60 days ago, AM challenged me to a walking challenge. Today, I have completed the challenge. Because I messed up my knee (something about bursitis), my doctor recommended that I walk for 20 minutes a day, as just light exercise to get the knee going and work out some of the muscles. AM said that if we created a routine, a daily regime of walking, I could buy myself one small fitness item that will help me continue to get healthier. That item is a FitBit.
I have been trying to track my steps, exercise and diet on my phone, but I am beginning to find that it drains my battery pretty quickly and it's not really all that constant. I have to have the phone with me, it can't be on the charger, if I want to track the steps that I take. While they have apps for it, there are no really good apps to track your sleep patterns and sleep quality. The Fitbit promises to do all that. It's a gadgety thing that goes in a wristband that you keep on you at all times and tracks everything you do and then syncs wirelessly to your phone or computer or whatever to help you track. And I get this neat little gadget probably tomorrow (if I can find money in my budget for it) because I kept a goal and I stuck to it for 60 days.
They say that it takes 27 times of doing something in the same way to create a habit. 60 seems excessive, but it works for me. I feel wrong if I don't do my walking every night now. In the last 60 days, I have walked. Sometimes I walked during the morning, sometimes I walked in the evenings. Sometimes, after coming home from gaming or a movie or just hanging out with our friends, we have walked past midnight. The track that we take is simply around our apartment complex, two laps, which equals roughly between 2/5 and 1/2 a mile. I didn't always walk in the apartment complex. Sometimes on rainy days I would walk the same approximate distance twice around the grocery store from the produce section to the bakery section and back. Most of my random zombie walks down to the market and back counted for my walk for the day. Some days I exceeded my half mile by a lot, and sometimes I barely made it, either because of injury or illness (when you can't breathe for coughing, it may not be the best time to walk). But I made it.
I finished my challenge tonight with one last walk past the mostly brightly lit windows around the apartment complex. Inside, families and friends were going about their business, most of them watching television, or gathered in some other fashion. Some were using computers, and some were cooking a late meal. Over the last 60 days, I have gotten to know some of these people. The gentleman in the balcony on the opposite building always smiles and tells us to have a nice evening. A young mother yesterday told us that she felt it was a strange day when she didn't get a chance to say hello to us. Though we don't know names, only faces and location, our walks have helped us get to know our neighbors and our neighborhood better.
My next challenge is not to end the walks, but to continue them and add some more to them. Another lap perhaps, or some weight training that my doctor recommends for weight loss. Perhaps I will do both, but I know that I can create and maintain a habit for 60 days, and I plan on making more plans to become even healthier.
What do you plan to do with the next 60 days?
Love and Lollipops,
ToryLynn
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Monday, May 28, 2012
Episode 61: Experimentation
A while ago, for Christmas, AM got me a great little book called Cutie Pies. My cousin, John, decided to make an apple pie this week, and it sounded so good (and I am too far away from Arizona to go and try his), I decided to make my own.
Rather than go with the traditional apple pie and crust, since I don't even think I am capable of latticing a crust as well as John, I chose to make a Sour Cream Apple Pie. The recipe can be found here Sour Cream Apple Pie Deluxe, with a few minor tweaks. Rather than use sour cream, which I don't actually have any of, I used plain full fat yogurt. This added a bit of a tang that was really taken care of by the sugar in the mix. A pretty good addition, I think. Instead of using white sugar in the topping, I used brown sugar, which is my favorite sugar.
The pie crust I got from the Cutie Pies book and used a 6 inch pie shape to cut the pie crusts, which I pushed into buttered muffin tins. Added the filling and the topping, and put in a 375 degree oven. I checked on the pies every 5 minutes or so, and it took about 25 minutes for the crust to get golden brown and the topping to set just right.
AM says they're wonderful, and went back for seconds (which he split with me), and we have 9 little pies left over in the fridge for a future dessert craving.
Yay for little pies!
May you find your own world to experiment with this week. Let me know what you've done to free some creativity!
Love and Lollipops,
ToryLynn
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