The New Fitness Plan

I mentioned in my Annual Review for 2024 that a big goal for this is to feel good in my body again.

I’ve done a lot of complaining about how gross I feel over the last year, and I’ve had a lot of ideas about what to do but always really struggled to implement any of them!

And here we are again in a new year and I’m full of that new year optimism to – one again – do something to sort myself out.

I am actually quite excited to get moving because over the Christmas reset I was able to come up with a proper thought out action plan.

Ridiculous shiny things

To get generally moving more I’ve signed up a Conqueror virtual challenge. After years of targeted ads they finally dangled a Star Trek themed one at me and I took the bait!

In order to get one of the gorgeous Star Trek medals, which I strongly covet, I need to log 100 miles in the virtual challenge. I took advantage of the New Year bundle deals and ordered 2 Star Trek challenge entries, both 100 miles, and a much easier Marathon to Athens one that is only 26 miles which I’ll be doing first as an easy initial boost. I also got the free Conqueror 2025 medal challenge in the bundle, which is one without a “route” that you can use to set your own distance.

It’s up to you what you log for any of the challenges, and how you do it. I have a Garmin fitness tracker so I’m syncing that and only logging distance activities (walks and runs), and not my daily total steps because I want to encourage more purposeful movements.

I should get to virtual Athens within a few weeks, but I expect the Star Trek ones will take me a few months each at least! And since this all cost me a pretty penny (even with the bundle discount the Star Trek challenges were £32 a pop!) the guilt over “wasting money” is an added incentive, on top of really wanting the toy at the end.

I’ll also be walking to Mordor

On top of this challenge, my fiance (and LOTR fan) was inspired by the Lord of the Rings challenges that Conqueror offers but didn’t want to pay to do it so he has designed his own equivalent one using Googlesheets to track it! This has become a group challenge with his friends which is an added incentive for him, and if he wants to walk and move more that is only going to help encourage me.. and means we plan in for more long walks on the weekends!

For this one I am logging my daily total steps, because it’s 1000 miles and we both work from home! (I don’t think we’ll make 1000 miles in a year!).

I really hope everyone keeps this up – the competitive element between his friends should help! It’s already motivated us to go for walks and I’ve been utilising my under desk treadmill (I’m on it as a write this!).

Jog on

Last year I discovered that jogging is actually quite enjoyable if it’s at a snails pace and while I listen to a good audiobook! Who knew you’re meant to just do it really, really fucking slowly! Anyway, I’m harnessing this new ability to help me cover more distance for the challenges above and to get in some more moderate cardio in.

I realised that my Garmin fitness tracker has some built-in coaching programmes so I decided to give that a try. Next week virtual “Coach Jeff” and I are scheduled for our first run so we’ll see how that goes.

Dumbbells

I recently learned that women in their thirties start to lose muscle mass, and then when you hit your forties it really declines beyond into menopause. Yikes. I already learned lots of facts about strength training and mental and cognitive health, so I know that I’ve got to work on my strength again for my all-around wellbeing!

I have a set of dumbbells from when I used to be good at doing this kind of thing! I just lack a decent space to use them and keeping them by the TV and the sofa and the living room was not working. I’ve now cleared a wee bit of space in our spare bedroom, with enough room to lay down on the floor, and set laid the weights out ready and waiting to be picked up, along with our spare mirror so I can look at my form and make sure I’m not going to hurt myself!

I’ve also found a beginner’s plan of exercises to get started with which I’m printing out and will stick to the wall so I know exactly what I need to do and can write down my progress. I’m also going to make a YouTube playlist of demonstrations for the exercises so I have easy reference while I’m still learning.

I’m trying to make it as easy for myself as possible, so it’s harder not to do it than it is to do it!

I just got hit by my period so I’m going to wait for next week to get started on this, I’m already probably overdoing it with all the walking (my lower back says so!) and I don’t want to wipe myself out before I get going!