Exercise and Other

For the past several months, I have been working on some personal challenges that have really helped me to feel better, look better, and make progress toward my goals. These challenges have had to do with exercise, drinking water, taking vitamins, and not eating sugar:

Exercise--the goal has been to exercise one hour a day five days a week, and to do 500 crunches a day six days a week.

How it's gone--Pretty good. I have had more than a few perfect weeks. I had the most success when I was posting my progress daily on facebook. What can I say, I really didn't want to have to get on facebook and tell 283 people that I just didn't get it done that day. Yeah, stuff happens sometimes. But I was a lot more likely to sacrifice sleep and other things for the sake of being able to post that I did it. But daily posts got tedius after a little while, so I switched over to weekly posts. It has been easier to skip a day here and there that way, but I have done a pretty good job sticking to it anyway. It may be more realistic for me to commit to the one hour a day four days a week. I still want to do five, but I also have to be realistic for my lifestyle. I imagine that most of the time I'll still do five days. But even if I only do four days half the time, I'm still doing good.

What I do for exercise: Two workouts a day. First I do a 30 or 40 minute cardio workout. Lately it's been aerobics or step aerobics. Every once in a while I still wimp out and do Walk Away the Pounds, because if I'm super tired, I know that Walk Away the Pounds won't kill me, but I'll still get some exercise, which is better than staying in bed. I have 2 really good step aerobics DVDs (Cathe Friedrich and Gilad), and a really good Gilad aerobics.

I have also borrowed my mom's Zumba DVDs, and the only reason I haven't tried those yet is that I need to preview them so that I can know what to expect. Is that lame? I just don't like doing a new thing as my official exercise, because it's likely that I'll have to stop and rewind to practice a step a few times or whatever, just to get the hang of it. And if I'm constantly stopping, it doesn't really keep the heartrate up, ya know? I just need to find a time when I can use the t.v. for my own stuff, and then get those DVDs out and give them a try. Then I'd like to work them into my morning cardio rotation.

The other workout I do is a 35 minute toning workout that has six different segments, targeting lower body (lunges and squats, basically), arms, outer thighs, inner thighs, butt and abs. The abs segment includes 200 crunches, so when that is over I do another 300 assorted ab exercises to get to my 500.

Water: The goal is to drink 100 oz. a day. I currently do water bottles, because that just works best for me right now. So it's 6 water bottles a day. That is actually going awesome. I never miss an ounce, and frequently I drink an extra water bottle or two. I do not drink anything else. No juice, no soda, no tea, nothing.

Vitamins: I take 3000  miligrams of vitamin C, a shot of B12, and a prenatal (as my multivitamin).

Sugar Free: I am in the middle of a sugar free challenge. I haven't had sugar for 8 weeks. The challenge goes until Thanksgiving. Although I feel compelled to confess that I just lost it today after church, as I gave into the chocolate chip cookies that were in my freezer. I don't usually give in--I can have stuff in my cupboards and freezer, and they don't bother me at all. I guess today I just had to have them. Maybe partly because I have had virtually no treats for 2 months, and I'll be juicing, and for the majority of my life from now on, there will be no treats. I do wish I could still say I've been sugar free all this time. But I'm still going to stick to it from this minute on, all the way to Thanksgiving. Something's gotta get me through Halloween, after all. =)

So the exercise, water and vitamins are just an ongoing reality for me now, not necessarily a challenge. Well, the sugar free thing is, too. I know that occasionally I will indulge. That's just life. But for the majority of the time I will just plain be sugar free. After all, I didn't eat sugar on HCG, so that means that for half of the past year I have been sugar free. Exciting! Now I just have to improve the other half.

Onward and upward!