10,000 Steps



Before these two left with their parents on summer vacation, I tried taking
one or both of them walking with me whenever I could. 

 

Not too long after my personal heart-to-heart, my friend Brooke emailed me one day and asked if I’d be interested in a simple challenge… get 10,000 steps in every single day, no off days. 

I love me a good challenge and when it comes to challenging each other, I really am lucky to have Brooke in my life.  Before I moved away from Utah, we were waking up at insane hours of the morning, three days a week, and giving our best to the Couch-to-5K running program.  Unfortunately I did move eleven hundred miles away not too long after we started so our cute little contract became void.  I had all hopes of continuing, but I struggled finding my groove without my running partner.  Even though I am in a different state, Brooke is still one of my biggest supporters and I would like to think I am one of hers.  We are at two different points in our lives, but we have similar backgrounds and frustrations in regards to our bodies.  It’s nice to have someone who understands and is trying to make similar changes.  Having a workout buddy – no matter the distance – is extremely beneficial and I really am lucky we found each other two years ago and continue to support each other.

I could talk all day about how much I love and admire Brooke, but since my husband gets to hear that all the time, I’ll go back to the challenge.

Ten thousand steps.  The challenge started on June 1^st.  If we don’t reach 10,000 steps we have to put $5 in the pot along with two freebies.  We’re in our sixth week and neither of us have any money in the pot.  We have a Google doc that documents how many steps we take daily and since we both have a thing for numbers we also keep a running total of the steps we’ve taken since June 1^st.  In full disclosure, Brooke has like 20,000 more steps overall than I do – she’s a rock star. 

The first few days of the challenge I really struggled.  That first night, my sweet husband and I walked all over Target just trying to get enough steps.  We got home and my steps total was barely 7,000 so at ten o’ clock that night we headed to WalMart and walked aimlessly around the store before we went outside and walked up and down the aisles of the parking lot until I was sure I had my steps.  That first week was not easy.  My sweet husband supported me every step of the way and ended up getting a FitBit so he could keep track of his steps too.   For those that don’t know me, I am NOT a night owl and staying up late to get my steps was not a good thing so I started making sure to get as many steps as I could before I left work.   At work, I started mentally routing how I’d walk to and from my office and increase my steps.  I would make sure I took 15 minute breaks in the morning and the afternoon that would get me moving.   Before this challenge, I’d use my lunch to shut the door to my office and either take a nap or catch up on my favorite shows.  Since this challenge started, I started utilizing the skywalk that connects all the buildings on the hospital campus by changing into sneakers for 30 minutes.  Obviously the faster I walk means the more steps I can take. I challenge myself every day to get at least 4,000 steps during that break and by the time I get back to my desk I am ready to conquer the rest of the afternoon.  Whatever steps I don’t get before I leave work, I’ll take a walk after dinner, which has helped me discover more places to love about my new hometown.

Getting my 10,000 steps daily has become almost second nature.  It doesn’t really take too much more effort, but these relatively small moments of exercise have already made an impact.   My legs are definitely getting leaner and stronger every week. We still have eight more weeks of this 10,000 steps challenge, but this simple challenge has already made me ready to move on to better challenges… like going back to training with the Couch-to-5K  running program, which both Brooke and I started again last night and we will continue to support each other eleven hundred miles apart. 

Kicking My Soda Habit

One of the first changes I knew I needed to make was kicking my newly-formed habit of drinking soda.  I was never really much of a soda drinker until I moved to Oklahoma.  Don’t get me wrong, I had it on occasion, but it wasn’t until my new job provided everyone in our department an endless supply of caffeine that I started drinking Diet Coke or Dr. Pepper every. single. day.   My hours for my job can be all over the place and if I was coming in for a 6am meeting, I’d drink a can to wake me up.  As a result, I’d drink another can to keep up my “energy” throughout the morning and again another can in the afternoon to avoid the inevitable crash at two o’ clock.   By the time I got off of work, I was exhausted and took a nap, but then I wouldn’t be able to sleep those nights which would start the cycle all over when I had to wake up early the next morning. 

So here’s how I kicked the habit:

• I gave it up cold turkey the day after my 30^th birthday.   
•  For two weeks, I used water enhancers {Mio, Dasani, etc} to give me that sweet pick-me-up that I also got from soda.  These water enhancers aren’t necessarily a healthy alternative to soda, but for me personally, my focus was just kicking the soda habit.  
• After two weeks, I stopped reaching for the water enhancers all together and I rarely have urges to grab a soda any more.   

I haven't had any soda in 49 days except when my sweet husband lets me take a sip of his Cherry Coke that Spaghetti Warehouse makes by adding cherry syrup and several cherries to their Coke.  One sip has become too sweet for me.  I’ve never really been strict water drinker before, but now I seriously prefer a big glass of ice cold water.  When I’m working, my goal is to refill my water bottle six times before I leave for the day.   At home, we our constantly refilling our Brita water filter and I always make sure to have water with me when I exercise… especially when I’m out in the dang Oklahoma heat.  Water has become a must and trust me, I never thought that would ever happen.   It’s recommended that you drink half your weight in ounces of water.  I like challenges so every day I see how fast I can get in that much water.   

Thirty Years.

It was exactly fifty days ago that I had a silent heart-to-heart with myself.  For those that know me and have no desire to look at the calendar themselves, that is the day I turned 30.  It was also the day that my sweet husband of fifteen days and I were driving the remainder of my belongings eleven-hundred miles to our home in Oklahoma.  I’m not sure about anyone else, but road trips definitely give me ample amount of time for self-reflection so on that day I found myself thinking about the woman I had become. 

It had just been a little over six months before my 30^th birthday that I had left behind my world of familiarity and comfort of Utah and started a new adventure in Oklahoma.  In such a short amount of time, my world had changed completely – I moved three times.  I started a new job in a new part of the country.  I had made new friends, but I was also struggling with the implications the move had made on old relationships.  My sweet stepdad had passed away.  I met and married my husband.  In just six months, there were very few things in my life that had remained untouched in regards to change.   While my sweet husband drove me farther away from the world I had built for myself over the course of six years, there was a small part of me that was struggling with officially having to say goodbye to parts of my “old” life, but to be honest, I was really looking forward to what the future would hold.  It was no longer my future.  It was OUR future.

And with that being said, I knew that instead of focusing on what was, I needed to re-shift my focus on who I wanted to become.  During this time of self-reflection, I immediately knew that I wanted to become the healthiest version of myself… not only for me personally, but for the man who committed to stand by my side and support me every step of the way.  As we continued to drive, I told myself that it was time to make those changes that I had been putting off for one reason or another.  I no longer had a full-time social life on top of work and school to worry about.  It was the perfect time to make new changes as I was already adjusting to being a wife.   I told myself that I was going to make small, simple changes and I made a personal commitment that these changes were going to be for the long term.   I wanted to make real changes along the way instead of depending on fad diets, shakes, or pills that would be hard to sustain weight loss for the remainder of my life.  As a graduate of Community and Public Heath, I knew what changes needed to be made, but I had never had the real motivation to make those changes until I got married.    

I’ve created this blog as my way to document my progress.  This minuscule part of the World Wide Web is my way of holding myself accountable as I continue down this road of the unknown.  This blog will document my journey and will probably include way too many pictures of yours truly and the food I eat.  I will document each new goal I make and I will be open and honest about my thoughts and feelings along the way.  This is my online journal as I continue to become the woman I was destined to be.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that I’m not giving up on myself any time soon.  Change is inevitable so I might as well make it happen for myself instead of just waiting around for the next “reason” to get healthier.  This is just the beginning of the rest of my life and I know without a doubt that good things are going to happen and I for one can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me.