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SPRING FITNESS CHALLENGE: Week 1 Wrap-Up

Week 1 Challenge Theme: ACTION.

Week 1 of the challenge is quickly rolling to an end. It’s been an awesome week of: ACTION! This time last week, I was so nervous knowing that my “Accountability Pictures” would be going live Monday morning. But obviously I had nothing to worry about. You guys have been so supportive.  Posting those pictures was exactly what I needed to hold myself accountable this week. Every time I felt myself starting to slip, I thought about those pictures and how proud I want to be of myself when I post my final set. If you haven’t posted your own pictures yet, head over to the forum and get to it.

It has been a great week! I am so proud of myself. Based on the conversations over in the forums, it sounds like you guys have been doing awesome, too. I want to give a big shout out to three challenge participants in particular—Stephanie, Michelle, and Brad—who have been kicking ass & taking names. So proud of you guys!

No action, no change. Limited action, limited change. Lots of action – Change occurs. —Catherine Pulsifer

Week 1 Progress

My goals & results for the week:

  • Five minute meditation each morning before I do anything else – YES!
  • Twenty minutes of non-stop movement each morning (stretching, light cardio, light weights) – YES! (except Wednesday)
  • No fried food (except for stir fry) – YES!
  • No eating out – Almost! 😉

Here are my accomplishments from Week 1:

Stopped eating out. Eating out has been an ongoing issue for me.  In the past, I’ve tried to eat breakfast at home every morning, but sometimes I run late and it’s “so easy” to stop at the convenience store & grab a buttered roll and juice.  It’s unhealthy and it makes me feel like crap.  Eating while driving is wrong on so many levels, too.

I knew that if I wanted to stop this habit, I had to find a replacement that would really satisfy me.  So I did.  Every morning this week, I made myself a delicious bowl of 100% Whole Grain oatmeal made with soy milk, a scoop of natural peanut butter, and a handful of fresh blueberries.  Delicious!  I had to leave myself a few extra minutes to make it each morning, but it was so worth it and I had no temptation to stop at the convenience store!

Eating out at lunchtime has been another problem for me.  I love running out on my break and picking up a bowl of soup from the grocery store or a couple of sushi rolls from the Japanese restaurant.  But this week, I made it a point to bring my lunch from home every day.  I made sure to pack something delicious & nutritious.  Again, this took a little extra time in the morning but it was so worth it—not only for the health benefits but also for the benefit to my wallet!  😉

Trail mix. Trail mix was my secret weapon this week.  One of the reasons that I tend to overeat during meals is that I allow myself to get so hungry.  However, this week I made myself a delicious trail mix every morning—dried bananas, dried cranberries, and pumpkin seeds—and snacked on that throughout the day.  As a result, I never got hungry during the day and I did not overeat during any meals!  This is a huge accomplishment, because I typically overeat all the time.  In addition to the appetite control, the light snacking throughout the day seemed to help keep my energy up, too.  Bonus!

Exercise. I really wanted to devote twenty minutes each morning to continuous movement.  I feel good about the progress that I made because I hit my target every day except for Wednesday (because I had a life coaching session from 7:15 to 8:15 a.m.)  What I found, however, is that even with waking up an hour early, it was still difficult to squeeze the morning workout into my schedule.  I’m going to re-evaluate my exercise goals & plan for Week 2.

Week 1 Slip-ups
I’m really proud of my Week 1 progress.  I feel at least ten times better this week than I did last week.  Just by cutting out fried foods and eating out, I feel lighter, healthier, and more energized.

However, I did have a couple small slip-ups.

  • I had a box of Girl Scout cookies in my cabinet and had one too many of those this week.  Luckily, they’re gone now so that won’t be an issue for Week 2!
  • On Wednesday, something really wonderful and important happened to me (more on that later).  And as a result, I went out for a celebration dinner on Wednesday night.
  • And finally, I’m not 100% content/impressed with my exercise routine for Week 1, but I will improve that going into Week 2.

Looking Ahead to Week 2

The SPRING FITNESS CHALLENGE is off to an amazing start.  I am truly overwhelmed by all of your positive feedback and participation!  I’ve got a lot of fun & exciting things lined up for the rest of the challenge, so please stay involved & stay pumped.

Action was our theme this week, and we nailed it.  We are implementing positive change in our lives.  We are getting healthy.  And we are getting happy!  I am so proud of myself and so proud of all of you.

In Week 2, we are going to step things up another notch!  I’ll be posting my next set of goals on Monday.  In the meantime, start thinking about your own individual goals for Week 2.  Have an awesome weekend.  Stay strong & keep up the great work!

In love & light,
Dena

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  • Carousel — 04.09.10

    Hello Dear Readers & happy Friday! It’s been a bit quiet around here this week because I am preparing for vacation. Yahoo! I leave tomorrow morning and will be returning late next week. You will see a couple of guest posts during that time (if I can properly set that up in WordPress) and a guest post from me will be posted over at a friend’s blog. So keep your eyes open for those things, but my apologies in advance as I will not be replying to comments or emails because…

    I plan to be completely disconnected during my trip. That means no Blackberry, Twitter, Facebook, Web, Foursquare, and so on. I need a break from “virtual reality”, my friends. 😉 In fact, we all do from time to time!

    That said, let’s move on to this week’s Carousel. I’ve got some very sweet goodies to share with you this week.

    ———————–

    Every Friday, I post my favourite links, posts, & resources from around the Web. Expect to learn, grow, & be inspired.

    1. Coming across hurting people: Every now & again, I come across a piece that touches me in a deep, profound way. Usually the piece is not too long, but it is always powerful and tugs at my heart strings in a soft, yet poignant way.

    This blog post is one of those pieces. If you read nothing else from this week’s Carousel, read this.

    2. Eco-Bootcamp: The sustainable, savvy heroines over at Your Daily Thread have kicked off a month long going green boot camp in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22nd. Their goal is to turn Eco-zeros, to Eco-heroes even if you’ve never recycled before.

    3. Soda: A Sin We Sip Instead of Smoke? and Junk food ‘as addictive as heroin and smoking’: I am extremely passionate about healthy living & lifestyles. My passion has been really intense lately as I become increasingly aware of the disturbing truths about modern “food”.

    I view the recent elimination of sugary beverages (soda) from school systems as a huge triumph. I look forward to the continuation of this important trend. Education and awareness is crucial.

    4. create luck, embrace chance & tune in to your serendipity: What is it about lucky people? Have they all got horseshoes tucked into their backsides? 🙂 Amber doesn’t think so & neither do I.

    5. 7 Sources of Deep Clutter: Some great advice about how to eliminate the “shoulds, have-tos, and people-pleasing” bad habits that are cluttering your life & soul.

    (And as a side note, the Good Life Zen blog is really fantastic. Each post is insightful, inspirational, and well-written.)

    6. Remaining Calm in Stressful Situations: I like this post because it teaches us something that we can all benefit from (remaining calm) but I love it because it reminds us of something even more important — that mental/emotional stress does cause physical illness.

    7. 40 Belief-Shaking Remarks From a Ruthless Nonconformist: Ah, yes! We can always count on Friedrich Nietzsche to obliterate the complacent, feel-good beliefs that we hold about ourselves. This collection of quotes will stir your pot and get your wheels spinning.

    8. The Top 10 Online Habits That Make My Life Simpler: If you’re like me—meaning you spend several hours a day online—then you know that the Web can be the biggest time-vacuum known to man (if you let it). This post lists lots of simple yet effective ways that will help you make the most of your precious time spent online.

    9. Why You Should Be More Decisive: Truth: I am an extremely indecisive woman by nature. Those closest to me will tell you this.

    I have trouble deciding upon the simplest of things—which restaurant to visit, which shirt to wear, which road to take, whether or not to put salt on my food, which movie to watch, and so on. Well, a couple of years ago I found an ingenious method for dealing with this problem: I started flipping a coin! Yes, that’s my secret.

    While the coin-flipping model has worked well for me, I still really enjoyed this post. It teaches us why some people have so much trouble being decisive in today’s world and why it is really important that we become more decisive overall. Perhaps I should stop relying so heavily on the coin and start aiming to be more decisive myself…

    10. How To Fund Your Travels With Creativity: I have several friends who are currently living outside of the United States, seeing the world, gaining incredible life experience, and living the lives of their dreams. If you want to know how 95% of them are doing it, read this post. It will tell you exactly what they’re doing and how you can do it too.

    ———————–

    That’s it for this week. I’ll see you all on the other side.

    In love & light,
    Dena

  • Carousel — 03.05.10

    Oh, why hello my gorgeous readers! It is so wonderful to see you here on this beautiful Friday afternoon (or whatever day/time it is where you are). This week came in like a lion and is heading out like a lamb… typical March weather in the North Eastern US. Last week received over three feet of fluffy white stuff (snow!). Currently the temperature is on the rise and it’s beginning to melt. Is this a sign that Spring is on its way? I sure hope so!

    And now on to this week’s charming Carousel. I do hope you enjoy…

    1. Quick easy tips for travel health and Living in the now: Two awesome posts from Vagablogging this week. One contains common sense tips to keep you healthy while on the road and the other talks about the importance of fleeting moments in time. Lovely.

    2. This is So Inappropriate!: “Your choices always carry tremendous weight, even when you feel like you have no choice in the matter. We don’t need enormous reserves of skill or advantage to make big differences to what happens to us — and to the manner in which we ‘happen’ to the world.”

    3. The Sure Fire Way to Sabotage Any Relationship: In this post, Jared explains why trying to “get back to the way things were” is like signing your relationship’s death certificate. Do you agree?

    4. 5 Travel Lessons You Can Use at Home: This post is far & away, one of the best that I’ve read on the topic. Can you take travel lessons and apply them to your life? Can you use these lessons to live the life of your dreams 100% of the time? Yes, you can! This post will tell you how.

    5. Avatar’s Impact: How To Train Like A Na’vi: Have you seen Avatar yet? I saw it once in 2D and then again in 3D—yes, it was that good! I love Amber’s take on the movie in this excellent post. “While the special effects and imagination behind the film are awe inspiring enough, what excited me the most was the vital ecological message that’s reaching millions. The fact that people from around the globe are beginning to see the significance of our connection to all organisms is incredible.” Yes, yes, yes! Exactly. She’s hit the nail on the head.

    6. What Are Values?: Many people pay Tim Brownson good money to help them define values; but in this post, he’ll show you how to do it for free! I absolutely love (& agree with) the way that he introduces the post: “So what I’m really saying is this is some heavy personal development shit that needs your total concentration and commitment if you’re going to get the most out of it. And make no mistake, it’s the single most powerful thing you can do if you genuinely want to understand yourself.”

    7. how to: focus in batches: “Limited resources force you to focus on your creativity.”

    8. Coping with Major Life Changes: Excellent tips to help get you through some of life’s most challenging moments.

    9. The War Over Wolves: One topic that I haven’t written too much about yet is wildlife & environmental conservation. It is one of the things that I am most passionate about. This post from the National Geographic Blog broke my heart a bit. Despite my inclination to preserve as many creatures as humanly possible, there are always two sides to every story. I’ll be making some posts on this topic in the near future.

    10. Olympians’ daily food choices as important as their rigorous training: Want to learn to eat like an Olympian? Is the food that you put in your body really that important? After reading this, I say YES!

    —————————

    That is it for this week’s round up. I loved all of these great posts and I hope that you will, too. Perhaps just the burst of inspiration you were needing to get your weekend off to a great start?

    Have a lovely weekend. Spread love & light!

3 Comments

  1. Sounds like a good week all in all, the first week of any fitness regime is always tough…you have various goodies (girl scout cookies) around yelling your name and, of course, you just can’t let them go to waste. 🙂

    Hang in there and keep on chuggin’

    Reply

  2. Great job this week Dena! I would say you rocked even with the few minor “slip ups”. On my journey one thing I have learned is that those things happen, but as long as I don’t dwell on them (like I am so known for doing) I’m usually okay.

    I’m very analytical so it’s hard for me not to want to make a bigger deal out of my mistakes and analyze how I messed up. I’m usually way too hard on myself but have lightened up a bit in the last 8 weeks.

    I did find out on Wednesday that I could no longer do weight training because of my “frozen” shoulder, but I’m not letting that stop me. Since that leaves me with the cardio option I decided to really push myself and will be doing P90X’s Plyometrics workout 3 times and Kenpo X 3 times each week with a final rest/stretch day. Plyo is one killer workout so to do it 3 times in one week will be difficult but totally worth it.

    That workout alone has given me more results than I ever expected. IF you check out my latest post on Enemy of Fat you’ll see a photo of me doing what they call X Jacks. I’m not only able to do all 10 of them, but all 4-5 times during the workout. I can jump so much higher now and that photo MOTIVATES ME. I’m so pumped that I can get my 280 body that high off the ground that many times.

    In 7 weeks I have lost 18 pounds and I’m looking forward to my week 8 weigh-in on Monday. Great week Dena!! Keep up the great work!! 🙂

    Reply

    1. @ Lou – Thank you so much for the words of encouragement. I was a little down on myself for sure, but you’re right — the first week is always the hardest. And it’s that much more reason for me to go even harder next week! 😉 And you’re right about another thing too… we can never let Girl Scout cookies go to waste!! haha

      @ Brad – Thanks so much & I especially thank you for your support despite my slip-ups! 🙂 WOW! Just checked out those K Jacks pics — holy mackerel! You are really blowing me away, man. You have come leaps & bounds — literally! — since you started training just 7 weeks ago. YOU ARE BRINGIN’ IT. You continue to amaze & inspire me daily, Brad. Here we go, I’m ramping up for Week 2, baby! 😀

      Reply

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