8/15/15In July I did a 30 day workout challenge although unlike workout challenges in the past this one was not made by blogilates, it was just one that I found online. I liked it because I knew is would be very intense but it gives you the number of reps, which is more beneficial to me since I am motivated by knowing the number of reps I have to do rather than just having a timer. It also had built in rest days every four days, which were the only things that kept me going at some points. The workouts were very intense and I definitely felt like quitting at some points. However I stuck to it, and it was great feeling knowing that I finally completed it. I still have more plans on continuing this fitness journey, and a little ways to go before I am content.
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Pictured above is the workout plan I followed all of July. I found it on Pinterest, and I thought it would be a good workout challenge to try since by the end of it you are doing 200 crunches, 255 squats, as well as lunges, planks, and wall sits. I would just listen to my iPod as I worked out, however towards the end I started listening to a book on tape for my crunches since I needed something to keep my mind busy for awhile since doing 200 crunches takes a long time. There were some good days where I was excited to workout, and doing 100 squats was nothing, but there were quite a few bad days where I would not want to do even one squat. On these days I just had to think of the rest day. Since the rest day was every 4 days it helped motivate me since it always seemed to be close. I also thought about how I would feel once I had completed the whole challenge, and that also worked as motivation. Now that I have completed the challenge it gives me mental strength knowing that I worked out for the whole month, and now I know that I can complete something like this again as long as I work at it, and take it one day at a time. This challenge also gave me endurance for my workouts since they were such high reps, however even though this workout challenge seemed hard, and I know that it was, I didn’t see any huge results. I did get results though, because my lower body is toned, but this challenge didn’t work in the places I need it the most. What I want to focus on now is lower abs as well as my love handles.
I looked up some workout moves that will help tone these areas, and I plan on doing a few of these each day. This month I want to be a bit more casual with my workout routine by just focusing a a few moves each day, and then doing the new blogilates video when it comes out. Some of the moves I have chosen are: leg lifts, side planks, Russian twists. side leg lifts, and waist whittlers. Now the side planks are the hardest for me, but I know they are also the move that will help the most, so it will be a struggle for me. Now this month because I am laying off on the workouts a bit I am really working on eating healthy. I want to stop snacking especially on really unhealthy foods, so I broke down and made a food log. I am sure you have all heard about them since it is supposedly the best way to keep track of your food, and to seriously get better at eating healthy. I just created a document on my computer since I knew that would be the easiest place for me to write things down in. All I do is write down what I ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, as well as I give myself a letter grade at the end of the day to sum it up. I don't plan on going vegetarian or vegan or even trying a diet plan, I simply just want to have it be that I make healthy choices in my everyday lifestyle and slowly work at it. I created a cover page for the food log as inspiration to keep eating healthy, and it is something nice to look at.
This is just a way to evaluate what I eat, and to hopefully stop me from eating 7 candy bars in one day. I don't even know if it will make a huge difference but to me it is all about the effort that I put in. The inspiration for my eating healthy came from a video I watched that really made me realize that I am ok with my body, and that really it is just small conscious choices and working on it day by day that can make a difference. The video is below, and I don't know if it will necessarily will be inspirational to everyone, but it did help me so I thought I would share.
This was how the workout challenge went and what I plan to do to continue on my fitness journey. I hope you enjoyed and that maybe it inspired you to continue on making choices to a better you and to a happier place.