Student VS Fitness

So It is August 1st 2015 and last night whilst watching Pretty Little Liars (My reward from me to me as long as I have worked out during the day. It works.) I was listing ideas that I could incorporate into my blog as permanent fixtures throughout this journey to a healthier lifestyle and a fitter future and to make this blog a little more 'alive'. 

The first idea that I came up with is 'Monthly Motives' ( some fine alliteration there, Shan.) the whole idea around this is to get back into setting regular reachable goals at the beginning of every month. Since being home from uni I have admittedly slacked on the mentality side of my journey. At uni I used to set reachable goals each week whilst in the gym of what I wanted that week. Some of the goals included things such as not allowing myself to leave the gym unless I have worked out for at least an hour each day or No snacking between meals, substitute with water, making sure I am asleep by 10:30pm to get the most out of a sleep ready for a workout in the morning...you get the idea. These are the kind of goals I set myself every week when I first started this journey to force myself and push me into a strict routine (I needed to do be this strict for it to work).

Since being home although I haven't given up on eating clean or working out everyday ( I never will, I love it too much). I feel I have really lacked in keeping my mentality in shape. My motto is 'Mentality Over Physicality' because I believe your body will do anything you push it to do, its the mentality you have that will make or break your dreams (cheesy but true).

So this is where Monthly Motives come in. At the beginning of each month I will be setting 3 new goals for myself one for fitness one for health and one for lifestyle. Then at the end of every month I will be looking at how I did, focusing on whether I carried it out for a month, if I didn't, WHY? and if I did, what I did well and what the next steps/goals are.

So here goes...

AUGUST FITNESS:

The motive I want to set for this month is to work on my running pace to improve my running time and distance. Running outside and not on  treadmill is a lot harder because your legs have to do more work to keep pushing you along whereas on a treadmill the floor moves and your legs just go with it. I find when I run I rush, I become very impatient and try and power through the run all the way although this can be a plus because it makes me do a high intensity interval run, I want to work on my running distance and time to improve my long distance running. I was reading an article the other day on About Health on '13 Tips for Running Farther' and one of them stood out to me which is: Run at a Conversational Pace. I d never heard this before and thought it was such a good way to put it. So this is how I am going to judge my pace, if I can talk and hold a conversation easily without being out of breath my pace is good, even if it is at slightly slow pace I will be building up over 4 weeks. 

AUGUST HEALTH:

For my health motive I am going to make sure I have at least 1 glass of water as soon as I wake up. Before I have a morning coffee, my breakfast or anything else. I am following the well loved saying 'Hydrate before you caffienate' 

AUGUST LIFESTYLE:

This is a kind of big one, cutting the alcohol. Now I'm not a massive drinker I don't go on a 'mad one' every weekend but lately ive been drinking almost every weekend due to going to festivals and going out for birthdays so ive decided im going August with absolutely no alcohol intake. This is also mainly because I will be moving back up to uni at the beginning of Septmeber and although I have pretty good will power and self control, trying to go through freshers week without some alcohol induced nights out just wouldn't be the same( the excuses of a student everybody).

So... the 3 goals above will be my monthly motives... the laws of august...the great goals! that I will be working towards,at and with throughout the month of august. On August 31st I will be doing a follow up blog post to update on how I did and continue through to September 1st to set 3 new goals!

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