September Streakin', Day 6!

Another night run on the books 💙 Took it easy today and just enjoyed the ride.

Jumping on the #fitember Challenge hosted by @btchthatfightsbears First a quick reintroduction for anyone new to my blog. I go by m0tiv8me and have been a fitblr on Tumblr since January 2014…does that make me an OG?? Anyway that’s when I officially started getting serious about working out and eating better consistently and improving my mental and physical health. I thought I had it all figured out until about mid 2017.

That’s when my demons came in force for me and a lot of really tough hardships fell upon my family that I struggled to process and deal with. It threw me off my routine and eating habits and I backslid and battled heavy depression. I tried to restart my journey in 2018 but big challenges in my work life kept me in a mentally challenging place. I changed careers in 2019 and my mental outlook started to improve drastically. However my new job required a lot more travel than I was used to. I was accustomed to only working out at home and I found the long hours and constant travel really hard to try to do any type consistent workouts.

Enter 2020, we all know how that year went. Forced to be at home actually helped me get back into a bit of a rhythm with my workouts and I felt like I was once again starting to find consistency but the mental roller coaster that was the whole year left me feeling mentally drained and often defeated and hopeless.

By 2021 I started to lose interest in working out all together but still tried. A neck and back injury in the early spring put me out of commission for several months and by the time I was all recovered I had lost all drive to do anything. I spent the remainder of 2021 and first half of 2022 really working on my mental health, focusing on being grateful and thankful and working hard to calm my anxieties, fears and frustrations. I started lifting again in August and have been sticking with it and feeling good. After a month just trying to workout each day has begun to feel like too vague of a goal so I decided to join a challenge and set a small healthy habit goal for September.

My mini healthy habit goal for September (fitember)

A minimum of 100 push-ups and 5 minutes of planking each day. This will be in addition to any other type of workout I may do. If I feel like doing more I will but the goal is no less. I kicked off today by doing them first thing this morning. Day 1 = mission accomplished!

My unhealthy habit dump for the month will be sweets. I’ve fallen back into grabbing a cookie or some ice cream or other sweet treat for a snack and they just make me feel deflated and lacking energy so I’m kicking them to the curb for the month. When I do crave something sweet I’m going to drink some water instead.

So there you have it, you’re all caught up now will you join me in the #fitember challenge and pickup a new healthy habit and dump a bad one for the month?? @btchthatfightsbears has the all deets on her blog go check it out and let’s make September ROCK!!

I’ve had such a hard time posting my Fitember stuff because the words just aren’t coming to me. Removing something negative feels so hard to phrase for some reason.

Anyway, here are my goals for this month:

Stop slacking on cardio. I do cardio, but I think that I am cheating myself a little bit. I either need to increase the intensity or increase my time spent doing it.

Eat at least one vegetable a day. I know this sounds like not enough veggies, but I’m super inconsistent about that so 1 is still a tough goal for me.

Hi there! My name is Ann.

I'm an analyst at a tech company in northern Idaho. I used to be a fitblr and a runner and I've been "gonna start running again" for about four and a half years now. So I'm using hoping to use Fitember and the September run streak (#septemberstreakin22) to get back into running and back into the fitblr community.

And with that, I'm off on my first run of the streak!

Hi, my name is Lucy (she/her). I’m 28, have a master’s in health sciences, and am quitting my job as a medical scribe in October as I’m applying to medical school and want to spend my last little bit of time that I CAN volunteering and giving back to my community! I have a husband and a sweet little pug, Oreo, and I’m not sure which one is hairier.

I’m not sure I really belong in this community, since my idea of fitness differs from some standard ideas. I have dealt with disordered eating in some capacity since I was very young. Eventually, I developed atypical anorexia in high school which persisted on/off in undergrad. Recovery was the best choice I made, but I gained a significant amount of weight to the point people tend not to take my history seriously. It’s a bit of a curse of atypical ana.

The reality is that I can take lot of “healthy habits” too far. One of the things I have learned in recovery is that focusing on specific goals can sometimes make me question or not trust my own body and it’s cues. In some cases, I lost complete touch of cues- even in recovery, it was more about doing things “the right way” rather than reconnecting my body and brain. I’m still trying to sort this out, but one of the big things I want to do in Fitember is work on that connection. Put simply, I want to do more movement I enjoy, at intensities my body wants, in ways that promote my general health (not changing or shaping my body), and eat in mindful, flexible ways that supports my activity and general health as well.

8 easy greenway miles before heading to NYC in the early hours to see the Yankees this weekend. Ready for a fun filled weekend up north to rest and relax. Try to get one good run done while there. Maybe being back home will rejuvenate me. I will need one after the drive for sure. My glutes will be screaming at me. 😂 I hope everyone has a great Thursday. 🤜🤛🇺🇸❤️❤️❤️

@btchthatfightsbears

#fitember goals accomplished for the weekend, took a nice walk today, reached my step goal, spent some quality time in the garden yesterday which is a plus on the mental health end, so all in all I'm satisfied.

Why yes! Yes I do! I really seem to enjoy sulking, focusing on the negative, and putting myself down. I would like to improve my " Just do it" mentality. No over thinking, just do the task.

September Streakin', Day 15! Halfway There!!! 💪🏃‍♀️🎉

Not a great day for me. Don't feel well mentally or physically. Ran half a mile in the dark, just to stay in the game. 💙

Nailed a 4 minute plank this morning!

This has too much half and half to be considered healthy, but it does have two veggies in it! Squash Alfredo with mushrooms, sage, and Italian sausage. It was delicious.

My other goal was to stop slacking on cardio and I think I checked that box today. I jogged for 7 minutes at 13:00 pace and 1 minute at 10:50 pace. I haven’t ran in a while, so it was a pretty solid cardio session, if short.

I’m going to try to keep jogging as part of my warm up so that when it’s finally nice enough to run outside (it’s still 108), I’ll be ready to hit the ground running.

So the thing is, it's a LOT easier to build a good habit than to break a bad one. For example, I drink a lot of soda. And I'm currently in a place of acceptance on that with no real plans to change it, but I used to drink a lot more. I know all the reasons one "should" limit soda consumption, and I agree with them. It didn't matter who told me I should cut back or why (even if it was myself), changing that habit by "not drinking as much soda" just wasn't gonna happen. What did change the habit was drinking more water. Because if you're drinking more water, there's not as much time to drink soda. And yes, sometimes it's still a struggle to make myself reach for a water bottle instead of a can of Diet Pepsi, but I don't tell myself "you can't have the soda" I tell myself "have the water first".

Obviously none of the above means I don't still have "bad" habits, but I'm not focused on breaking those as much as I am on adding good things until they overpower the bad.

Using images from the end of the first to show this one off because I was anticipating this questions yesterday :P

As I said in my intro post, my big desire this month is to increase my mind-body connection and learn to listen to my body a bit better. Historically, I’ve tried shoving my body into the box of what I think it “should” want/need. This isn’t really a specific or measurable goal, and it’s hard to call “listen to my body” a habit because it’s more like a constant conversation you have with yourself.

I’ve been using my 12-week planner since August 22, but primarily just the 12 week overview and the weekly pages. The stickers on the overview page don’t actually mean anything other than just a count down, and the weekly view is more of a log than a journal although I do add gratitude or what I intentionally did as self care that day too. This doesn’t really say how connected I was- just how well I fit into a prescribed box.

So my new daily habit is to add in journaling.

I want to continue to do my general objective logs, but I also want to use the daily pages if for nothing else than for the little “thoughts” and “grade” sections at the bottom. The goal is to document how much I tried to listen to my body that day. How was I feeling? Did I try to check in with myself? Did I ignore any cues? The grade is a way to give myself a concrete measure out of a subjective feel. How did I do overall honoring present and future me? It’s still subjective, but at least it’s measurable!

(Fitember challenges hosted by @btchthatfightsbears)

Edit: today I learned that my phone autocorrects to grace instead of grade which, especially as a former chemistry instructor (weird to call myself that), I find really indicative of my approach to learning?? Give yourself more grace.

Ran at the lake to try and got some decent speed work done, didn't happen as fast as I had liked it. Use to pace 3 min in 8:30 still a minute off on my mile paces. I dropped out of NYC marathon and just sticking with Marine Corp Marathon on 10/30. I need to be realistic and an under 5 hours marathon may be asking touch right now. I haven't run over 5 hours in 4 years it's been a struggle. So, best thing to do one and keep showing up training. Hopefully it will all come together I still have 7 weeks to pull it together. Happy hump day everyone. 🤜🤛🇺🇸❤️❤️❤️

@btchthatfightsbears

Day 2! It almost feels like fall today! Me and the pup are getting our steps in!

Steps and calories are tracked. I gotta put my phone down now though because it's bedtime and I'm supposed to be off of it by now 🤣

Just went for a 2 mile walk! It’s not much, but it’s the first exercise I’ve gotten in ages. I’ve especially been avoiding exercise lately because of severe chronic back pain, but my back pain is a lot less intense today - I think thanks to this acupressure mat I just bought and tried out for the first time two days ago.