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improvements in my cardiovascular fitness.
