I came up with a challenge for myself to try to encourage more physical activity in the month of December. See, I am going back home for Christmas and don’t want to be the same lazy blob then that I am now. Yes, I know that in 20 days I won’t be magically transformed, but hopefully I will feel better about myself when I am there and even if I don’t manage to get smaller hopefully I will at least not get any bigger before I go! Hey, it’s the Christmas season which means more food and drinks and parties and all that stuff which means waaaaay more things to tempt you off your healthy eating plan…assuming you are on one lol 😉
Originally the challenge was just going to be for me but I decided to rope my co-workers in to it and turned it in to a work fitness challenge. I also strong armed a friend in to it but she likes being active so it won’t be that much of a challenge for her I don’t think.
The challenge itself is super simple, please feel free to join! Basically it is:
20 Workouts In 20 Days!
Boom! Mind blown with the simpleness of this challenge am I right? lol
I fly out on Dec 21st so I had 20 days to work with. I decided to challenge myself to be physically active every one of those 20 days. The activities don’t have to be just traditional fitness activities they can be anything that keeps you physically active for 30 minutes or longer. Some suggestions I gave to my co-workers were:
- go for a walk
- go up and down the stairs at work
- clean your house for 30 minutes
- decorate your house for the holidays
- drop in on a fitness class
- do body weight exercises while watching tv
- exercise dvd
- swimming
My list of suggestions is not exhaustive but I wanted to make it clear to do this challenge you don’t have to be hitting up the gym every day for 20 days to succeed. You just have to be consciously engaging in some form of physical activity for 30 minutes every day for 20 days and reeeeally, shouldn’t we be doing that anyways?
Oh, and if you are thinking that life sometimes gets in the way and you legit won’t always be able to work out for 30 minutes some days that is ok because you can make up the missed session. This isn’t an all or nothing type of challenge. It is flexible, like how we have to be in order to navigate life lol So say today I just didn’t have the time or energy or drive or whatever to work out in some manner, ok, that’s cool, I’ll make it up tomorrow and do 60 minutes. Before you freak out! that 60 minutes doesn’t have to be all at once. I could go for a 30 minute run in the morning and then clean the apartment when I am home in the evening, or run the stairs at work at the beginning and end of my shift and on my way home hit up the gym, or do weight work while watching tv in the evening, you get the idea I’m sure. 🙂
I made up, and distributed at work, a cute Activity Tracking sheet. It is a picture of a Christmas Tree with the numbers 1 through 20 on it, randomly placed, like an Advent Calendar, so you can cross off numbers as you go. Visual reminders of the work done help encourage you to keep going when you hit a day you just don’t feel like working out. Or at least they do for me, shrug.
So there ya have it, my December Fitness Challenge! I would put a picture of the Christmas Tree Activity Tracking Picture on here but it is saved on my work computer sooooooo it will have to wait. 🙂
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
That’s a neat idea! I’m in! I’m going to draw my own tree, and draw decorations on it, then number them. I can stick it up on the fridge – it might make me think twice before looking for snacks!