five

A print from one of our favorite artists, Erté.

Five days in… are any of my goals showing signs of becoming habits?

Well, the sleep thing, oh, yeah…. Getting enough sleep is addictive!  It’s been a little difficult to put the book down, or stop ironing, or sacrifice internet time so as to get to bed at a decent time, but the reward of not sleepwalking through the morning has definitely been worth it.

The cardio — well, we all know I’m up in the air as far as what *cardio* really is for me right now.  Let’s just say, I’m getting in a workout every day, and loving it.  And I’m really loving the five day split for weight training — I feel like I can really target a specific area and give it my all, rather than having to save some muscle for later exercises.  It also feels like it takes up far less time.  Overall, I’m probably spending more time per week with the weights.  But I don’t have to lay out two or three one hour blocks during the week to devote to it.  Roughly, it’s taking me 20 minutes a day.

Blogging — well that’s well on its way to becoming a habit here.  But on our family blog and my homeschooling blog, I’m completely slacking off.

new challenge at the Sisterhood!

I’ve been refreshing the Shrinking Jeans site every five minutes all day long, I swear it.  I was itching to find out what the new challenge was, and to get on with it!  And, finally, it’s up!  (Remember, I’m in  Belgium.  By the time the girls get up and moving, it’s late afternoon for me!)  So the new challenge is a relatively short one — 21 days.  The mission: form new habits.

Funny.  I always kind of think of habits as a bad thing.  I’m always trying to *break* myself of my bad habits.  Drinking, slouching, pouting when things don’t go my way… The idea of forming new, healthy habits intrigues me.  I want to approach this in a positive way.  Not, I’m going to stop drinking. Yes, I know stopping drinking would be a positive, but that statement has a negative connotation, ya know?  And besides, I’ve already got that one pretty much beat.  I haven’t been posting much these last couple weeks, but I have been busy.  I’ve been limiting my wine to one night a week, and it’s been working really well.  No jitters or anything 🙂

So, the new habits I’m going to form during this 21 day challenge:

1. Set my alarm for 5:45 so I can get my workout in early. I love working out first thing in the morning.  I hate getting up. But when I do workout first thing in the day, I’m more motivated to stay on track with everything else.  And obviously, less likely to skip my workout!
2. Do my best to get at least seven hours of sleep a night. My littlest is still often up during the middle of the night, and sometimes that can’t be accounted for.  But me staying up until midnight to read a trashy romance novel… well, that I can account for!
3. Get at least 30 minutes of cardio six days a week.  Preferably 45. I’m into week two of the C25K — that covers three days.  But I want to add some cardio to the other days as well.  The more I move, the quicker the weight will move.
4. 5 day split weight training. This is a new one for me.  Previously I’ve done upper body one day, cardio the next, then lower body, then cardio, then upper, cardio… you get the picture.  Instead, I’ll be working shoulders, chest, back/abs, bis/tris, and legs on different days, but more intensely.  This is an approach, along with the more frequent cardio, that I’ve been looking into.  What better time to try and implement it than in a 21 day challenge!
5. Blog, blog, blog!! I’m very lax at keeping accountable, I know.  It would do me a world of good to get in here every day and journal — the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.  Even if it’s just a few words, I need to do this!

That’s my plan!  What’s yours?