Dateline 6-24-2016

I've always admitted to living a life of trial and error. Though I get frustrated with the errors I recover pretty quickly and move on to the next trial to mess up and learn from. With time, I almost always end up a bit proud of my mistakes because they've led me down some uncharted roads. 

Though I'm pretty good at rerouting my plans when an error arises in a project I'm passionate about, I often through the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to failing at something I'm only half interested in from the get-go.

Take my latest exercise plan for example. I'm not a big fitness person but I really need to take off this extra weight that I've put on since giving up on having a personal life. I don't care about my looks or even the health benefits of being smaller, I just want to be more comfortable in my everyday life. I want clothes that fit, I want to be able to ride my bike without feeling like I'm going to break it and have less weight to fight the pressure of the springs in my chair.

In the past year, I've started many diets and workout strategies that have been pretty successful up until I fail just once, then I lose interest and give up on going back even though I try.  

I started this month with a diet and fitness plan that went well for quite a while. I drop out of the diet about a week ago after eating what I want at my nephew's graduation party but I kept to my workout routine which was a one month push up challenge along with a one month planking plan. 

Both challenges are based on the idea of starting out small and then working your way up. So, on day one I had to do five push-ups and then plank for 20 seconds. Then on day two I had to do 6 push-ups and plank for 25 seconds. Somedays the count would remain the same and other days I'd get a break, but by the end of the month, I was supposed to be able to do 50 push-ups and plank for 5:00 minutes straight.

I did great up until two days ago when I crashed at 30 push-ups and dropped halfway into a 3:00 minute planking session even though I was able to do 2:30 just fine. I was just going to move forward and try again the next day but I failed again at the same point and since I was no longer sticking to the set schedule, it felt like a fail and I lost the drive to move on.

After thinking about this as I tried to sleep I came up with a new plan that I hope will work for me. From here on out I am going to start every month with a diet challenge and a fitness goal. I'm going to stick to each plan as long as I can and if I fail, I'll rest and start again at the beginning of the next month and keep doing this until I succeed. 

I'm finding that even though I don't complete all of these challenges, I am picking up on healthier habits that I carry over into my non-challenge lifestyle. Even though I'm not sticking to a diet, I'm more conscious about my decisions, even though I'm not sticking to a workout regimen a do fit more fitness into my day.

This means that even though I'm technically allowing myself to give up each month, I wouldn't be going back to my old ways as I wait for the new month to rest the challenge. I think this might be a good way to go because I'd at least be attempting a new strategy each month, but I really need to find a way to live healthier minus the motivation of a challenge.

This concept really works well in my head, we'll see if the trial leads to an error within the next couple months and as always, I'll be here to keep you posted.

Talk to you tomorrow,

- The Wicker Breaker