Greetings fellow Scoutlings, I am a brand new newbie to this site, as in, yes, I just joined today. Since I have a competitive streak a mile wide and an overachiever streak 3 miles wide (why settle for 1), I have decided to not only jump from the frying pan into the fire, but to leap from said fire and extinguish myself in a boiling pot of water.
My goals for this 4 week challenge shall read thusly:
1. Fitness: I have a marathon training plan. I am in week two of the said plan. I will stick with said plan. Every run, every REST DAY!!!! (I fail epically when it comes to adhering to rest days) and every, single cotton-picking cross training day (yuck). I am quite notorious in my running group for ditching my training plan long about....oh, let's say.... week 3??? Yeah. That bad. I'm a free spirit, what can I say. So - that's goal number 1.
2. Fitness: So let's talk about my least favorite aspect of fitness - cross training. I abhor weight training and I am allergic to going to a gym. In my estimation, if you force me to enter a building to run on a belt followed by grabbing a couple handles and pulling with all my might and fury, that is something akin to being both grounded and subjected to corporal punishment. So.....I'm committing to body weight conditioning for my cross training, which I can do outside along side my beloved Mother Nature. Thank goodness it's only once a week.
3. Fitness: In addition to my extreme distaste for weight training, I am no particular fan of attempting to place my rather vertically challenged and horizontally broad self in a physical predicament akin to a pretzel. Yeah, I can't stand flexibility training. I know, I know, I know..."IT IS NECESSARY!" Okay. Got it. Darth Vader is also my father, I got that, too. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. That's my third fitness goal. To employ some flexibility training into my routines every week - still not going full-out pretzel - just saying.
4. Diet: I am logging absolutely every ounce of food into MyFitnessPal. That's become habit - what has not become habit is tracking my water intake. So...I am committing to tracking not only my food on a daily, mouthful-by-mouthful basis, but my beverage/water consumption as well. If anyone is up for holding me accountable to this, let me know and we can hook up on MFP and I will give you access to my diary.
5. Diet: I have managed to shed 53 pounds since last October, so I am bit paranoid about consuming all of my calories in a day for fear of stalling my continued weight loss. However, now that I am back in training, I do recognize the need to consume calories appropriate to my exertion level. So, I am committing to a deficit of not more than 200 calories daily, even on long run days.
6. Diet: Finally, I love my fruits and veggies, but have not been consuming as much as I should as of late. So, for this challenge period I am committing to eating at least 5 serving of fruits/veggies daily - and at least 3 of those to be raw and whole.
7. Leveling Up. My life schedule is insane. My family and I live a homesteading, off-grid lifestyle. HOWEVER, until we can achieve complete or mostly complete self sustainability, I work on the grid. I also work 2 hours away from our little slice of heaven. Yes, I spend 4 hours every single day in my vehicle. PRO: I listen to a TON of books. CON: I am sitting on my ass for 2 hours at a time. Life, at the moment, is get up, drive, work, run over lunch hour, work, drive, chores at home, bed. For my leveling up, I am going to invest in some quiet meditation and breathing time - literal breathing time, employing Prana breathing techniques for at least 10 minutes each day....probably locked in a bathroom with the lights off and meditation music playing...but I will make the time and find the place.
So, (dusts of her hands and offers a humble salute) there you have it. My first challenge on the table.
Thanks a million! Support welcome and ass-kicking graciously accepted. Looking forward to getting my can in gear and making some serious training progress rather than contentedly skipping along tra-la-la.