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Stephanie Howell

reading, organizing, shopping, momming too close to the sun. Home is wherever the Army sends us.

Whole Life Challenge | Week 0- Thoughts Before I Begin

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So I am now three days away from starting the Whole Life Challenge.

I plan to blog about my experience and I thought this week was a good place to start. I want to talk about my fears, my expectations, and my thoughts in general.

 

What is the WLC? The Whole Life Challenge is an eight week challenge that works by identifying the areas that almost everyone wants to change, and then making a daily game out of creating new habits in each of those areas. The game is designed around the five key areas that every person can identify with. Relying on their more than forty years of combined personal coaching experience, the founders created a system of play focused on implementing new habits in each of the five key areas.

 

What are the different components?
1. Diet (similar to Whole 30)  2. Exercise(10 min a day) 3. Water Intake (take 1/3 of your body weight and drink 1 ounce per pound)4. Stretching (10 minutes) 5. Supplements (I’m taking fish oil) 6. Lifestyle (this changes weekly- sleep,meditation,etc) 7.Daily Reflection

Each component is worth a certain amount of points. You lose points for breaking the rules.

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So. Yeah. I’m pretty nervous but also really, truly excited to experience these eight weeks.

Saturday is the first day.

 

What am I scared about? No bread, pasta, sugar, dairy, cheese, milk. ESPECIALLY the cheese. I love cheese. Drinking my coffee black. I will miss gelato soooo much.

 

What am I most excited about? Changing my life. Does that sound dramatic? Maybe. But it’s true. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of my back hurting and my stomach aching and I’m tired of being out of breath. I’m tired of not feeling strong. I’m tired of making bad choices because they are the easy choices. I’m tired of making excuses and I’m tired of not feeling good about myself.

 

What’s my plan? Exercise every day. CrossFit, Body Pump, Yoga, Swimming, Walking, Running, Elliptical, Hiking. Backup Plan at home= 30 Day Shred, TurboFire.

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I’m on week four of almost daily exercise and y’all- I feel GOOD. And strong. And I’m happier. I can’t wait to add in the nutrition piece.

My plan is to make good choices and to make changes. I know that I will mess up and slip up and I’m okay with that. I’m not aiming for perfection.

My plan is to do prep every Sunday. Eggs boiled, Chicken baked. Vegetables and fruit chopped and sliced. I am going to buy a small freezer so that I can make and prep meals as well.

 

What level am I doing? Lifestyle/intermediate. One glass of wine a day? SOLD.

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What am I stocking up on? Recipes and ideas. I have a Pinterest board HERE. I am going to make my own sriracha sauce and some other seasonings. I intend to try to make my own Lara bars. We’ll see…

I’m stocking up on almond and cashew butters, Lara bars, and quinoa. Coconut oil, almond and coconut flours, almond and coconut milks. Raw cacao powder, a big water bottle, coconut flakes, and dates are all in my cupboard.

Each week I will visit a farmer’s market or local shop and load up on fresh fruit and veggies. I have to teach myself to like sweet potatoes. VOM. Hahaha!

 

What about my family? Jimmy supports me 100 percent and is joining me in the challenge. I’m so excited to see the impact this makes on my family. For the record, I will not remove dairy, etc. from the house. My girls will still have these things, but dinners are for everyone. I make it, you eat it. No other choices. 🙂

 

This Friday I take the workout assessment. I will compare my times/scores before and after the challenge. I had my photos taken (in my sports bra-EEEK) and measurements taken on Monday. It was a scary experience for me but I really believe the end results will make it worthwhile.

It’s eight weeks. I can do anything for eight weeks. After the challenge is over I want to decide what components to keep.

Let’s be honest. Life is too short to not have pasta, or pizza, or gelato. Life’s too short to not taste the wine. But I need to cut down on these things. I’m not taking care of myself and it’s time for that to change.

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I am determined to become stronger than my strongest excuse.

Let’s do this!

xoxo

S

Comments

  1. i’ve never heard about this challenge before in detail…i think it sounds great! i’m definitely trying to exercise more self-control in a lot of these areas. i hate exercising…but 10 minutes a day? there’s no reason i can’t do that. none.
    i’m cheering for you! (and will look forward to hearing about your progress so i’m glad you’re sharing!)

  2. This sounds so intriguing! Please keep us in the online world posted on your experience. I would love to try this but terrified to try it. (Thinking I’ll “fail”) so would love to hear your thoughts and how it’s going. I’ll be rooting for you!

  3. Go Strong Mamma!
    Sweet potatoes are excellent simply roasted with olive oil and salt. Cut ’em up into cubes, toss in a bit of oil, salt and cook in the oven until soft -ish. You might like to toss them a time or too while baking. I never liked them until I had them this way & now they are a favorite.

  5. This sounds amazing!!!!!! And if anyone can do this, it is YOU! I love how you inspire me, and all around you to be a better person, Thank you for that! GO GET’EM GIRL 🙂

  6. I wish you all the best! As you age you tear and injure parts despite your best intentions. All simply because you are aging. So my wish for you is to stay injury free.

  8. Good for you! Good luck! Sweet potatoes are delicious roasted with a little olive oil. I’m following your board & plan to use some of your recipes.

  10. Good luck! I am at 6 months of daily exercise – minimum of 30 minutes a day. It is great. Wishing you all the best on this journey.

  11. This sounds fantastic. Daily exercise makes you feel so good. I was doing that until I injured my back and shoulder. Slowly getting back to it. Next up is my need to sort out my nutrition 🙂

  14. I have a great sweet potato/onion recipe and a bruleed sweet potato recipe (from cooking light) if you’re interested e-mail me. bmeilak at live (dot) com My 20 year old doesn’t like sweet potatoes but will eat these 2 recipes.

  15. I am also doing this challenge through the Move More Eat Well (Cathy Z) group. I have decided to do the Intermediate/Lifestyle too, because the Kick Start looked kind of comfortable. You sound very organised and determined and I think I will go look in your Pinterest Board! Giving up dairy (oh, alright and chocolate) is going to be so hard for me, plus I think I may drown with the amount of water I have to drink (I have to lose quite a lot of weight …)
    I am positive it will be life changing though – good luck to you, too 🙂

  17. You can do it! I need to stop making those lame choices. Although we taste tested VooDoo donuts tonight and I gotta say….yuck. I can do most veggies, quite happily – and my latest happy experiment is grilling them (do they grill in Italy?) but sweet potatoes? They make me gag….

  22. Go, Stephanie! 🙂 I read up on this a little when I saw another blogger (Cathy Z maybe?) write about it and thought it sounded pretty daunting. Power to you all who are accepting this challenge! I think I’m just going to try to add in exercise to my routine — a challenge, since I am lazy when I get home from work and am not a morning person — hahahaha.

  24. Not sure if you are still checking this thread but I am using an app called Plant Nanny. Why not make drinking water fun. Several of us at work are getting a kick out of it.