30 day Challenge no. 2: Accomplished!

At the onset, I apologize for my extended absence from blogging daily. Good news is that my 30-day challenge was successfully completed. Now working out is a habit and I can safely say that I can’t live without it 🙂

There were a couple of unexpected hurdles along the way to the 30 days. For one, I was hit by a massive common cold attack that took some time to recover. But what I did during the time when I couldn’t get my body to exercise was, I ate healthy. And very very consciously.

I can already see changes in my body and I am very inspired because of that! Also, I took swimming classes. I have only attended 2 till now. But considering that I am awfully scared of swimming pools, this was a giant step for me. So hoping to continue that without making excuses!

Now I understand why they say that working out can change your life! There are so many hidden lessons in this whole process of working out towards fitness. Since the changes in the body happen so incrementally, you know for sure that one week of exercise is not going to get you to your desired goal. Hence patience becomes necessary. Eating the elephant piece by piece comes next. So planning follows. Sore muscles are evidence of changes taking place inside the body even if you can’t see it on the surface as yet. Faith in the goal, no matter how impossible, comes automatically. Also, personally I noticed that I wouldn’t push my body enough when I worked out earlier. But now I am driven more because I know I am making lifestyle changes, painstakingly planning my meals, avoiding falling to temptation to eat pizza etc. And I eat more consciously because I know that I am really giving each work out my 100%. So this diet and exercise motivation is now feeding off each other, which is great!

What I mean is, that exercise has now made it clear to me that with every goal in life, it has to be done in a similar way: one piece at a time, with faith, patience and confidence that it’s going to happen even if I can’t see “how” just as yet. I think, if I HAD to choose a religion, it would be Fitness 😀 Because it’s makes you an awesome person!

Now I am really feeling lost without a 30-day challenge. Any ideas on what it should be?

 

Day 14- Biceps

Oops! I forgot to update the blog yesterday. But this was my exercise plan:

Mountain climbers- 30/20

Standing elbows to knees- 30/20

Bicep curls- 15/12/12– 8 pounds

Hammer curls 15/12/10– 8 pounds

Basic crunch- 25/25

Skyreachers- 20/15 (not as easy as they look)

Reverse crunch- 20/20

Situps- 20/20

I am not too sure about Situps and then there are a lot of conflicting articles on fitness websites. What do you guys think? Should situps be done at all?

Day 11- Rest day

Today I really got a chance to read a little about nutrition and some  myths surrounding it. I am also using Quora on my Samsung Tab 2 to read exercise and nutrition related stuff.
As a part if being a musician and performer, I have to be away from food for long durations and I can’t really imagine chompimg on food when in front if an audience. Even while driving, I have always carried almonds, raisins, dates etc. So today I decided to change that. Here’s my 1st snack

Carrots! 🙂
And 1st dinner

Sprouts, red and yellow bell pepper, broccoli, onion, olives, Greek feta cheese dressed in pepper, salt, honey, mustard and little olive oil.

I feel such a sense of achievement that I am going to carry this along! My relationship with my body just became really serious 🙂
I’ll post later how much I enjoyed eating it.
Have a great day ya’ll!

Day 9- Runtastic!!

That’s the name of the app I use to track my runs. It’s Runtastic indeed! 🙂
I managed to meet a dear friend for dinner today after my run and I was so aware of what I was eating, how much, how fast and I ate only a teeny tiny portion of dessert, which by the way was on the house! But this self-restraint didn’t feel forced at all. I WANTED to do it.
I also went for a run at an unusual time of 5.30 pm which was nice. And the armband sock idea works! I tested the product myself.
Tomorrow it’s the turn of biceps to undergo hypertrophy! Hope you’re all doing great as well 🙂 Till next post, I leave you with this: