Hello again, guess what time it is? Vacation time!!! I’m currently writing this in a hotel room bed, with my feet up and a clay face mask on.
Is there a more satisfying feeling in the world than getting to retreat and relax after you’ve smashed your goals? I haven’t found it yet.
For our little “program” or club we do what we call 3 months to 3 days, that means that for 3 months straight we exercise 6 days a week, follow our diet and meal plan, and do our best to set small goals and work hard at them. That can be a lot to take on, and burn out is so real, soo..every 90 days, we have a little dinner or hang out, discuss the good and bad and what needs to change, and then we take 3 full days (preferably out of the house) to just do whatever and eat whatever we want.
So, why 3 months? Well because 3 months is about the time it takes to break a bad habit, and put in its place a good habit. This means 3 consistent months, doing it every single day (Except your 1 rest day.)
Why do we set small goals? Because accomplishing your goals can make you want to do more, we get excited, we feel proud and that builds momentum that has us curious of our potential.
This program is built around learning to hold ourselves accountable, because much of the time, even as adults we don’t exactly hold ourselves accountable for our actions, we have a boss, and a schedule and things that keep us in check. The biggest way we try to learn this is by rewarding ourselves and each other for reaching our goals, so we have 3 rewards in mind, short term (3 months, I buy each of my hamsters 1 or 2 presents they get if they’ve reached their goals. They also often have things picked out they want to get or buy for themselves, and a mini vacation planned.) There’s also long term rewards (Such as, when I’ve met my goal weight, gotten the good doctor report I want or reached my long term goal, I will buy these clothes or take this trip or something of that manner.) There’s also social rewards, which is why we try our best to do a dinner, and go out, or have a little get together and share our good news with others.
I’m sure you’re wondering now, how do we get to the short term rewards? How do we measure success in this? Not by the scale. It’s nice to celebrate our success when we see a drop in weight, and while that is a part of this, weight is not an accurate measurement of health, and I can tell you from experience you won’t always see improvement on the scale even if you ARE making progress.
So, instead we go by a point system, We have a full 90 days, and I count our monday rest days, myself and my hamsters must exercise 6 days a week, if we miss one of this 6 days in a week, we get a point, if we have more than 9 points at the end of our 90 days, we don’t get rewards, but we still get our 3 day break.
Can we earn points back? Yes! If you exercise twice in a day, or on your rest day you get a point back, but when you do any routine, you must either have someone also participating witness you exercising and confirm it to me, or you must record it so I can see. This may seem unfair, but in all reality, I spend 50-100 dollars per 90 day period at least, so if I’m going to pay for it I do require proof.
Our rewards vary, I buy encouragement rewards, meaning either clothing or jewelry that motivates by having something to do with exercising or living health, exercise equipment, water bottles, and so on. I don’t have pictures of my hamsters rewards, or much of mine as the weather has had us all over the place and kinda confused for the past week almost week in a half. But this time I had custom water bottles, and 2 work out outfits for each of us as rewards. Also, personal rewards are bought individually, for me I finally took a trip to the mall and got some bath and body, I also got a new pair of cute pajamas which I looove. Each of my hamsters are encouraged to do a little bit of something special for themselves also.
Our first documented 3 months began in December, and that was a hard month. Though we began the month great, we quickly realized how tough it would be to turn down all the treats and food related presents our friends and family were trying to give us. So, of course we sorta dropped the diet in December, we did meal planning, and our exercises, but we didn’t pay much attention to our cheats.
January we all came back strong and did well, I quit drinking pop, Nicole buckled down on doing Yoga with me, but Zachs birthday was another small road bump.
February was our last month, and it didn’t go to well, Nicole and Zach both began to slip up a lot more on exercises, Zach had began to have issues feeling dizzy so his doctor sent home a sugar testing machine, he now needs to check his sugar 3 times a day so that doctor can have a better idea of what’s going on.
Without any further babbling, here is our progress.
Zach in total missed 32 points, but he did earn some back and finished with 21. Despite his struggle with exercising and some extra cheating on the diet Zach went from 252 to 242 between December and February.
Nicole in total missed 13 points, she earned quite a few back though doing our tough monday routine, and finished with just 9 points earning her rewards and celebrating. Despite her trouble sticking to our meal plans, Nicole went from 172 to 170 from December to February.
Me myself and I, the physical dictator ( 🙂 its a bad joke I know) I missed a total of 7 points, I earned almost all of mine back and finished with 1 point. My biggest trouble has been my mood during the cold months when I can’t be outside much, this has put me in a funk to often, and by the time I get to dinner, I don’t wanna cook and do dishes, I had to many days of deciding to order in instead, and although I did my best to throw in extra on my exercise routines the following days, I know it affected my weight. I started at 247 in December, and in February my final weigh in was 239.
Our second recorded 90 days begins March second, and I’m pretty excited because I have 4 possible new hamsters wanting to join our little club. There are so many exciting things coming up, including some changes to our weekly routine, and of course suuummmmmer!
GettingOurShitTogether 