30 Day Challenge?

I set myself a challenge on the 23rd April. To walk 10,000 steps a day for 30 days. This might not seem a lot to some of you, but for me it was.

I don’t have much of a walking commute to work as I’m about 6 minutes walk both sides of the train station, so can be at my desk with around 1,800 steps completed. Come lunchtime this could be up to 2,000. I always aim to go for a 30 minute walk so this brings me up to around 5,000-5,500 depending on where I have gone. By the time I get home, it could be up to around 6,000 – 7,000 steps. This leaves me with 3,000 – 4,000 steps to find. I run, maybe a couple of times a week at most, so that took care of steps on those days, other days I walked home from the train station before my usual stop but most often I would go for a walk once I got home, so on work days I didn’t have my dinner until I completed my steps, if I was to sit down before completion, getting up would be difficult! 🙂

Weekends were always easier as Scott and I love to go out walking, so we could easily be out for a few hours and do all the steps we needed.

There were a few occasions when I was struggling to get the steps completed, I was at an all day tea party for charity and therefore didn’t do much walking, however, I did manage to get my steps in, it just took walking on the spot for around 3,000 steps. Some may say that’s cheating, but how can it be, it’s still me walking! When we went on holiday, by the time we got to the hotel, my Fitbit, hadn’t synced with local time, so it was a race against the clock as had 30 minutes before it was midnight UK time. But I got the time changed eventually and we went out for a walk and I got my steps in.

I was really pleased to complete the challenge and with a little bit of effort (some days a lot) I moved my ass and felt better for it. It took a bit of planning, particularly if I had an event on in the evenings, but I worked round it, by taking a longer route to where I was going.

It was a good challenge to start off with and I can recommend you give it a try. I would say if you aren’t in a position to do 10,000 then start less, say 6,000 and see how you get on. You could always increase it for another 30 days if you wanted and get up to 10,000 steps. But hey, this is your challenge, as long as you don’t make it too easy and it is a bit of a stretch, then you are stepping out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself.

I am looking at doing another 30 day challenge as I find it is a perfect length of time, not overwhelming and not too short, it keeps me focused and gives me a wee burst of doing doing something fun. Some ideas I have are:

• Complete 5 Spanish lessons daily on duoLingo
• Read at least a chapter a day of my book
• Go for a walk every morning, before work
• Practice yoga daily
• Try new recipes or order dishes I wouldn’t normally have whilst out

The challenges I choose to do, have to be fun, enjoyable and ones I will look forward to completing. There is no point setting a challenge where I hate the task, there will be no inspiration to complete it and it will be a failure straight off. So set yourself something you know you want to do and have fun doing it.

You could have a competition with friends, once you have come up with a challenge you all want to do. It depends how competitive you are!

Obviously you may be looking to push yourself and want to do something like 100 push ups a day or write a chapter of your book a day. Whatever it is you want to do, go for it, make sure the challenge resonates with you and you have a connection with it as this will help drive you to succeed.

If is isn’t going your way and you find you are struggling to succeed, don’t give up just adjust it and keep going. You got this! Everyone is different, so do YOUR 30 day challenge, YOUR way!

Let me know what your 30 day challenges are and how you get on!

Thanks for reading, have a lovely week and look after you!

Love Emma 🙂

xx