As most of you have figured out by now, I am on a personal wellness journey. My journey has its ups and its downs. It has its lapse of judgment and it has its wins. And every day brings with it a new set of challenges that usually tries to disrupt my ability to stay on course. Staying on course is one of the key tenets to a long term successful lifestyle change. When one strays from the path, you acknowledge the diversion, and then you make the decision to get back on track. This is where you have a partner or cohort of the same mind set in on the journey with you. In my case, I have two, my wife and my son. My wife has been helping me with food judgements while my son has been my challenge partner. The second support activity – “The Challenge” – is what I would like to present in this article.
As I am sure everyone is well aware, there are two key elements to losing weight and enjoying a healthy lifestyle. The first element is what you eat. It’s the consumption of food that can be one of the issues. Food should be for energy purposes. Once it’s an addiction to the wrong foods, it’s now a problem.
The second element is movement. It’s daily exercise, stretching, walking, biking, etc. – in other words you need to move. You need to have some cardio and some muscle building in your weekly routine. I am not talking about anything extreme.
Now, you would think these two simple elements of healthy living would be easy to do but in fact they are very challenging. The proof of this is in the fact that there is a very high obesity rate and I am in that category.
For me personally the difficulty lies with eating. Specifically eating healthy and controlling my portions. The exercise and movement is not as difficult for me to adhere to. If you are not doing one or both of these elements in your life, you will most likely be challenged by health related issues and not be able to have a sound quality of life.
With that said, my son and I have started a time-frame based set of challenges. A time frame challenge is all about having an accountability partner or partners and with that partner defining a set of challenges that drive healthy habits.
As a team you and your partner(s) will define a set of daily tasks that need to be completed to drive a particular habit. The challenge will be set for a specific duration and will have a positive or negative set of consequences at the end of the challenge.
Start simple. You do not want to make it so challenging that you quickly give up. You want to make it fun.
So here is how my son and I challenged each other. We created a spreadsheet that listed our agreed to daily tasks down the left side and daily dates across the top. Each day we each had to mark our information. Here is an example:
As you can see in this particular round we had set our Apple watches and we had to close those rings each day (move, exercise and stand). We had to drink 64 oz of water per day. We had to meet a predefined nutrition plan, and we had to log our blood pressure and our weight every day. We also logged whether or not we did a cold plunge that day.
This particular challenge went for one month only. We rested and did it again. Each time we do the challenge we usually change something up such as adding breathing work or grounding work or something along those lines.
The point of the activity is to have a partner that you can work with to practice particular elements that support both eating healthy and moving. And a challenge such as this can kick start those habits. The first few of these sessions I have lost approximately 25lbs.
Give it a try. If it helps then you should try to do the challenge more often. Also, as you are going through the challenge, make time to discuss with your partner your challenges. Talk about the things that are pushing you off track or that are taking you away from your pursuit of the true north. Ask each other what you could have done to prevent the issue. But support each other in getting back on track.
Remember, success is in the journey.
