Jennerosity

• 10 Ways to Never Get Sick Again (from Fitsugar)
• EyeDefender Combats Eyestrain, Repetitive Stress Injury (from Lifehacker)
• Eating Our Way to Death, Literally (From Think Simple Now)
• In Case You Missed It: FitSugar Printables (from Fitsugar)
• In Case You Missed It: 7 Dynamic Yoga Sequences (from Fitsugar)

Don’t forget to vote for the next featured sumo wrestler!

Goals . . . resolutions . . . whatever you want to call them, I make them. One of my favourite things about the New Year’s Eve holiday is this part. I started doing quarterly goals last year, and I think that works even better. Helps to take some of the pressure off this time of year and sets up a review period so you can see how you’re doing. I always try to work on goals from the same general categories. Last year I did them each as separate posts (reading, fitness, money & random), but this year I think I’ll do one overview¹, but do less detail about each goal.

Reading

• Read at least 50 books
• Complete at least 1 non-fiction reading challenge
• Read at least 12 books that are currently on my to-read shelf

Fitness

• Be able to run for 30 minutes straight by the end of the year
• Establish a daily walking habit

Travel

• Plan a trip to Japan in 2013
• Research a trip to either France or Hawaii

With Locutus around I don’t want to push myself too hard to achieve things. Instead I’m just focused on building a strong family foundation. The older Locutus gets I’ll be able to re-asses my progress and add more goals as I’m able.

1. With the exception of the money goals, which get their own post with more details [↩]

I realized the other day when I sat down to do my summer goal review at work¹ that I hadn’t done a personal goal review in a while. And then I started typing and when I realized what a mammoth post it would turn out to be I decided it would be better to hack it up in several smaller chunks instead. So here’s part 1 . . .

The most challenging area for me has been working on my Health & Fitness goals this year. I spent most of the first trimester of my pregnancy with morning all-day-sickness and a lot of fatigue, in which I was feeling very nauseous, nearly all the time. Not sure if you’ve ever tried it, but jogging while nauseous is not recommended. Neither is downward-facing dog pose in yoga. I’ve been doing sporadic walking and yoga workouts during the second trimester, but not really enough to make me feel very fit. Now that I’ve hit my third trimester, fatigue has made a comeback² and our schedule is looking rather full. I don’t really know what to realistically expect to be able to do as the weeks progress so setting targets & goals for myself feels a little futile at this point. But I still want to keep fit and active since I know that is what’s best for me and baby. But, I don’t want that to be an excuse to not have any goals at all . . . so here’s what I’ve come up with for my goals for next quarter . . .

• I will continue to park the car in the far away spots & choose stairs over the elevator
• I will eat my veggies before I eat my fruits³
• I will take iron supplements every day to prevent anemia⁴
• I will do yoga squats in the morning and stretch before bed
• I will make sacrifices to my social life in order to be well-rested

1. which was a bit comical since the only goal that I could come up with was: start bringing home personal items from work [↩]
2. and thankfully left the sickness mostly behind [↩]
3. otherwise I would eat no veggies [↩]
4. and I will fill the Rx for the iron supplements ASAP [↩]

We’re about half-way through the first quarter of the year and I thought I ought to address some of the goals I’ve set for myself this quarter and a few of the tiny steps I’ve been taking.  I think my tiny steps are good because they are more sustainable than giant leaps forward.  Less chance of injury too.

I’ve made up my mind that meditation should be a morning thing with me, along with exercise.  This morning I did get up and meditated for about 15 minutes¹  I’m going to look out for a good meditation app for my ipod and once I get a more consistent practice going, upgrading to a better meditation cushion.

I realized that I never step back from a book to analyze it as I’m reading it. Which means that it’s difficult for me to really figure out what the author is doing right (or wrong), until after.  The systematic part of me dislikes this.  The in-the-moment part of me does not.  We’ll see which one wins in the long run.  I’m curious what other writers do when they read?  Do you just enjoy, or do you take moments of pause to reflect on the story/craft/structure while you read?

I’ve decided what my next reading challenge will be. However, I won’t be announcing it until sometime in March at the earliest.

I’m loving the content of my Human Resources Management class and learning a lot.  And I was reminded last week that I still don’t like group assignments.  Unfortunately I have one more to get through.

1. I’m pretty happy that I managed that long.  I’d intended for only 10, but for some inexplicable reason, the volume on my ipod spontaneously set itself to zero so I didn’t hear when the timer went off. [↩]

Yes, we’re almost half-way through January and I’m not finished posting my goals yet.  I’m totally ok with that.

I decided that this year I’m going to go back to my most successfully consistent fitness activity – running.  When I first started exercising regularly and eating well, it was because we had got a treadmill.  I was very skeptical in the beginning that we would actually use it, but now I’m a devoted treadmill fan!  In fact, part of what slowed us down last year was when our treadmill fell into disrepair.  Thankfully we replaced it with a new-to-us one so we can still be walking and running.

I’m also doing my fitness goals in quarters.  To start off with, I wanted to get into some good exercise and eating habits.  For fitness, an additive approach works best for me, so I’m not following a diet, per se¹ but I did start keeping a food log.  I’m going to try to track my food every day for a quarter.  Just the act of writing it down makes me more mindful of my choices and helps me realize where I’m out of balance – like not drinking enough water!  I’m using SimpleNote since it has an iPod app for when I’m out and a Chrome extension for when I’m sitting at work.

For my exercise, I decided to start a 10km training program.  It’s a fairly basic one designed to get you to a 10km distance in 8 weeks.  I’m giving myself a few extra weeks so that I can repeat some of the weeks and make it a more gradual increase to a 10km distance.  And of course I’m also doing this in conjunction with an app.  When I heard that RunKeeperPro was going to be free for all of January, I had to download it and try it out.  Love it!  The only thing I wish is that it had an option to add in non-cardio workouts.  The thing that kind of sucks about it is that the built in pace tracking doesn’t really work when you run on a treadmill².  But, it does have a pre-done 25 minute interval run which I can use on my ‘easy run’ days.

Since it is already almost 2 weeks in to January, I’ll do an update on my progress right away.  So far the food tracking is going really well.  I’m eating better and usually getting enough water in the day.  The running went pretty well too, though I chose a rest day instead of an easy run (which is an option) and today I stayed in bed this morning which means I’ll have to do my run after work.

1. but my husband is following the P90X diet plan and is doing all my meal planning for me, so it’s kind of win-win [↩]
2. hence some of my early entries where I ran all of 0.2km in 25 minutes [↩]

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ve been doing the 100 push ups challenge since about July.  Today was the day where I took my final test and did as many push ups as I could.  While I only managed to do 30 push ups, I’m still really freaking proud of my progress.  First of all, here’s my training graph:¹

Look at how much progress I made!  Seeing all those high yellow bars makes me so happy!  Sure, some days I dropped down, but the end result was still pretty awesome.

Second, I made sure I had really good form.  Even though I am a girl, I didn’t let myself get away with knee push ups.  Each and every one that got recorded, was a good form military style push up.  If I couldn’t complete a set with the military style push ups, then I’d switch to my knees and do as many as I could.  So, for some of those numbers above, not only did I do 50 or 60 military style push ups, I also did around 30 or 40 push ups on my knees too.

Now that the challenge is done, I’m going to take a break and focus on some other fitness and training.  Women’s Health Magazine has an ab workout that I’d like to try.  And I’d like to add a little more structure to my running as well, so I might just start the couch to 5k program.²  And after my break, I’m going to do the entire challenge over again.  And this time, we’ll see if I can make even more progress.  I’ll probably try to shake it up and do some different styles of push up too.  Thanks to the P90X program, I know a few variations I can try.

Once I’m really comfortable with the push ups several times a week, I’m seriously thinking about adding in the two hundred squats challenge and/or the two hundred sit-ups challenge and/or the twenty five pull ups challenge.

Also on a fitness related note, I just discovered the +5 Charisma group and am thinking about joining the forums there to have some online geek fitness buddies.  But, not sure how much time I’ve got to spare to really get involved.

1. apologies for the crappy photo [↩]
2. I picked the c25k mostly because their app looks cool! [↩]

Before reading this article, please close your eyes and envision me doing a fitness activity.  It can be running, kick boxing, lifting weights, the exact activity doesn’t really matter.  Got a clear picture in your head?  Good.

Now why did I ask you to do this?  Well, I try to include visuals with my blog, but despite searching through all my uploaded Flickr images, I couldn’t find any of me at any fitness event or doing anything particularly fitness-y.  Which is weird because both Benevolance and I have done all sorts of fitness stuff in the past.  The closest thing I could find to a fitness related picture was one of me posing in a lightish-red hip scarf and my lightish-red shirt¹ that I wore to belly dancing class.  And this is someone who has supposedly done the Vancouver Sun Run 4 times!²

On the bright side of things, this inability to find any pictoral evidence of my fitness abilities has given birth to a new fitness goal – start documenting fitness accomplishments with photos!  Now, part of me resists this because my fitness clothing is not really flattering.  I don’t shop at Lululemon and I don’t usually concern myself with style when I’m doing a workout.  Yes, I’ve even been known to mix peach and red together, which is not a flattering combination.  Plus, there’s the fact that I don’t wear makeup to workout and am quite often covered in sweat.  This is a good thing when you’re concerned with fitness, but doesn’t make me look particularly photogenic.  And then there’s the red-face issue.  I get very bright red in the face when I work out.  I always have, and probably always will.  But, it’s a little shocking to see a person who is normally so pale, go bright red.  It looks a little clown-ish.

But, I really should get past all of that, and start taking pictures.  Or rather, start getting other people to take pictures of me doing things.  And, by logical extension, this means I’ve got to start getting out and doing fitness things (again).  I’ve devolved into a bit of a couch potato, but my health and fitness is something that is really important to me.  Despite that, I haven’t been able to set any really concrete fitness goals for myself this year.  Last year I had a similar problem and didn’t feel like I progressed much at all.  This year, I’m tossing a few options around in my head, but a lot of the fitness programs out there, don’t last an entire year.  I had started working on my running last year just before switching to the P90X program, but we’ve just discovered that our treadmill may be on its last treads. ³  Probably won’t get around to repairing or replacing it until March when we’re back from Japan.  And though I know I could run outside, I’m a really big wimp and have a lot of reasons why I’d rather not. ⁴ So, in the mean time, I’ve got to figure out what I want to do and here are my thoughts so far:⁵

• Start working on the Lifetime Fitness Ladder⁶
• Complete a 90 day Peak Condition Project⁷
• Complete another 90 day P90X program⁸
• Get rid of soda & pop from my diet (again)
• Prepare more meals at home (including lunches)
• Eat less, but more frequently
• Integrate more yoga
• Begin meditating
• Do some sort of push-up/sit-up/squat/chin-up challenge

So, my dear readers, care to share your fitness goals?  Thoughts?  Advice?  Any and all are welcome in the comments!

1. I really need to add the Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow! shirt to my collection too! [↩]
2. And the last two times I even tried to look for the official event photographers who take pictures to sell to you online after the race, and despite looking for them and trying to ‘look good’ for the camera while I ran, I didn’t have a single clear shot taken of me.  Which is a shame for them too, because I probably would have bought one. [↩]
3. We’ve had it for at least 5 years, if not more.  Benevolance and I have trained for two Sun Run’s using it, and it doesn’t owe us anything of the $1,000 that it cost us at the time. [↩]
4. And let me list them all for you: I know right now that I’d let the cold and rain be an excuse not to work out at all.  Plus, I don’t like running by traffic and having to figure out where I’m going and how far to go and whether I can get back or not, or having to calculate the route ahead of time – It’s just too much work.  And, I know it’ll be harder on my joints than running on a treadmill would be.  Don’t really have any cold weather clothing either, so it would mean investing even more $$ so that I could get an outfit together that would allow me to run and not freeze. [↩]
5. Though my husband just remembered that we do have an amenity room at the condo where we live and they do have a gym that probably has a working treadmill in it that we could see about using – hm [↩]
6. I really like this one because it’s so portable and easy to follow.  Will I get huge results?  Probably not.  Will I feel healthier?  Probably [↩]
7. after getting back from Japan [↩]
8. you know, one where I don’t skip a bunch of workouts at the end, and maybe actually see some results? [↩]