I am a walking contradiction. I love goals and I love structure, but then I rebel against the structure I set in place to achieve the goals. That being said, I shouldn’t be surprised that my performance in this 30-day fitness challenge was less than ideal. And I’m not.
I first introduced my intention of doing multiple fitness challenges HERE. This challenge ran from 2/1-3/2 (I pushed it back from what I had originally planned).
As usual, I started off strong. Normally, halfway through I peter out. This time it was about 3/4 of the way. So that’s progress! By the final week, I was over it. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t asking myself how I’ll ever do a 75-soft challenge later this year.
I think perhaps I am too ambitious with my parameters. There are too many of them… this time they were:
- 15 minute workout
- Fast for 12 hours
- At least 20g of protein at breakfast
- At least 10g of protein at lunch
- Walk around work 1x
- Hit step goal / do treadmill walk in evening if I hadn’t
- Track all meals in MFP app
- Drink 30oz (water and electrolytes)
- Journal (morning pages and evening gratitude)
- Workout 30 minutes each weekend day
- Meditate 1x per week
- Weigh in weekly
This time I tried a stepped approach to gauging my success. Week 1, I was aiming for 20% of the parameters achieved. Both within a day (so 20% of the parameters achieved), and also 20% of each parameter within the week. Week 2 was 40%, Week 3 was 60% and so on. And I did well if grading myself to those standards. In fact, I well exceeded it most days (Day 1 I was at 100%!) during Weeks 1 and 2.
By Week 4, I pretty much stopped tracking so I don’t even know how I did. Then I stopped trying, so I know I hadn’t hit the 80% for the end of the challenge.
My next challenge is 45 days starting on 4/1. I already have parameters compiled, but knowing how the 30-day challenge went I’m wondering if I should cut them back some. The point is to work on my discipline and dedication, right? But it’s also to improve my health. And it will only work in doing that if I actually do the stuff that’s supposed to help me… I’m up in the air on this. I have the rest of the month to figure it out.
Have you done a 30-day challenge?
Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash