Its September and its nearly time to get back into my routines for fitting my workouts and healthy eating around going to uni! So here are 3 new motives that I will be working on for this month.

SEPTEMBER FITNESS:
So I am moving back to uni, into my new student house after, in my opinion, a pretty rad summer that was slightly too long maybe. I'm super excited to get back to the city and get straight down to... yep you guessed it, the gym to renew that membership! After using the outdoors as my gym for the past 3 months to save money and enjoy the countryside a bit more, I have decided to make my workouts my focus of this month. My motive is to make sure I go to the gym 6 times a week, using Sunday as my rest day. I want to make sure I have a solid, good quality month of workouts and clean eating before uni starts at the end of September and the flood gates open and mountains of work come flying my way.

SEPTEMBER HEALTH:
This motive is because I have been slacking on this for the whole of summer, the last term of uni I was super strict with not eating after 7pm, but its fizzled a bit and I want to get back into the swing of things. so NO FOOD AFTER 7PM. 

SEPTEMBER LIFESTYLE:
Sleep is definitely one of my favourite things to do but not if I get too much or too little. I have a little thing that I only like to have 8 hours each night, don't ask why I am so specific because I don't actually know, but I would say a big reason is how I feel. If I get too much sleep, I feel sluggish and lazy for the whole day and if I get too little sleep, I am super cranky. (yeah I am one of those people that do not do well on little sleep). So September is about focusing on my sleeping pattern, but also on my quality of sleep. I want to use my phone less before I sleep, it is so tempting to get into bed and just scroll through social media and pointless crap. I am either going to meditate for 20 mins before sleep or read a book for 20 mins before sleep. 

3, 2, 1 ...GO!  




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I cant believe that August is over already! That month went super fast but its time to review the monthly motives of August!

AUGUST FITNESS:
Pace
This motive has by far been the best one of this month, I've really enjoyed working on my pace during my runs because it has had such a positive impact on my thoughts about running and how my body reacts to my runs now. So, before I started working on my pace I saw the run part of my workouts as a chore because of my impatience. When I went running, I would go too fast which then made me want to stop sooner because I would tire quicker ( mainly because I have got pretty used to going on HIIT runs). So being able to work on my pace to enable me to run further and for longer has helped me to enjoy running more. So much so that I have made a goal for myself to be ready to run a full marathon in 2017. 
Motive Met? Smashed. 

AUGUST HEALTH:
Water 
This motive is going pretty well, I'm finding it a lot easier to get started with my days once I have had a glass of water before anything else. I know that sounds cliché but its true, drinking a glass of water every morning before I do anything else has become a very refreshing part of my get ready routine. I did drink a lot of water throughout the day before I started this motive and I still do but  I wanted to set it as a motive to make sure I was drinking water before filling my body with caffeine as it contributes massively to getting your metabolism started again after your body has been in a fasted state all night.
Motive Met? Smashed.

AUGUST LIFESTYLE:
No alcohol
So I am full on holding my hands up, waving a white flag and admitting that I failed at smashing this motive. BUT im not going to put myself down about it because yes, I had a couple glasses of Rosé with my dinners a couple of times during the month, but I could've done a lot worse with other alcoholic beverages that contain higher amounts of sugar and other nasties.One thing I will take away from this motive is, improving my willpower and knowing its not rude to say no to alcohol sometimes when at a friends or out with friends. ( plus some more will power to be able to say no sometimes to the beloved Rosé) 
Motive Met? Fizzled.

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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