Are you looking for support on your health and fitness journey? If you are, then this thread is for you.

There are no expectations in this forum. Post as often as you like. Post anything that you feel is relevant to your own personal health and fitness goal. Here are some ideas:

• Monthly health and fitness goal
• Daily health and fitness goal
• Progress (or setbacks) in reaching your goal
• Personal stories about why you are joining this topic
• Healthy recipes that you feel others will enjoy
• Links to articles or books that you feel others would find helpful
• Food Choices (healthy or unhealthy)

Remember, your health and fitness journey is your own. There is no one program, method, or philosophy that is right for everyone. This thread is for support only.

I will be here again this month.  I'll be continuing with what I have been doing so far: mindful eating/more greens, more water, cardio exercise 3 times a week (this is the one I don't always get in and need some more work on ....), walk every day especially when weather permitting, no food after 7 pm, and 10 minutes of abs work outs every morning.  I added the abs work outs for March and just started the second monthly abs program on Peloton.  

Here.  Continuing with my Jan.-Mar. goals and adding "read at least 30 minutes every day."

Not to make reading a chore, but to watch less TV maybe.  There was I time I almost always chose reading over TV.  Now it seems like I only read for a few minutes before I fall asleep at night.  TV has become a bad habit I think, but rather than frame my goal in the negative by saying watch less TV, I will frame it with the positive change instead.

Dropping the push-up goal, although I think it was just for March anyway.

Good morning & Happy first day of April! I sat down this morning & wrote out the habits & goals I want to accomplish this month. Then I took those & put the key words on a calendar so I can check them off daily. 

Lose weight (not on the calendar b/c it's not a daily thing to track, but tracking weekly in a notebook) weighed in today at 125.2, want to be 122 by 4/30

Drink 48 oz of water each day

Exercise 4x/wk

1 pop/day

Quiet time/Bible study each day

Read 10pgs in a success book each day

Fast 8pm-Noon (not on calendar as this is pretty much a habit now since I did it all of March)

Clean something each day--New one this month--I tend to spend a full day cleaning everything & I've decided I want to do a little something each day to avoid spending so much time cleaning all in one day. In other words kind of get in a rotation of cleaning a little each day in order to avoid cleaning a lot in a full day. I also plan for this to help me get decluttering done & things like windows/baseboards/etc..the non-weekly things.

Good morning.  Still here for April.  I love this thread for the accountability it gives me.

Shayla, hope the calendar to track daily is helpful.  I've got a piece of paper on my wall with each months goal (Jan-Apr) so I can be sure I'm not only meeting my current month goal, but also continuing the previous months.

January - Meet step goal 6/7 days per week
February - Prayer-1st thing every morning
March - TV off by 9 p.m. (adjusting for baseball to just watch the game, limiting TV time in general)
April - Read 30 minutes every day (also a goal to limit TV time and choose a book over television)

Raised my step goal by 500 steps, so it's now 9500/day.  Next month I'll raise it again to 10K and probably leave it there.  I am consistently doing this habit.

Prayer habit - I've been pretty consistent, although I modified the goal from my original 10 minutes to just start my day praying before I get out of the bed, and that may be less than 10 minutes some days and more some days.

TV off by 9:00 p.m. - I did this all of March, but am now adjusting that goal to allow me to watch recorded baseball games.  I think most of them will be around 2.5-3 hours if I watch recorded so I can fast forward through commercials.  If I choose to do something other than TV ahead of watching the game, I still achieve the real goal which is to limit television to about 3 hours a day.

And, starting today, choose to read 30 minutes every day.

My IF schedule daily and the gym 3 times a week are well ingrained habits that I don't really need to track, but listing them here helps me feel accountable.

Today's Goals:  IF schedule (eating 7-3); 9500 steps; Limit TV to ~3 hours; Read at least 30 minutes;Start day w/prayer

I'm off to a good beginning today.  I ate horribly yesterday, but I did eat according to my IF schedule and the scale is down a bit (water weight I'm sure).  Hopeful though that Sunday's weigh in will show a bit of a loss and I re-lose the 5 pounds I let myself gain in March.  Might need to set an actual weight loss goal, but for now I'll just try sticking to the IF schedule more diligently.

Happy April. I'm starting out April with a 1.2 lb.  loss from March. Would have liked to have lost more but any loss is a win.

This month my goal is to drop 4 lbs. Would really like to see that happen. I am eating more salad lately so hoping that will help. I'm also drinking more water so that should help too.

Good luck everyone.

You are so right Vicki, any loss is a win.  I didn't do well in March and I ended 2# up from where I started.  Sigh!

April will be better.

Congrats Vicki on the 1.2 pound loss. Keep that momentum going :)

Good job Vicki. I think seeing a loss can encourage us to keep up the good work. 

I love this thread too Lisa.  

Shayla, I like your idea of cleaning one thing a day. 

I weighed in this morning to see how I did in March and I'm 2 lbs lower than March 1st. My goal is to lose two more pounds this month. I am doing a little traveling so that may hinder me. 

I think I set myself up to fail last month with my goals. I wanted to walk 2 miles or bike 3 miles 5 days a week. PLUS a cardio workout 3 times a week. 
I didn't bike at all in March and while I did do a lot of walking I didn't meet my goal. I did one cardio a week. 
 
I have started paying more attention to the rings on my watch. There is an exercise ring that closes once I've done 30 minutes of exercise. I'd like to close it every day but I'm going to set a goal of closing it 4 times a week. I'm a little disappointed that I did a 30 minute bike ride this morning and even though my watch tracked my distance and my heart rate it only gave me 1 minute of exercise.  I see from reading comments online that other people have an issue with that as well. I know I exercised for 30 minutes so I'm going to have to accept that and go on. I'm also going to continue the push-ups.  My arms can certainly use it. I'm thinking of incorporating a plank challenge into my days but I have to research that a little bit more. 
I did a bike ride on Feb 3 and clocked in at 6 mph, on Feb 26 I biked at 7 mph and today my ride was 7.5 mph. I know that is still slow as my husband is always way ahead of me. I tell him to go ahead and then double back to me.  I'm pleased with my progress though.

Thanks again Melissa for keeping this going. 

Nancy, I sometimes feel like my Fitbit doesn't accurately log all my activity/steps, but I also know it sometimes gives me credit for steps that weren't really done.  I guess because the tracker is on my wrist, so a lot of arm movement will count as steps.  Might have been the same thing with the bike ride.  I think you just have to 'know you did 30 minutes' and go with that.

I still need 1700 steps to reach my step goal today.  Since it's almost 5:30 now, I think I'll get them marching in front of something I'm watching on TV.

I did a dedicated 30 minutes of reading this afternoon, but I also read for about 20 minutes this morning before I went to lunch.  Baseball was this afternoon, and not televised, so I'll go with the TV off by 9 goal for tonight.

Hope everyone is having a good day.

Today was a good day & I love a fresh start. I will say my fast from 8pm-Noon is messed up. The boys had basketball tonight...we had to leave the house by 5:30 (didn't have time to eat dinner prior to) so we had to eat dinner afterward which was around 10pm. I did make good choices though by getting something off the lower calorie menu...steak, grilled avocado & grilled asparagus. Other than messing up my fast I met all my goals. My cleaning activity for today was vacuum & mop all the hardwood floors. I got Rob to help..he vacuumed & I mopped.

Tomorrow my fast will be messed up again b/c I have a breakfast at 8:15 I need to attend. I'll eat small & smart at that breakfast & will limit my eating during my Noon-8pm eating time.

I weigh more than I ever have and my pants are starting not to fit. I'm trying not to stress about that and just focus on the good habits.

March 31 was a setback. The antibiotics from earlier were finished on March 30, and I felt fine. But I woke up March 31 and ... its BA-ACK. The infection flared; my face was swollen again and I had a fever. Called dentist and have started on yet ANOTHER round of antibiotics. At least this time it didn't flare to the point where I was in such serious pain. Anyway, just no energy left to address any food goals at all. So here goes:

Jan: gave up diet drinks; this is now done without thinking

Feb: 2 liters water/tea per day; this is still not firmly established, but it gets done almost every day

Mar: not much of a new habit, but I did establish it. I added a thyroid med to my daily routine, which actually only takes seconds, except I had to establish it as done before anything else, since nothing else is to be taken with it.

Apr: I'm going to try the x pushups a day again, just as a challenge, but the new habit I want to add is to record the steps I take in a day. I am not setting a goal yet, because I am not sure what I am doing right now. Also, I use the step count on my phone, which means I have to quit leaving my phone behind, or the steps I take don't get counted! And I still want to do the stretching routine daily. I didn't make it every day in March, but March was really a problem with so many other health issues!

For April 1: phone says 3550 steps. I'm sure that is mostly from the grocery store. I did take more steps, but didn't have phone with me all the time.

Lisa, I do the same thing with most sports that you mentioned... I record and deliberately start later to watch, and then I can fast forward through commercials.

Melissa, thanks for keeping up this topic.

Shayla, I used to have a whole rotation of chores so that I did a little every day. But right now I just attack whatever corner I feel like, and try to get rid of as many items as possible. I'm trying to move as little as possible later this year. Right now I am concentrating on my office at work. I have been in that office for 27 years! And it was very full of stuff. I can see I have made a lot of progress, but there is so much left!

Good afternoon.  I was busy all morning, first making the egg cups I took to the bridal shower, and then being hostess at the bridal shower.  So, just now getting here to check in.

Today's Goals:  Morning Prayer (but it was probably only about 5 minutes); 9500 steps; TV off by 9 p.m.; Read 30 minutes

I'm pretty sure I'll be over the 9500 steps.  I'm tired so the TV off shouldn't be a problem.  I read about 20 minutes this morning, but I'll try to get a dedicated 30 minutes here in a little bit.  I'm sticking to the IF schedule (eating 7-3), but I ate way too much at the shower I think.  I had intended to come home and fix some chicken corn chowder and have that, but decided to skip it.

I'll cook the corn chowder for lunch tomorrow after church.

Margaret, man you are having a time kicking the infection.  So sorry!  Probably a good idea to get a baseline of the steps you are taking now before you set a goal. 

Shayla, life sometimes throws a curveball that messes up the IF schedule.  Sounds like you have been thoughtful about how to manage that so I'm sure you'll be fine.

Welcome everyone! I met my basic goal of losing two pounds. April represents new beginnings. I need to get back to the basics--clean foods. I want to focus on fresh ingredients and lower sodium. My water goal is 33 oz per day. My step goal is 5000 steps per day. I also want to implement a reflection time each day. I will use this forum for reflection. 

Hit my daily goals today, but had to get creative with my fasting/eating. So I usually fast 8pm-Noon, but today had a breakfast to attend. So I ate a small heathty breakfast out at 8:30 a.m., ate 2 pb/oatmeal energy balls (these are homemade & a small, healthy snack) mid day, then I had a dinner to attend tonight at a Mexican place to say goodbye to one of my employees. That was at 4pm so I ate dinner at 4:30pm & haven't & won't eat anymore. Trying to be mindful when I have to switch it up.

It's probably good for me to have to adapt b/c generally I'm a black/white person & don't do well with gray. This eating/fasting schedule on the weekends has been quite gray lately.

The thing I cleaned today was my junk drawer in the kitchen. I need to go to Dollar Tree & get a little tray for pens & then it will be done.

I have a cleaning hack for you...if you have drawers or cupboards that have those gray or black scratch marks from pots & pans or whatever...use Clorox Clean Up...it's in a spray bottle with a mostly green label & has bleach in it. Took the marks right off the bottom of my junk drawer. I'm going to use it on my cabinets soon b/c my crock pot has made all kinds of marks where it sits & gets slid in & out.

I'm here for the month.

Shyla - I will take a stab at your clean up hack - I have several stains in my pantry I need to test this out with.

We will continue our declutter as our move gets more real.  Several showings.  One offer our realtor will prestnt tomorrow.  Her wording we different we have seen so will be open minded.  It is only day 2 of showing.  

Good Morning. I know we can all reach our goals if we want it bad enough.

I'm weighing exactly the same as last Sunday, which means no loss this month so far but I did start the month out with a loss so that's still a win. This month I've been eating a lot of salads which I think is good. Less processed foods and no junk foods at all. I'm still drinking two sodas a day but they are diet so at least I'm not drinking my calories. And I've upped my water intake by 2 bottles a day, which I think is good and will be working to add in another bottle, making it a total of 4 daily.Each bottle is 16.9 oz. so if I manage 4 a day, that equals over 9- 8oz. glasses, which is more than enough, I think.

 Exercise wise, I'm still not doing great. I am getting in a little extra walking but nothing note worthy. This week I will work on getting in a little more exercise.

I have been going to bed a little earlier, trying to get a little more sleep. Some nights I can't stay in the bed all night so I end up out in my recliner for a few hours. That happened last night. I came out to the recliner around 4:30 and slept then til 8am. I had gone to bed at 9:30 but tossed and turned until I got back up at 4:30. Can I count tossing and turning as exercise? LOL !! For my size, tossing and turning IS exercise because it's not easy flipping my body back and forth trying to get in a comfortable position. I have a time with my pillows because I have to sleep slightly elevated or else I get vertigo ( inner ear imbalance), and anyone that sleeps elevated knows, it's hard getting your pillows in just the right position for a good night's sleep. In my recliner, I have a pillow pinned to the chair in the perfect spot for my head and it stays there all the time. Too bad I can't do the same thing in the bed. Oh well, tonight hopefully will be better.

 I hope everyone's goals for this week work perfectly.

I am in for this month. I lost 3 pounds last month.  I was happy with that due to all of the events that I had to attend where food was served and my snacking!

I joined Ideal Protein.  I am going to give it a month to see how I do.  I also bought one of those motivational water bottles that has the times of the day listed.I think this will help me remember to drink.

Congratulations on everyone's progress.  Thank you, Melissa, for keeping this forum going.

Yesterday was a stay at home day, but I did get more accomplished than some Saturdays.

Today was the official weigh in. I'm up  0.6 of a pound over 1/1, but down 8 pounds from the peak from 2 weeks ago, so I'm happy to lose the weight from that issue!

My problem is that I woke up, did some morning things, and went back to bed. Now that I have gotten back up and attended Sunday School via Zoom, I can't remember whether I took my thyroid pill or not, when I was up the first time.

Yesterday the phone only registered 2,263 steps, though I know that is a little low, because I still don't have the habit of always having it with me when I am doing things. Part of this "recording only" habit is to get back the habit of keeping my phone with me. It's also that I'm not ready to set a step goal, but this will help me know where to set it.

Goals for today:

• Reinforce February habit: drink 2 liters of water / tea
• Reinforce March habit: take thyroid med (not sure whether I did this or not)
• April Pushup challenge: do 3 pushups (did wall ones, but that was such cake I did another 3 desk ones.)
• April habit: record steps
• April bonus habit: do the stretching routine

Good afternoon.  Didn't have time to get here before I went to church this morning.

Sunday's is the day I weigh and the day I get a new fasting schedule.  Weight was down 1.5# from last Sunday, which I found amazing since in the middle part of the week I was eating a lot of junk and not sticking that well to the IF schedule.  Probably just water weight from the last couple days when I was "on track," but encouraging anyway.

As for the new IF schedule, the next one it wants to give me has only 1 fasting window and it is a 48 hour window.  The app doesn't seem to have a way to bypass a week, although I can accept it and then modify it to fit what I want to do.  Eventually I'll do that, but I didn't feel like messing with it today.  So, I went to the Fat Killer weeks and got the next schedule there.  I'm not sure why they would be anymore of a fat killer schedule than the regular ones, and my experience hasn't shown that they are, but that's what the ones in that part of the program are called.  It has me basically eating from lunchtime-7:30 p.m. and I did have to back a couple up by an hour so that I could eat at 11:00-11:30.  Some days it starts the eating window at Noon and other days not until like 1:30.  Because it's different every day I really have to look at the app to see what I'm supposed to be doing.  I like the variation sometimes, so we'll see how this week goes.

Ginny, are you moving out of the Denver area?

Vicki, I think you are doing great with slowly increasing your goals.  You'll be more likely to meet them and not feel so overwhelmed.  I aim for 5 bottles of water a day (16.9 oz) bottles or 4 bottles of 20 oz.  It's a LOT of water, but ironically, I've been doing it so long that I actually feel 'off' when I don't drink as much. 

A water bottle with the times of the day listed - sounds kind of cool Renee.  Hope it is helpful.  Congrats on the loss - 3# is very good.

Margaret, down 8 pounds from two weeks ago is phenomenal.  Good job.  I hate when I can't remember if I took a pill or not.  I take enough though that I have them sorted out in a container by day/time.  So, usually it's just a matter of going to the container and seeing if they are gone.  Only hard to keep up when it's a one off type prescription, but even those I sometimes put in the container at the time I need to take them.

Today's Goals:  Morning Prayer (); Read 30 minutes; TV off by 9 p.m. - and I guess do the IF schedule, but that's a piece of cake today because I'm eating from 7:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. (hopefully, not eating all that time, but I could  :))

Sunday is my slacker day and I don't try to do the gym or care about steps.

I see that quite a few of us met our March goals. I did not weigh myself as I weighed yesterday. I will weigh again next Sunday. I did not meet my step goal, but I did reach my water goal.

As we got rid of our scale I have to go by feel of my clothes - which are getting looser.  

Everyone is doing great.  I need to still work on my water consumption.  I guess we cannot count wine consumption as water 

Lisa - we are moving closer to you. We are tired of the snow and cold weather.    We are having a home built in Bulverde.  DH has family / friends in the San Antonio area.  He has a sister near you in Tomball, one in Sugarland,  As TX is one of 17 states the waives property taxes for disabled vets and no state income tax it makes sense to retire there.  Our current taxes are insane.  

So Ginny, I've heard of Bulverde, but don't know exactly where it is.  I'm assuming the Hill Country area.  Our lack of State income tax draws a lot of people here, but our property taxes are insane.  Luckily, you can have those waived, but I guess being a disabled vet isn't really lucky.