365 Days of Bliss: Project Me – Exercise
Hello everyone! It’s Dana here – and I cannot believe it’s already the end of August! I say that every month – but seriously – the year is more than half-way over! Yikes! I have done nearly as much this year as I had planned!! Haha! But seriously, I had some pretty big goals this year, and I don’t feel like I’ve been making any real progress towards achieving them. In fact, I feel like like my life has gotten a bit more disorganized/out-of-control. At the beginning of the year, I chose FOCUS as my word of the year. As I look back, I see that I haven’t been focused at all – I have been running around doing a little bit here, a little bit there – but not really accomplishing anything. Therefore, I’m going to make a concerted effort, beginning tomorrow, September 1st – to really start focusing on ME and what I would like to change in my life. Luckily, both my girls will be in preschool three days/week so I should have some free time to tackle some projects.
As I think about things I’d like to change – I can come up with a few categories off the top of my head: my overall health (broken down into exercise and diet), housekeeping, meal planning, general organization, digi-scrapping and photography, other hobbies … I, personally, really love structure and plans – so I’m going to try to come up with some sort of plan for each of these categories to work towards my goals. I’m going to start with exercise – because it’s something I’m already doing a little bit of, it’s something that makes me feel GREAT and, when I feel good, some of the other categories (e.g., eating well and keeping the house clean) start improving naturally.
I don’t dislike exercise, actually – in fact, I love going to the gym and doing group classes. My problem over the past few years is that there is always something else I need to do “more” – there is always housework and laundry, doing something with/for the kids or my husband … exercise is something that has been VERY easy to put on the back burner. I need to make it a priority in my life again – I am REALLY out of shape, especially when I think about the activity level I had pre-kids. I wasn’t super fit or anything, but I could run for an hour, I loved aerobics, I swam on swim teams for most of my life, I ran 5Ks every once in a while and I even did a few triathlons (slowly – haha!) … now – I cannot even run one mile 🙁
So – here are a few things I’m going to do in the upcoming months … If anyone else would like to join in, please comment here! We can start a check-in thread in the forums and all work on exercise together 🙂
The Couch-to-5K running plan: I did this program about 10 years ago and it was the first time I ever really ran 3 miles. I remember being SO proud when I finished the program! I continued running a few times a week and worked my way up to 5 or 6 mile runs. I never LOVED running, but I DID love the feeling I had when I finished. I was just so very proud of myself! I really want that feeling back! So – I’m going to start this program again next week (after the Labor Day holiday). I have an iPhone App for this – I’m sure there is something similar for androids – and I’ve heard there are podcasts out there too that follow the program.
One Hundred Pushups is something I just recently heard about – and I was immediately interested! I have really poor upper body strength and would love to improve. I’m going to start this at the same time as the C25K program.
I LOVE Jillian Michaels – it borders on obsession, really LOL! I have both the 30 Day Shred and Ripped in 30 DVDs and am planning on doing them (30 Day Shred first, then Ripped in 30) starting late September/early October (earlier if I can – but I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself LOL). The workouts in each are 20 – 30 minutes – so combined with the C25K plan I will be working out for one hour/day max – totally doable!!
As I mentioned above, I love going to the gym to do group classes – I will also continue to do that as time allows – some of my favorite classes are Zumba, Step Aerobics, Body Definition (a cardio/weight class), Pilates and Yoga. However, I’m not sure I can go to any of them consistently enough to add them to my official schedule. So, for me, these will be added bonuses 🙂
Some of my longer term goals are do do a 5K (maybe the annual Turkey Trot at Thanksgiving …anyone in Dallas at Thanksgiving want to do it with me ?! 🙂 ), join the local Masters Swim Team and do another triathlon …
So there you go – my exercise schedule is now out there publicly!! Whew! Now to actually stick to it! Tell me – do you exercise consistently? What are your exercise goals?
Also – sorry everyone that I don’t have a great scrapbook page to share about these goals – I am actually stuck out of town without my real computer! We went out of town last weekend (to FL) and were supposed to go home on Sunday … well, because of the weather we were unable to get a flight – and are STILL here! LOL! We had plans to go to Chicago for Labor Day – so we have decided to stay here until Thursday night and just go directly to Chicago from here — our long weekend has turned into a more-than-a-week vacation 🙂 What a nice way to end the summer!
Majda (pomi) said...
on September 1st, 2011 at 3:07 am
You have some great goals, Dana! I set similar about a year ago, did actually stick to them and now I’m perhaps in best shape of my life (even if I ran short tracks in my teens/early twenties – I’m feeling much better now). I ran one hill race in the Alps (well, walked a lot there, like the most of the start field), it was an incredible experience and the kind of “I can do anything”. I’m going to run a 5K next weekend (it’s an evening race in Prague’s old city) and then a half marathon at the beginning of October (in Austria). And then I’m going tu sign up for the full marathon and have chosen Paris for my first. 🙂 I followed the 100 push-ups programme, too, it was great, I think push-ups strengthen and tone your whole body, but I got wrist pain later and had to stop. But I have quite a few exercise DVDs and they’re a great possibility for me.
I’d totally think that a thread in the forums would be great if we were more! 🙂
Have a great vacation 🙂 and good luck on starting your program!