100 Days of Fitness | Lessons Learned

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When I began this challenge, I had no idea of what it would bring me: now I am chomping at the bit to share my lessons learned. In a previous blog post, I wrote about my end of year goal to complete 100 Days of Fitness within the last 100 days of 2018. I had no plan.

Initially, I simply made a commitment to myself to wake up first thing in the morning, get dressed, and head straight to the gym. I knew that as long as I made it to the gym, I could decide how to proceed once there. Even simply walking on the treadmill met my requirement. I made sure not to put too many qualifiers on this goal, no particular time commitment, no particular weight loss goal, nothing. For the first two weeks, I simply woke up, hit the gym and found a random workout on Youtube to execute after a 5 minute warm up.

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1 – Have Intention

However, one thing I know about waking early is that if you do not have a particular intention, you will waste time. Those first two weeks, I spent 5 minutes warming up, then I surfed on Instagram for 10 to 15 minutes before I would snap out of it and look for a workout. Then, I would spend five minutes looking for a workout on Youtube to complete, only to have a short window of time left in the gym before I needed to get back home. Eventually, I took stock of my wasteful choices and landed on the 10 Week Bodyrock Bootcamp from Bender Fitness.com. Melissa Bender lays a full week of workouts for 10 weeks including days for stretching and rest. BUT I didn’t want any rest days, so instead, I walked Puppsie.

Lesson #2 – Rest Days Are Not Optional

The Bender Fitness Workouts are short workouts that when combined with cardio can last for one hour. Normally, when I am truly exercising, that works just fine because I exercise four days in the gym, one day of running on the weekend and then a couple of rest days on which I do not exercise. You would think adding a couple of days wouldn’t have much of an effect. Well, I learned quickly that rest is necessary. After four weeks I had aches and pains I didn’t know was possible, and I was just fatigued. My rest came in the way of Hurricane Michael. I was forced to take three days off exercise, and my body was very happy for it. Once I could jump back into exercise, I cut my workouts back to 30 minutes in the gym 5 days a week, one long run on Saturday, and one day of leisurely walking with Puppsie. That schedule gave my body enough time to recover and was not too strenuous.

Lesson #3 – Nutrition Matters

Never in my life has nutrition mattered more than in those 100 days. The amount of energy I had when I woke up was been directly related to the type of food I ate the previous day. Throughout those 100 days, there was a marked difference in how I feel when I ate healthy vs when I did not. Those 100 days were not about food, but I did notice how much food factored into my overall health because daily fitness because daily fitness if taxing for the body. Luckily, water is my drug, so hydration has was not an issue

Lesson #4 – Stick To The Routine

I built fitness into my morning routine, so regardless of my intention, I did not put going to the gym or heading out for a run off until later in the day. Every time I decided to exercise later in the day, it took serious willpower to actually go to the gym or run outside. On those day, I basically waited until my dog needed to go outside to do her business and walked longer than usual.

Lesson #5 – Stay Ready

Going to the gym every day meant I had to either buy more gym clothes or stay on top of my laundry. I had no desire to buy more gym clothes, so I washed my gym clothes much more frequently. Coupled with the idea of staying ready is preparing gym clothes the night before. If I wait to pull out gym clothes in the morning, getting to the gym takes twice as long. Instead, I pull out my gym clothes and pack my bag before going to bed each night. In the morning, while my brain is still foggy, I throw on my clothes and head to the gym before I can talk myself out of staying fit.

Most importantly, I learned how long it takes for me to develop a habit… 60 days. I know what the research says, but I noticed after 60 days that I mindlessly put my clothes out each night. At this point, I wake up before my alarm, get dressed, and am done with my workout without lagging or laying about. Now, I look forward to that quick win each morning, and I feel accomplished once I complete my workout. I also feel like I earn my breakfast, and it pushes me to make healthier food choices throughout the day

In a perfect world, I would have eaten healthy all 100 days, exercised and I would be snatched by now. Did I exercised every day? Definitely not. So far, I missed twelves of the 100 days and I am ok with that margin of error. Reality is that health is a work in progress, and all that I learned helped me make fitness a habit. Now it is 2019, and I have set a solid foundation that I transitioned into six days of fitness per week.