Physical Fitness & Weight Loss Challenge

Week # 3 - Eating Habits

Welcome to week # 3!

The theme for this week is to start looking at eating habits while continuing strong on your exercise routine.

Health & Fitness Results

The following components play an important role in the health & fitness results you experience:

  • Physiology - The way your body works, what it needs to function properly, and how it reacts to exercise and food.
  • Psychology - The mind plays a crucial role in your behavior & habits. As you'll discover during this challenge, fitness & weight loss is not just about willpower.
  • Stress - Research shows that the stress you feel, and how good you are at managing it, can significantly affect your weight loss and fitness results.

Up to this point, we've been focusing mostly on exercise. Starting this week, we'll gradually delve into some of the other areas using the small steps approach.

Weekly Goals - Week # 3

Start by picking your reward for this week and writing it down on your scorecard.

Cool Down (CD)

Cool down is slowly bringing intensity down to warm-up level for about 1 minute (march in place slowly or walk at normal pace) followed by 1 to 3 minutes of light stretching.

You may also want to drink some water after your cool down.

Goal # 1 - Exercise Goals

Here are the exercise goals for week # 3 (EG3):

Advanced Track

Days 1-3: 2-4 minutes warm-up + 8 minutes Level I + CD

Days 4-6: 2-4 minutes warm-up + 10 minutes Level I + CD

Moderate Track

Days 1-3: 4 minutes warm-up + 3 minute Level I + CD

Days 4-6: 4 minutes warm-up + 4 minutes Level I + CD

Easy Track

Days 1-3: 4 minutes at warm-up intensity

Days 4-6: 4 minutes warm-up + 1 minute Level I + CD

 

Day 7 is your rest day on all tracks.

Remember to check the box in your scorecard when you complete each day... and keep going strong!

Goal # 2 - Pay Attention to Your Eating Habits

The second goal for this week is to start paying more attention to your eating habits.

You don't have to change anything yet, just become more aware and start noticing your eating habits & patterns.

Here are some things to pay attention to this week:

  • When you eat - At certain regular times, munching on snacks during the day, when something happens, etc.
  • How much you eat - How big are your regular meals? Do you eat smaller snacks during the day?
  • What you eat - Notice the kinds of foods that you eat throughout the day
  • Why you eat - Do you eat when you feel hungry? Do you eat out of habit even when you are not really hungry? Do you get the munchies? Do you eat when you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, bored?
  • How you feel when you eat - How do you feel before, during, and after you eat
  • When you stop eating - Notice when you stop eating. Do you stop because... You're not hungry anymore? You feel full? You feel so stuffed that if you took another bite your belt would break? You ran out of food in your plate?

If you want, you can start keeping a "food journal" to write down what you notice and any insights that you've gained about your eating habits.

You can download a food journal template from here.

  • When - Time of day when you ate something
  • What / How Much - What you ate and how much
  • Why - Your reason for eating (hungry, habit, food was there)
  • Feelings - Before/after: Happy, sad, angry, bored, stressed, overwhelmed, etc.
  • Stop - Why you stopped: felt full, out of food, not hungry, etc.

Or, if you prefer the idea of keeping a journal on your computer, check out this great journaling software.

This week, start thinking about small changes you could make to develop healthier eating habits and write them down.

You'll be collecting and brainstorming more about these small changes next week.

Goal # 3 - Start Your Health & Fitness Vision Board

A "vision board" is a tool that helps to inspire and motivate you. It gives you a concrete visual representation of what a healthy & fit lifestyle means to you.

Here is my current health & fitness vision board (shrunk to fit):

I included things like racquetball & bicycles because those are fun activities that I enjoy in addition to exercise. You'll want to use your own fun activities or sports.

I also included things like stress management, relaxation, fun, energy, and sleep because I consider them important to my health and well being.

I recommend you create an electronic vision board because it's much simpler and easier to put together, plus you have access to a huge image database through search engines like Yahoo and Google.

If you prefer, you can also create a vision board by cutting up magazine images & text and pasting them into a piece of cardboard.

Your goal for this week is to start collecting images to build your own health & fitness vision board.

Here are the steps:

  1. Create a directory on your PC to store the images.
  2. Go to Google or Yahoo and do an image search for relevant keywords like: fitness, health, healthy eating, well being, sleep, energy, etc. You might also want to search for images related to activities you enjoy.
  3. When you see an image that inspires or moves you, save it. You can always delete it later if you don't use it.

All you need to do this week is to have some fun looking for images that you like.

You'll start putting together your vision board next week.

P.S. If you think this challenge is a good idea, I would really appreciate if you tell you friends, family, and co-workers about it.

This article is part of the physical fitness and weight loss challenge. Click here to learn more and join the challenge.