MuadDib

Thanks for the welcome Sky. Despite the great winter boom of 2018, I managed to stay mostly on track and meet or beat all goals. Week 1 Results: 1) Wake Up - Time push back to 8:00am. Success rate: 4/5. Snow day meant I took a day off 2) Exercise - 20 minutes on bike. Too cold for the outdoors. 3/3. 3) Breakfast - Had breakfast everyday. 6/6 4) Daily Reading - 6/6. No great revelations or accomplishments yet, but I feel like I am building a habit and consistency.

I've been lurking around for awhile, especially during my "I have to get in shape phases," but I've never before signed up for the community or engaged, which is almost certainly more than half of the "secret sauce" of NF. Building relationships helps to build commitment. Always "planned" on joining but never made the time. I've been doing the 30 to 40 pound yo-yo for the last 3 years. However, I realize rather than dieting and returning I need to build habits that encourage the lifestyle I want to live. I'm near the top of the arc, so even my "big" clothes are starting not to fit, and I'm having to go to biggest. I always exercise sporadically so I have some stamina, its ensuring routine that I fail at. Still I am going to have crawl before I can walk, and walk before I can run. And at points I'm sure I will need someone to carry me. My other big challenge is a relatively intense job that involves lots of late nights/travel/receptions. I often find myself trapped in situations where I have 15 minutes to eat, or I have to be out a restaurant with people. My overall epic theme is live much more intentionally. To me this means developing the habits and routines that lead to where I want to be. For this challenge my goals are to start a healthy routine in the morning. So: 1) Wake Up - Push my wake up time back 15 minutes each week to 6:45 am. 1) Exercise - Minimum of 20 minutes (bike or walking) 3x a week for the first 2 weeks. Minimum of 30 minutes 3x a week for the next 3. Ultimately, the goal is to turn this into daily exercise habit that incorporates a rotation of cardio/body weight, but that as they say, is for a future challenge. 2) Breakfast - I have the horrible habit of skipping breakfast in order to sleep a few more minutes (See the relation to goal 1!). I am the ultimate Get up, shower, shave, get dressed, leave guy. Totally shockingly, I'm starving by lunch and order too much of the wrong things. So I'd like to add in some sort of breakfast at least 4x a week. Epic goal is to turn this into getting my diet to a much healthier place. 3) Spirituality/Daily Reading - I will do a 5 minute reading in the morning while drinking coffee. While I read voraciously, it tends to be at random times and either history or science fiction. Instead, I'd like to take a few minutes each day to read purposefully about my faith and take a few minutes to respond to it. Ultimately, I would like to develop this into a practice of daily reading, journaling, and meditation. While I am just posting now, I have been doing all four since the Jan 1 with success. I'll go through all that in a Friday recap tomorrow. Time to keep it up.