Tuesday Tidbits

Here are some of the random thoughts rolling around in my head today….

It is a good thing I don’t live any farther North because I can’t take these below freezing days. I love snow but this is just too cold to be out in.

With the snow days, vacation days, teacher in-service days and two hour delays, my kids have been home and stuck inside way too much this month.

I won’t be meeting my step or my swim goals but I’ve done a lot of reading so the book goal is coming along.

Doctor’s appointment tomorrow – I’ve fallen off the paleo wagon and definitely need to clean up my diet. Not sure what she is going to say. I’ll get the results of my hair analysis and will see if I need to make more changes.

I’ve updated my books read list and will try to stay on top of that this year.

Getting tired, I’ll close for now.

Fitness Friday

This has not been a good month for fitness. We are on a pace to have as many below-zero temperature days this month as we have had in the past 10 years combined.  Add in 3 school vacation days and that has really done a number on my routines. Good news first – I redid the pushup test and was able to do 15 push ups in one minute. I did the timed one mile walk and managed to finish in under 17 minutes for an average rating.

Now for the bad news – still haven’t done the step test, didn’t retry the ab curl test and both my swimming and my steps are behind my goals. I have only been swimming twice this month for a total of 1000 meters not even half of what my goal for the month is. I knew I would probably not reach my walking stretch goal – 424,700 steps but I was hoping to be further along than I am. I have 266,052 which is an average of 11,567 per day so far. I did hope to get at least 10,000 everyday but fell short  4 days. I will definitely need to pick up the pace and try to get more steps in.

Hope you are able to keep yourself fit and active no matter what kind of weather you are having this month.

books read

I have been reading book reviews in the Twitterature link up on The Modern Mrs Darcy’s blog for the past several months and decided that I would like to try to join in.  Here is my first attempt – nothing fancy but it’s a start. Head over to her blog to take a look at one everyone else is reading this month.

Activate Your Goodness by Shari Arison – good discussion of how each and everyone of us can make a difference even if our action is small. My best take away – My suffering comes from within – I can choose to see things that happen as a way for me to learn and grow.

Goodnight Mind by Colleen E. Carney PhD and Rachel Manber PhD – Variety of tips and practices to aid in the development of quality sleep routines. My best take away – quality trumps quantity – don’t try to make up lost sleep in terms of hours in bed.

The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler  – nice mix of research and practical application. My best takeaways – read The Five Love Languages, keep eating dinner as a family and talk about our ancestors.

Fitness Friday

I found 4 tests for fitness and thought I would use them for my benchmarks throughout the year. For aerobic fitness there are 2 tests – a timed one mile walk and a 3 minute step exercise. It has definitely been too cold to go out and do the mile walk and I haven’t measured my steps to see if they will work, so I don’t have a baseline for those yet.

The other 2 tests are pushups to measure muscular strength/endurance and an ab curl to measure abdominal strength/endurance. I was a bit worried about the pushup test because I have no upper body strength. However I was pleased to discover that I was able to do 13 bent knee pushups in the 60 second time limit. That put me in the average category for my age.

Then I tried the ab test.  You have to reach a certain spot with your fingertips in order to count the curl. You have 60 seconds to do as many as you can. I couldn’t even do one! It was very depressing. Since I don’t think I can lengthen my arms, I decided I will need to start doing more work to strengthen my abs. I did a yoga tape yesterday and now today my abs are actually sore. I guess I overdid it – I’ll need to try to take it down a little and not overdo.

Goal update – steps were not as much as I would like due to the frigid weather around here. I did manage to get 10,000 everyday but not much more on several days. My total for January is 107,221 steps.

Swimming is not going so well. I have not been as much as I would like. Actually I have only been once and that was today. It was a rough workout. There were a lot of people in the pool and the water was very choppy. I did manage to get my 10 laps but it was very tough to do.  My total for the month is 500 meters.

Fitness Friday

I’ve made my plan for the year and I have two major fitness goals – one involving steps taken and the other has to do with swimming. I’m doing a minimum goal and a stretch goal for each of these.

For steps taken my minimum goal is 3,650,000 steps which works out to 10,000 steps daily. My stretch  goal is the 5 million step challenge which works out to 13,699 steps daily. I will not stress over each day but will work to get my weekly totals to be between 70,000 and 95,900.

For swimming my minimum is 260,000 meters which works out to  500 meters a week which is my current level. My stretch goal is 520,000 meters. I have just gotten back to swimming and I haven’t been very consistent so far.  I hope to revise this goal and increase the distance but we’ll see how it goes for awhile before making that decision.

Anyone else making fitness goals for the year? Please share and we can encourage each other.