Fitness Fellowship 2023: Welcome & Goals Post

[sylvanwitch]

Thank you to everyone who responded to my earlier request for expressions of interest in a weekly fitness check-in. I cannot overstate my gratitude and my pleasure that you'll be joining me on this journey. It means a great deal to me that you're willing to give this a try.

How this works:

Each week, usually on the same day (so, this year, Sundays), I will make a check-in post encouraging you to discuss how you've done on your personal fitness goals for the previous week. You may comment on the post with your updates, if any, or choose not to join in that week. Please come and go as you see fit; there is no judgment here, and I promise I won't DM you with a nudge unless you tell me that's something you'd like me to do.

I will respond to your comments, and I encourage you to respond to each other's as well.

This is intended to be a friendly space to provide a measure of accountability to help you reach your personal goals. Please do let us know if you are seeking advice or if you need a firmer sort of pressure. Otherwise, what you'll get from me is positive cheerleading and/or commiseration.

Goal-Setting:

Please know that you may choose whatever definition(s) and variet(y/ies) of fitness you'd like to achieve. You might want to gain strength, develop a meditation habit, get more sleep, drink more water, spend less time on your devices, etc. (and in combination). You may choose short-term and/or long-term goals. You may change your goals at any time.

I do encourage you to consider mini-goal rewards and a more significant reward for achieving longer-term goals, but that is entirely up to you. I just work better by the carrot than by the stick. :-)

What to do now:

Please comment below with your personally developed fitness goals. A week from today, I'll post a check-in to let you know how I've done and to see how you're doing.

Thank you for joining me on this journey!



Some background, in brief: I'm a 52-year-old yo-yo dieter since childhood. I lose weight, I struggle to maintain the loss, I regain a portion of it back. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm also an emotional eater with an unhealthy relationship with food. I eat when I'm depressed, stressed, or sad, and I use food as a reward to lift my mood. Food was used as both reward and punishment in my house growing up, and while we were never food insecure, my mother's rules about eating made me a fast eater, which I have tried, with varying success, to change.

I was a vegetarian for eighteen years before going whole-foods, plants-based (vegan) in 2016. I am a vegan for health purposes, not because of animal rights, so I will sometimes cheat a little with a vegetarian dessert or with milk chocolate. I am NOT a proselytizer. I don't like it when people preach to me about how I'm not getting a balanced diet (I am), so I won't preach to you about eating animal products. I promise, I am not evangelical about food, even if you can't spell evangelical without v-e-g-a-n. ;-)

Most recently, I lost almost 70 pounds in 2020 through a combination of calorie counting, "clean" eating (e.g. limited processed foods, lots of fruits and veggies and whole grains), and exercise.

I am pleased to report that though I've gained back the majority of those 70 pounds, I have maintained a regular (almost daily) exercise habit, and I'm pretty proud of that.

Also, I am currently struggling with an ongoing injury in both my left ankle (posterior tibial tendonitis) and my left wrist (a more recent repetitive-motion tendonitis), which limit my ability to do certain types of exercise.

For that reason, I am expecting delivery of a new recumbent stationary bicycle on Friday, to replace the ancient one I've had for 15 years; this way, I can stagger my walking and elliptical workouts, which cause stress to my ankle, with biking workouts, which are much more ankle-friendly.

My Fitness Goals for 2023:

1. Long-term: Get at least 7 hours of sleep a night. I just feel better when I'm getting enough sleep, but during the work week, I sometimes feel resentful of bedtime because I haven't had enough time for myself in the evening after work. This leads to a cascade effect of insufficient and lower quality sleep, and that's no good for weight loss or general fitness.

2. Long-term: Continue my daily exercise habit of at least 30 minutes of focused exercise every day. I'm hoping to break myself of unhealthy fixations on my fitness watch stats (i.e. having to get 10000 steps a day when I've had a long work day and also done at least a half-hour of focused exercise) and find better personal rewards than the digital badges I get through Garmin, iFit, and MyFitnessPal, the pursuit of which sometimes makes me unhappy and resentful. I'll continue using those apps, of course, but again, I need to develop a healthier attitude around competing with myself for goals.

3. Long-term: Drink more water. I'm good about this in the warmer months, but in the colder ones (like now, in my part of the world), I'm kind of a slacker. I really do feel better when I have enough fluid each day.

4. Long-term: Lose 30 pounds by 1 July. We're going on a dream vacation in mid-July, with lots of hiking and other outdoor stuff planned, so I need to be in shape for it. The weight loss will also help me with my sleep difficulties, my peri-menopause symptoms, my anxiety, and, I hope, my ankle injury. But also, I really do feel better when I weigh less. STARTING WEIGHT: 213.6 pounds.

5. Short-term: Meditate at least once a week (with the intention of developing a more robust and frequent practice).

Comments

[cornerofmadness]

thanks