kylie

Week 4 continued very similarly to the previous weeks. Goal 1: At least 6 portions of fruit and veg per day - I managed 6 days out of 7. My fail day was a proper fail though, I think I only ate 2 portions! Goal 2: Drink at least 2l of water per day - I managed 6 days out of 7. I'm really glad I'm done with this goal. Goal 3: Exercise 3 times per week - 5 times this week. 1 gym session, 2 runs and 2 yoga classes. The fruit and veg goal was a good one, I didn't always make it but it was definitely a good focus. The water goal didn't work for me this time. The exercise goal was great and I've got into a habit of thinking about doing something each day rather than having to force myself occasionally. Overall it feels like a successful challenge and I've learnt more about what suits me.

A slightly late week 3 summary. Goal 1: At least 6 portions of fruit and veg per day - I've managed 5 days out of 7. My average over the 7 days is still a little over 6 though. As before this was easy during the week and harder on the weekends. Our weekends tend to be quite spontaneous and I like that but it makes sticking to goals a little harder. Goal 2: Drink at least 2l of water per day - again I managed 5 days out of 7. And again it's easier on work days - it's not that I need more water on those days but if my water bottle is sat on my desk I'm more likely to make myself drink it. If I'm busy doing things on weekends I'm less likely to go and get a drink if I don't really want one. It also occurred to me that eating more fruit and veg is probably making this goal harder as I'm already getting extra water there. Goal 3: Exercise 3 times per week - 4 times this week. 1 gym session, 1 run, 1 yoga class and a long bike ride. I cycled for about 4.5 hours having not been on a bike for a few years! I didn't really move a lot the next day though, I was pretty exhausted and my knee was sore. I recovered quickly though so it's all good. Overall, the exercise goal has been easy and enjoyable. The water goal has been hard and I've not seen any results to make it feel worth the effort. I'll stick with it for the final week but that's it. The vegetable goal is tricky sometimes but even on the days I haven't hit the goal I've usually eaten more than I would if it hadn't been for it so it's definitely worthwhile.

To be honest, I'm feeling the same. It still feels hard to do and I haven't noticed any benefits. I can only think that I must be well enough hydrated on less than 2l. I think that's possible, I spend my day sat at a desk and it's a reasonable temperature so I'm not sweating. It feels a lot easier to drink more if I'm doing exercise as I obviously do need it. I don't think it's something I'll continue to concentrate on after this challenge but it's reassuring to know that the amount I naturally drink seems to be enough.

Thanks for asking! It's going pretty well. We've had internet issues which is why I haven't posted anything recently. It's sorted now so I'll just summarise the first 2 weeks. Goal 1: At least 6 portions of fruit and veg per day - I've managed this 12 days out of 14. My average over the 14 days is still a little over 6 though so that's good. I find this quite easy during the week but trickier at the weekends. We've been busy with DIY and often don't stop until we're starving at which point I'm too hungry to cook properly. A bit more planning for those days would fix this. Goal 2: Drink at least 2l of water per day - I've managed 11 days out of 14. I actually find this quite hard, I just don't feel like I need that much water unless I'm doing a decent amount of exercise. I can't say I've noticed any benefits from making myself drink more, except from having to get up from my desk more often! I'll keep trying for the rest of this challenge though. Goal 3: Exercise 3 times per week - 6(ish) times total so far. 2 gym sessions, 2 runs, 1 yoga class and 1 walk. The walk was not even an hour so I'm not sure it counts. There would have been more gym / run sessions if 2 full weekends hadn't disappeared into DIY / demolition. That felt like a pretty good workout itself so I'm not bothered about not quite hitting the goal. Overall I'm happy so far. I technically haven't hit any of my goals but I'm feeling more positive about my health and excited to exercise. I'm also already starting to have ideas about my next challenge!

How's it going? How did you get on in the first week? Looking forward to hearing all about it!

I think I'm calling this week zero and starting the challenge for real next week. I was sick at the start of the week and never managed to go food shopping until Friday so had very little fruit and veg in the house after Christmas. I've exercised plenty this weekend with gardening and a long walk but did nothing all week. I did concentrate on trying to drink more water throughout the week but I didn't manage to measure it. I've also been mindful of snacking and unhealthy eating and I think that is actually working out quite well so far. Now I've got a house full of fruit and vegetables, a plan for measuring water and my exercise mostly scheduled for the week. So bring on week one!

Thanks for stopping by. I don't really feel like I belong in any particular guild at the moment and feel a lot like a beginner, which is why I started here again. I'll have a look around though, and see if I feel I would fit better elsewhere. Mine wasn't a hip replacement but a hip arthroscopy, I'm not sure how the recover differs. I started swimming as soon as I was allowed and have been really enjoying it so I intend to continue with that. I hope that starting yoga will help me recover full range of motion too.

This is a great idea. Sloth will overcome greed for sure!

I think your long term quest is great as I know exactly how you feel. I also am unlikely to have family around to look after me when I'm old, and I really want to be able to enjoy my life for as long as possible. I think your short term goal of functional fitness is definitely the way to go. Best of luck with this challenge!

I've heard of this before, and I think it would really work. I shall try adding it to my evening routine, as I find that after dinner is a problem time for me. I've not had a problem with binging for the past year or so, mostly because I've allowed myself to eat whatever I want and whilst occasionally I've eaten more than is probably ideal, it never felt like a binge. I'm just a bit worried that to lose some weight I really need to restrict and that might lead to problems. I'm hoping that just being aware of the problem will be enough, and if it isn't, I can cross that bridge when I come to it.

I've tracked in the past and I pretty much know where I'm going wrong but I struggle to come up with a consistently achievable measurable goal. Cutting out unhealthy food completely doesn't work for me, I do a lot better if I allow myself some occasionally. Measuring 'some' and 'occasionally' are the parts I have trouble with. I'm hoping that just by being mindful of this, and concentrating on eating more healthy food I'll see a positive change. I've struggled with a tendency to binge in the past and I don't want to start that again.

I've been a member here for a couple of years and have completed challenges in the past. I haven't been here much recently as I've been out having a lot of fun backpacking. However, I now need some help so I'm back! I had hip surgery just over 2 months ago. It went really well but being at home and unable to do much during recovery I ate too much and got out of the habit of exercising. Now seems a good time to get back into good habits. My life goal right now is to get fit ready for another summer of backpacking, I want to be able to hike further and faster than I could this year. My goals for this challenge are general fitness improvement and weight loss and to achieve that, I'll be doing things that have worked well for me in the past but that I easily forget to do. 1. Eat at least 6 portions of fruit and vegetables per day (for this goal I count a portion as 80g). 2. Drink at least 2l of water per day. 3. Exercise at least 3x per week. At this point in my recovery from surgery, I can start doing more exercise but I don't want to overdo anything. This will likely be a combination of swimming, yoga, starting jogging again, and walking if nothing else works out. I have been thinking about adding a goal to avoid snacking and desserts but I can't figure the right goal that isn't too restrictive. It's certainly something I intend to be aware of throughout this challenge, but not something I think I'm going to measure right now.

Ok so it all went a bit wrong for a week. Backpacking was awesome. We did nearly 27miles and 2600m of ascent over the weekend. I didn't really track water but I drank plenty and I caught up on my minimising when I got back home after. Unfortunately I'm gluten intolerant and I got glutened whilst I was away. Consequently I felt pretty unwell last week. Headaches, stomach aches, fatigue, depression. I managed to keep up with the minimising which I'm really proud of myself for as it's getting hard. I think I exercised once, other than that, just doing a day at work seemed super tiring. I didn't track water but did still try and drink more than usual. The dessert / snacking goal I gave up on. Anyway that's over now. This week I'm back at it. Yesterday I did 25mins on the elliptical trainer. I got my 2.5l of water and there was no snacking. I also got rid of my 27 items. That goal is getting really challenging. I feel like I've been through all areas of the house now and have got rid of the easy stuff so finding more is hard. I've also been thinking about my eating. I have a tendency when I'm at work to snack all day. I know I do this so I plan my food for the day accordingly, basically I'm having the equivalent of my breakfast and lunch, but spread out over the day. Whilst this means that I'm not eating an excessive amount of food, it does mean that I get used to eating almost constantly, or at least every hour or 2. I think this might make the evening harder as I am used to eating all the time and there are yummy snacks available at home! So for these last 2 weeks, on top of trying to stop evening snacking, I am going to attempt to just eat my 2 meals at work, and not spread the food over the day.

Wednesday: Water: 2.8l. Dessert: piece of dark chocolate. Exercise: upper body and core at the gym. Minimising: 15 random things. Thursday: So hard! Water: 2.5l, just. I felt a bit off most of the day so didn't drink much which meant I had to drink a lot in the evening. Dessert: a small bowl of icecream and a piece of chocolate, not great but not awful. Exercise: nope, we're going for a 2 night backpacking trip this weekend so rest and packing instead. Minimsing: 16 books, I know I will never read them again, but getting rid of books is so hard. Thursday was a bit of a rubbish day, I felt a little unwell and sticking to the challenge was hard. I also think that I hadn't realised how much I was eating in the evenings, and now that I've cut that right back, I'm hungry! I felt like I was hungry all day Wednesday and Thursday so I might need to add a little more breakfast, I do want to lose weight, but I don't want to feel rubbish constantly to achieve it. Backpacking this weekend, so I'll continue sticking to the water goal, and the exercise is a given! I've minimised for today already and hope to catch up on the other days once I return. The no snacking / dessert goal is on hold as I hate big breakfasts / lunches when hiking so I tend to just have a lot of snacks through the day. I reckon if you're hiking carrying a pack, you can probably get away with it.

I would probably also struggle with afternoon snacking but my approach to that is to refuse to allow myself to buy food at work, so if I didn't bring it with me, I can't eat it. It works because I'm too tight to buy food when I know I don't really need it, but when I'm home and it's all around me I find it a lot harder. I agree with you, it definitely feels good to clear stuff out. I've managed to sell a few things too which is nice. Good luck with your challenge too salambander! I haven't tried the capsule wardrobe idea yet, although since most of my clothes are a little tight right now, I sort of have one unintentionally! I have been trying to get rid of one item of clothing per day this month, along with my main minimalism challenge and I'm finding it pretty hard. The advice I've heard when your partner isn't so keen on minimising is just to go ahead and do your stuff, and hope that when they see how much easier it makes your life, they will follow along without you having to nag them. I'm lucky that my partner has less stuff than me and doesn't seem against my minimising. I am careful not to throw out any of his stuff without asking him though.

Yesterday went pretty well. I think I drank about 3l of water, managed not to snack in the evening (that was hard!) and just had a little dark chocolate for dessert. I did 25mins on the cross trainer in the evening too. I got my daily minimalizing done too, yesterday's included amongst other things my rock collection (everyone has one of those right?!) and my university notes that I hadn't previously looked at for years.

After a long time of not doing challenges here, I think I need the accountability of it once more. I've been doing pretty well, eating fairly well and exercising quite a bit but I think I need to step my game up a little now. I've been doing weights in the gym so I'm definitely stronger than I used to be but I now have a little more fat than I'd like so I want to get rid of some of that. With that in mind, here's my approach: Drink more water - 2.5l per day. I've always struggled with drinking enough, and I also hope this will help make it easier to cut down on snacking. Eat better. My meals are fine, pretty good actually but my downfall is evening snacking and desserts. I really can't cope with nothing after my dinner but my goal is that on work days I can have something very small - 100kcal approximately though that is a guideline not a rule. Non-work days are a little more open but I need to not be excessive here. Exercise a little more. I've been managing to make it to the gym about twice a week for weights work and I want to keep this up whilst adding some cardio. My overall goal is at least 5 days of exercise per week, with 2+ gym days. Other exercise can be anything, and we hike a lot on weekends at the moment so that definitely counts. I also have a life challenge on the go right now, so I'm going to detail that here too. I recently heard about The Minimalists and after listening to some of their podcasts I realised that we have a house full of stuff and I don't ever use most of it. They have a challenge where you start on the 1st of the month and get rid of 1 thing, then 2 on the 2nd etc. It starts out super easy but gets trickier pretty quickly! I'm still on track for June and it'll be good if I can keep it up until the end.

How is week 2 going? Sometimes its good to go back to simple, and you know that doing the things you planned for this week will make you feel better. You're doing better than me at least, I didn't even create a challenge this time round!

Well this sounds awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing what you get up to.

Great work! It's been fun to follow your challenge. Good luck with your maintenance phase, I think it's great that you're taking the time to focus on fitting these changes into your life. I always think making changes and losing weight is the easy part, changing your life to maintain that is a whole different thing.

Backpacking was so super awesomely amazing. I got blisters, and my feet hurt but I loved it. I'm pretty glad we chose a flat route though, carrying a pack didn't feel hard but I was surprisingly tired after. I'm not sure we'll get to backpack again this year, but we can definitely get out for day hikes in the hills so we're fit and ready for action come spring. As far as challenge stuff went, I probably got about 5 portions of fruit & veg, ate a lot of sweet stuff (which totally doesn't count if you're hiking all day) and walked for about 6-7 hours on Sunday. I'm not going to bother with a week 6 summary but straight onto the full challenge summary. I've added stuff up and am actually pretty surprised how well I've done. My average fruit and veg intake has been 7.5 portions per day. This shocked me, I remembered days where I felt like I had so little, but had forgotten all the days where I had 10 or 12 portions. Whilst my goal was 8, it was an arbitrary number and I'm really pleased with what I achieved. Even more so because a day feels odd now if I don't get a fair amount of veg and really the goal was to improve my diet rather than to hit a particular number. I feel like I succeeded on this goal, now I just have to keep it up. I managed an average of 5 'good' dessert days a week. A little lower than I might have hoped but as I already said, hiking days involve eating stuff I would generally count as dessert (chocolate, M&Ms etc) and I did have my birthday in there too. Exercise: I did about 30 hours of walking and 8 hours of non-walking exercise in the 6 weeks. An average of 6h15min total exercise per week, beating my 2h30 goal by miles! Quite literally, 3 solid days of hiking in the 6 weeks helped me out a lot. And, as a bonus, and to prove that I am definitely doing something right, over the 6 weeks I've lost 7.5lbs without trying particularly hard. Long may it continue.

Awesome challenge! It was great to see you progress in so many areas as the challenge went on. I look forward to seeing what you come up with for the next challenge.

Tuesday - Saturday I've managed 8 portions of fruit and veg per day, just. I've been disorganised and it's required raw veg bingeing (binging? who knows) post dinner but I've done it. However, filling up on carrots after dinner does leave little room for dessert so I've been good on that front! Exercise has been somewhat lacking. I've got in about an hour of walking total in 5 days but in my defense I've been fighting a bug I think so have been going to bed really early. Sunday/Monday we are backpacking for the first time in many years! I'm all packed up and extremely excited (hope I can sleep tonight, I'm that stoked about it!). 15 miles planned per day so no problems with hitting my exercise target for the week. Vegetables may be lacking, we're travelling as light as we can.

Friday: I didn't get to give blood as my iron level was too low. I was pretty upset about this. I did get my 8 portions and just some chocolate for dessert. Plus a 45min walk to and from the blood place. Saturday and Sunday: I didn't feel very well, so not much fruit and veg. When I feel sick the thought of veg is just too much for me. At least it meant I didn't overdo dessert either though! I got about an hour's walk late Sunday when I started to feel better. Week 5: fruit & veg: 2 days of 7 sensible dessert: 5 days of 7 exercise: 2h30 walk, 45min gym Well it wasn't a great week, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Hitting my fruit&veg target completely relies on having stuff easily available. I shall try and make sure I don't run out so badly in future. Monday, week 6: fruit & veg: 8 portions. I stocked up on fruit and snackable veg at the weekend so this was easy again. dessert: a piece of dark chocolate toblerone, so good. exercise: 20 min walk + 1h gym session. I've been feeling pretty down the past couple of months. I started this challenge to try and give myself something to focus on. A lot of time I just feel like it's something else I'm failing even though I didn't set specific limits for that reason. I've been here before, and I know it's all in my mind, but sometimes it's hard to get past irrational feelings. Hopefully I can push through this last week.

Awesome week 5! I'm really impressed at how well you're doing this challenge. Best of luck kicking week 6's ass!