“I learned how to be mentally though in multiple areas of my life and I became the strongest I ever have been in my entire life.”
Alzheimer’s, heart disease, high cholesterol, obesity and cancer are some of the major health issues mine and my husbands family has been through. Most of these diseases can be prevented or lessened by living a healthy life. This was one of the driving forces for me to live a healthier life. Now that we have a baby girl my husband and I were really wanting to live a healthier life so we can teach her good habits and live a long and healthy life with her. We took this challenge as a learning experience to develop the good healthy habits that we can live by and teach our family for the rest of our life. We live completely different as far as our eating goes. We have gotten in a great routine of planning, prepping, and being prepared with healthy options for our meals. This was the best I have ever been with making healthy choices in my food. I was able to find wonderful recipes that my vegetable hating husband even loved. This system of eating is a major way my life has changed. I have loved feeling prepared with healthy food options. I plan on continuing this system of eating so we can stay healthy as a family.
The second goal of mine during the challenge was to become physically and mentally stronger. I wanted to push myself harder than I ever had in my workouts. Before the challenge started I felt like I hit a plateau in my workouts. I wasn’t beating any of my Tabatas and I was lacking energy in my workouts. I came to the realization that I needed to become mentally tough. This was a learning process throughout the entire challenge and is something I am still working on. My husband was a great example and teacher of this. He always told me the workout is all mental. He would tell me no matter how exhausted I was I needed to have the mindset to give every workout every ounce of energy I had. I also learned great advice at the Advanced fitness class about mental toughness that I have been able to practice in my workouts. One thing I worked on this challenge was staying positive. Before parts of the workout I would state in my head “you can do this” and that would help me. Another thing I learned that I have been practicing this challenge is “Sucking it up and taking it”. Many times I had to push myself out of my comfort zone and do extremely hard things. I would feel exhausted and like I wanted to throw up at times but when this would happen I knew I was being mentally tough and making a difference in my body.
I decided to up my amounts of workouts in the last three weeks of the challenge. I ended up attending or Periscoping 30 workouts in the last three weeks. Some days my body would become really weak and tired and I HAD to be mentally tough in order to get through many of those workouts. Because of this hard work I was able to improve in all of the advance fitness tests by a lot more than I ever thought that I could. I was especially happy and excited with my mile test. I was able to beat my time by 1 min and 31 seconds. It was the fastest time I have ever ran my mile.
I have been able to apply the skill of mental toughness to other areas in my life as well. My life has been busier than it ever has been. With my husband working and going to school full time, me working full time, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of a baby sometimes I would become so overwhelmed. I felt like my plate was so full and I was drowning. I would then think if I can do hard things in my workout I can do hard things in my day to day life. I would have to remember to be positive and stay focused on how important all of these things are in my life and then things would always work out and I could accomplish a lot and not feel as stressed.
This challenge has been more beneficial than the other two challenges I have done. I have learned how to eat heathier as a family. I learned how to be mentally though in multiple areas of my life and I became the strongest I ever have been in my entire life. I am amazed at my accomplishments this challenge and I am excited to keep the hard work up.
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