April 23 Weekly Challenge: Make Your Week Harder
themedalist
Posts: 3,218 Member
Theme: Exercise and Movement
Challenge: Make Your Week Harder
Let's get moving!
Dr. Mike Evans is a physician who has produced and narrated a series of white board videos on various health topics. One of the concepts he promotes is “Let's Make Our Day Harder” by looking for ways to add a little more movement into our day. Since this is a natural lead-in to Sit Less Boot Camp, let's extend his concept to a full week. Let's look for opportunities to be more active throughout our week.... by taking the stairs, parking further away, and adding a few more steps here and there. With a little practice, it's easy to do. And it can make a big difference in our health.
This Week's Challenge: Watch Dr. Evans' video and then find and implement ways you can be more active throughout your week. Practice these small actions and see which are a good fit for you and something you can sustain.
Challenge: Make Your Week Harder
Let's get moving!
Dr. Mike Evans is a physician who has produced and narrated a series of white board videos on various health topics. One of the concepts he promotes is “Let's Make Our Day Harder” by looking for ways to add a little more movement into our day. Since this is a natural lead-in to Sit Less Boot Camp, let's extend his concept to a full week. Let's look for opportunities to be more active throughout our week.... by taking the stairs, parking further away, and adding a few more steps here and there. With a little practice, it's easy to do. And it can make a big difference in our health.
This Week's Challenge: Watch Dr. Evans' video and then find and implement ways you can be more active throughout your week. Practice these small actions and see which are a good fit for you and something you can sustain.
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Replies
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And it’s Move It Monday!
Please post your Monday workout here:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10637806/move-it-monday-weekly-challenge
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I love this! Today is a rest day for me but I intend on making my day harder. I will come back this evening and add what I did today.6
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Awesome suggestions. I sometimes take the stairs at work, and I park a little further away then I used to. I will try to take the stairs more often, and I'll park a few spots down from where I do now. I'm also going to try for that 15,000 steps a day that Amish women walk. I currently have my goal at 10,000 and 4-5 days outta the week I actually make it. but I'm going to push myself even more.5
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I got off the bus two steps early today and walked much more deliberately. I hit 10k steps about 2. I will try and keep it up all week.7
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I'm a tad bit late this week but I am going to park farther away from my job this week. I take a walk during my break already, so I think I will take a walk after dinner with my husband. I'll do it by myself if he doesnt want to. Lol.3
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Love this challenge.
I park further away, always on purpose
I have changed my morning routine and now instead of sitting to use my laptop I get moving. Use the laptop before bed.
Stopped procrastinating, making myself do the chores and things I need to do instead of complaining about it.
Started strength training again.3 -
Agh, i forgot to park further away, but I'm about to run (drive) to another building for some work and I'll take the stairs -
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Yesterday I made many, many trips up and down the stairs to put things away. Monday is my big weekly cleaning day. All clutter that accumulates during the week gets put away. I usually stack items on the first stair and take things up as I make trips up stairs. Instead of stacking I climbed the stairs each time I had an item that needed to be put away. I also brought up individual loads of laundry instead of waiting to finish all the laundry and then bring it up in a basket. I put each load away as I brought them up from the basement. It was fun and a way to keep the body in motion.
I also park as far back from a business as I can to get more steps in. Dave and I are in couples therapy and he takes the elevator up 3 floors and I take the stairs. He surprised me and walked down the stairs with me last week.
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Wow @PinkyPan1, your steps count must be awesome! I'm still trying to improve. Yesterday I was so tired, I didn't even make 10K, but I'm going to keep going. It improves my mood I don't have any stairs but I'm sure there is something I can do at home to increase my steps. 4
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I like reading your updates! Parking further away has another advantage too: your parking skills can be mediocre as mine are and it doesn’t matter because there are lots of parking spaces and not a lot of competition.7
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I have got off the bus early every day so far, I am making myself walk more, I have more steps in the past few days than last week 5
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My hubby has a classic car, so parking at the end of the lot has been part of my life. But I've improved upon that now by intentionally parking in the farthest lot. I think you idea, @aobhro ,of getting off the bus a couple stops away is brilliant. I'm also chatting with my daughter's as we walk now.6
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Fantastic posts! Thanks for all the suggestions.2
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I've been taking the stairs at work more. There is one building that I work in sometimes with three stories. Taking the stairs used to kill me. Now it's not so bad. Not easy, but not bad.
Plus - non-scale victory - I can do full jumping jacks!!7 -
I have this week used on my steps and on Thursday I really stepped it up on the treadmill walked over a half mile at a faster pace.5
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When I was growing up, my Dad always made life harder in order to get more exercise. My parents have been such good examples. He always parks in the first spot he sees (usually the farthest away) in a parking lot, and when I moved into my college dorm on the 11th floor of the building, we carried all of the furniture, clothes, etc. up 11 flights of stairs instead of using the elevator
Now that I'm an adult I like to make my life harder as well. This past fall we jumped into the busy world of having a milk cow, and I got so busy milking, making cheese, and caring for her that I didn't always have time to exercise. So when I filled her water tank with buckets, 5 gallons at a time, I would run the 150 meters back to our house and do burpees or jumping jacks while someone inside filled up the buckets. I would be sweating buckets by the time I had her 100 gallon tank filled.
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MmamabearR wrote: »I've been taking the stairs at work more. There is one building that I work in sometimes with three stories. Taking the stairs used to kill me. Now it's not so bad. Not easy, but not bad.
Plus - non-scale victory - I can do full jumping jacks!!
Stairs and jumping jacks are both great accomplishments!
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susie_q1968 wrote: »I have this week used on my steps and on Thursday I really stepped it up on the treadmill walked over a half mile at a faster pace.
Wonderful, @susie_q1968! You certainly have embraced our challenge this week!1 -
littlebear0121 wrote: »When I was growing up, my Dad always made life harder in order to get more exercise. My parents have been such good examples. He always parks in the first spot he sees (usually the farthest away) in a parking lot, and when I moved into my college dorm on the 11th floor of the building, we carried all of the furniture, clothes, etc. up 11 flights of stairs instead of using the elevator
Now that I'm an adult I like to make my life harder as well. This past fall we jumped into the busy world of having a milk cow, and I got so busy milking, making cheese, and caring for her that I didn't always have time to exercise. So when I filled her water tank with buckets, 5 gallons at a time, I would run the 150 meters back to our house and do burpees or jumping jacks while someone inside filled up the buckets. I would be sweating buckets by the time I had her 100 gallon tank filled.
Such a great post, @littlebear0121 for so many reasons. Your parents clearly set a good example for you early on and had good habits and practices that made moving more the rule and not the exception. You’ve certainly embraced their move more values.
“Harder choices now, easier choices later. Easier choices now and harder choices later” is certainly true. The lifestyle decisions we make now have a big impact on the kind of life we have later on and whether we maintain our independence and mobility or we don’t. Gotta choose wisely.2 -
Yesterday I needed a couple zippers. I live in a small town where you never know if you'll find what you need so I called the store to ask. They had them. Then I walked to get them. It would have been really easy to get in the car and 15 minutes instead of near an hour. But life needs to be harder, right? Bonus... I didn't use gas or car wear and tear either!
Problem with the threads... I can no longer click on the star either to select or deselect. This is what I get.
Any thoughts?0 -
Yesterday I needed a couple zippers. I live in a small town where you never know if you'll find what you need so I called the store to ask. They had them. Then I walked to get them. It would have been really easy to get in the car and 15 minutes instead of near an hour. But life needs to be harder, right? Bonus... I didn't use gas or car wear and tear either!
Problem with the threads... I can no longer click on the star either to select or deselect. This is what I get.
Any thoughts?
Right now, @bcTRAI, there is a problem on MFP with “starring” the threads you are interested in following so that you get a notification when someone makes a new comment. When you try to star a thread, you get the “You need Vanilla. Discussions. View permission to do that.” error message that you are seeing. The problem is on MFPs end, not yours. They know about the problem, but I’m going to circle back to the MFP Help desk and see if there are any updates.
The extra punctuation in the cryptic error message is priceless.
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@themedalist
Love this!
“Harder choices now, easier choices later. Easier choices now and harder choices later”
When I was having car serviced, I didn’t sit in the verrry nice customer lounge with goodies and free awesome coffee, but put on my sunscreen & hat & walked to a bookstore, browsed, and then took a longer way back
I think a standing desk will be next for me since the only time I sit for long periods is when I’m working on my computer.2 -
Took to the stairs today! I was very happy about that.2
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All week I kept looking for all the little ways to make my day harder. When out in the garden I would take smaller bits of garden cleanup to the trash bag instead of bringing the bag with me to fill up.
Parking far away is always a given with me. My DH always says he needs to pack a lunch to get to where we are going :laugh: if I'm the driver.
I stand up to color sometimes.
Sometimes I'd take a thing at a time to where it belonged when tidying up. Our house is one level and not that spread out, so I have to do everything I can think of to increase activity.
Laundry: When taking clothes off the line I bring in partial loads to increase walking time. I also sometimes bring partial loads to the line, but often I bring the whole load because with it being wet it can get quite heavy, so that is strength exercise, especially when it is my DH's work clothes loads.
I always like the reminder to make my day harder
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texasgardnr wrote: »All week I kept looking for all the little ways to make my day harder. When out in the garden I would take smaller bits of garden cleanup to the trash bag instead of bringing the bag with me to fill up.
Parking far away is always a given with me. My DH always says he needs to pack a lunch to get to where we are going :laugh: if I'm the driver.
I stand up to color sometimes.
Sometimes I'd take a thing at a time to where it belonged when tidying up. Our house is one level and not that spread out, so I have to do everything I can think of to increase activity.
Laundry: When taking clothes off the line I bring in partial loads to increase walking time. I also sometimes bring partial loads to the line, but often I bring the whole load because with it being wet it can get quite heavy, so that is strength exercise, especially when it is my DH's work clothes loads.
I always like the reminder to make my day harder .
:flowerforyou:
I've always thought drying the clothes on a line is such good exercise, and sometimes I miss my clothesline.1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPuRLil4c0
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