If you haven’t read last week’s post yet here, read on!

WEEK ONE RECAP:

 Meditate for ten minutes: this one was tricky. I’m always struggling with the whole ‘let go and relax’ concept, because I’m naturally used to always thinking. I think I lasted eight out of these ten minutes but it was definitely peaceful with the right music on! I put on Spotify’s Piano Moods playlist and the first song that came up was “The Twins (Prague)” by Max Richter. I used what’s called the ‘tensing method’ to meditate, starting by tensing the muscles in my toes and working muscle by muscle all the way up to my head. Not sure if this helped me fall asleep faster though, like it was supposed to.

Add an extra vegetable to your plate: I failed this one. It did motivate me to put lettuce on my ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, but I’m not really sure that counts.

Wake up earlier and get a head start to your day: I woke up earlier..but I fell back asleep. Failed this one too.

   Add 1,000 extra steps to your daily goal: I’ve recently lowered my step count to 8,000 with the intent of working back up to 10,000. I had written in my journal at about 3pm that I was going to fail this goal, but my competitive side came out. I walked to the golf course where I work in a vain attempt to at least get to 8,000, but that only pushed my step count up to 4,000. At 9:30 I turned on Netflix before going to bed, then realized I could be walking while watching it on my phone. I paced back and forth in my bedroom watching Netflix and reading articles appropriately titled, “I’m Addicted To My Fitbit.” Eventually I reached 9,000 steps. (Proof on the right.)

Go for a fifteen minute walk outside: I arrived at my church camp on Saturday, so this one was easy to accomplish. I walked up to Inspiration Point with my friends, a gorgeous place to worship at camp. It’s far enough away from the city that you can see all the stars and I took my camera and my tripod in an attempt to take pictures of the stars–this was the night that the Bethlehem star was supposed to be shining! While I didn’t see the Bethlehem star, I got this picture instead by opening my 50mm lens all the way up to f/1.8 and manually focusing to infinity. 

Getting this photo was a total fluke. I just used a long shutter speed of 30 seconds and kept the camera steady on my tripod so no shake would happen. Once we got back to the cabin, I was looking through my photos and found this shooting star! This photo with the trees in it was way more interesting than the ones of just the sky. I definitely want to try more of these!

Stock up on healthy snacks: This was an essential before leaving for camp, a place where everyone usually ingests junk food and candy like it’s air. My friend Madie and I (remember her?) went to Target to buy snacks for our room and our small groups before, and I found these: Simply Balanced Dried Mango. These are SO GOOD and filling! This brand is great because normally I can’t have dried pre-packaged snacks due to my allergy to peanuts and tree nuts, but these worked perfectly.

Go to bed fifteen minutes earlier: Long story short, I spent most of this day in the hospital due to an unfortunate run-in with my allergy. So while I slept in my own bed that night and did go to bed earlier, it wasn’t because of this challenge. I’ll have a post up later on how serious this is, because some kids just don’t get it (and while I don’t expect anyone without an allergy to understand, there’s no harm in education).

Thanks for reading!

I’ve never been great at the whole ‘being healthy’ thing. I usually don’t drink enough water, I don’t exercise consistently–pretty much the closest thing I am to athletic is the fact that I wear running leggings instead of normal ones because they’re thicker. But who says I have to stay like that?

Fitbit recently released a Healthy Habits challenge on their blog, focusing on four categories: stress, nutrition, sleep, and fitness. Instead of following the challenges all in order like they did, I’ve assigned myself a mix of the four for each week, starting today and ending July 21st.

WEEK ONE:

• Meditate for ten minutes
• Add an extra vegetable to your plate
• Wake up earlier and get a head start to the day
• Add 1,000 steps to your daily goal
• Go for a fifteen minute walk outside
• Stock up on healthy snacks
• Go to bed fifteen minutes earlier

WEEK TWO:

• Drink a cup of tea
• Drink a glass of water before each meal
• Avoid eating for 2 hours before bed
• Exercise for fifteen minutes
• Listen to music that makes you happy
• Put your meals on a smaller plate
• Lower the temperature before sleeping

WEEK THREE:

• Do an equal breathing exercise
• Keep half of your plate green
• Do yoga before bed
• Walk/bike two miles
• Write about your day in a journal
• Replace candy/sugar with fruit
• Drink 64 ounces of water

WEEK FOUR:

• Take the time to socialize
• Do 50 crunches in the morning
• Take note of portion sizes
• Exercise for a half hour
• Stretch at your desk
• Skip all screen time for one hour before bed
• Go for a walk on your lunch break

I’ll be sharing results after each week and telling you if I succeeded, failed, liked it, disliked it, and so on. There’s enough days in this challenge that if I stay consistent, I can do this rotation again throughout the summer and finish right before I move in for college. Wish me luck!