Last time, we chose our five. The five areas to prioritize in our life. As a refresher, mine were:
- Faith
- Health
- Family
- Friends
- Home
Those are pretty broad, but I’m going to spend some time breaking down each one of those during the refine process. Some took a little longer than others, and I didn’t exactly go in the correct order. I noticed when I tried to put time and effort into one of the five, I had a huge feeling of being overwhelmed by another. For me, I listened to the one that was loudest first, the one that I knew I had to tackle to ease my mind.
Health.
My personal health. Not that my health was in shambles, but I wasn’t putting it first. I was really focused on the results I could give, how much I could accomplish. Accomplishing those things meant big hits to me personally, getting little sleep, eating whatever was quick and easy, skipping the gym in favor of checking something off my list for someone else.
A huge shift for me came when I signed up for a new gym. I was in need of somewhere to workout and the gym I paid a membership for, just wasn’t meeting the needs. They had childcare, but Jud was never happy, so I would cut my workouts short and eventually, just stopped going.
At the new gym, part of the incentive package for signing up included an hour session with a trainer, and a personal health assessment. I met with a trainer who basically confirmed all of the things I already knew. More sleep, better eating, more exercise. He also urged me to focus on my body fat percentage, rather than pounds. Prior to this, I was a step on the scale every morning girl. This was a huge hurdle for me, I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard, it’s just a number it doesn’t mean anything, I threw my scale away a long time ago. Being the bigger kid in middle school is no joke, you’ll grow some thick skin, but you’ll pick up some habits that aren’t easy to break. Like being a slave to the scale.
I don’t know what was different this time, but I assume it was the strong desire to change coupled with a more accurate way to measure myself. It’s been fun to focus on a different number and see myself making gains in the right direction.
Back to the point, health was my main goal to begin with, making habits and commitments and not letting myself down.
I have a worksheet below that goes through the process, but I’ll quickly take you through my mindset throughout this refining process.
I sat down with my calendar to decide how many days each week I would be able to work out. I settled on the number five, Wednesdays and Sundays prove pretty difficult to me, and I felt like five was a nice number, and I would be able to take those two days off. I also settled on one hour each day, sometimes I go over, but I always try to hit the one hour mark.
What about barriers? You know, the things that were keeping me out of the gym in the first place? I listed those, just to make myself aware of the fact that I already know all of the excuses, and then I named a solution for each one of them. I found that I actually get more things accomplished when I start my morning off with a workout, and my mood is noticeably better. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t ever pack my bag in the morning, and think about how excited I am about going to the gym, I love it while I’m there (except for that one time I took a cycle class), and I am so happy with myself when it’s over, but I don’t jump for joy at the thought of going. And I think that’s okay.
I try to take 3 weight training classes per week (there is a barbell class that I love), and run 4-5 days. I don’t always have to go to the gym for the runs, I can do the park with a jogging stroller, too. And once Jud was sick for an entire week, and I did the 21 Day Fix at home. When you eliminate all of the excuses in the beginning, it’s easy to show up ready.
I also signed up for a 90 day challenge. I’m currently down 16.7% body fat, not down to that number, but that’s the overall percentage lost in a 9 week period. If I were counting pounds, it would equate to about a ten pound loss. Not too shabby for nine weeks.
And what about food? Well, I didn’t do anything drastic. I definitely watch my portions, we stopped eating out so much and I plan for the day. I know I’ll need to refine that more later, but for now, I’m enjoying the process. I found that when I started working hard for my body, I also started thinking twice about the food I was eating.
Click here for the PDF — refininghealth
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