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Aug 6 Weekly Challenge: No Snowballs
Theme: Healthy Practices Challenge: No Snowballs It all starts innocently enough. You join in your family’s nightly ritual of snacking while watching TV at night, despite a pledge to yourself that you’ll close your food diary and stop eating at 7pm. Or your schedule gets thrown for a loop one day causing you to skip your…
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July 23 Weekly Challenge: HIIT IT
Theme: Exercise and Movement Challenge: HIIT IT! Our challenge this week is to focus on HIIT, or High-Intensity Interval Training. Very likely you’ve heard of HIIT as it’s getting lots of press recently and may even be worthy of its reputation as a miracle exercise that can dramatically slow the aging process. You may…
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July 16 Weekly Challenge: One Small Word
Theme: Greater Happiness Challenge: One Small Word The goal of this week’s challenge is to boost our gratitude for the many gifts and blessings each of us has in our lives. We’ve had gratitude challenges in the past, and we will again, but this week’s challenge has a twist. Let’s see what a difference it makes in what we…
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July Schedule of Challenges!
Can you believe it is almost July??? I hope your summer is off to a great start! I’ve tried to select weekly challenges for July that are easy to work into our often hectic summer schedules. We will continue to have a new weekly challenge each Monday, though I typically post the new challenge on Sunday evening. There may…
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July 2 Weekly Challenge: Bean Counters
Theme: Healthy Eating Challenge: Bean Counters This week’s challenge is the first in a series of challenges we’ll be having periodically. I’m dubbing them, “Blue Zone Challenges”. If you are not familiar with the term Blue Zones, these are specific regions in the world where residents are healthier and live longer than…
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June 25 Weekly Challenge: You Can Quote Me
Theme: Sharing Your Wisdom Challenge: You Can Quote Me Losing weight and becoming a healthier, fitter person doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long-term process. And since it’s a long-term process, it can help to have a regular dose of inspiration. Do you have a favorite quotation that has inspired and motivated you? Maybe…
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May 28 Weekly Challenge: Mindful Eating
Theme: Healthy Eating Challenge: Mindful Eating Our challenge this week is to practice mindful eating at least one meal a day. Since mindful eating is a term that has gained popularity recently but can have lots of different connotations, let's start with a definition: This week, let's focus on really paying attention when…
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June 18 Weekly Challenge: Accident Proof
Theme: Healthy Practices Challenge: Accident Proof This week, let's take a closer look at our homes. Let's do a room by room inventory and look for potential accidents waiting to happen. According to the Home Safety Council, home accidents cause 20,000 deaths in the United States each year, and what's just as striking,…
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June 11 Weekly Challenge: Lots of Squats
Our exercise challenge this week is squats. Bluntly, I know very little about squats, but I do know they’re an important tool in our exercise toolbox. Fortunately, my good friend Jen is a certified personal trainer and health coach and Jen has agreed to help craft our squats challenge. I greatly appreciate Jen’s…
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5/15 Tuesday Day 15 SLBC: What's Working and What's Not?
Theme: Reflections: What's Working and What's Not? Today's Challenge: Today's challenge is to pick any activity that you enjoy that will have you up and moving. While you do your activity, please review your last 2 weeks. What's working and what's not? Are you sitting less and is it become easier and more natural? If not,…
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June Schedule of Challenges!
Well, after a one week post Boot Camp hiatus, our weekly challenges resume here on the Building Healthy Habits group! We’ve got an exciting lineup of challenges planned for June! And since we have some new members in our group, if you’d like to receive an email notification when a new weekly challenge is posted, send me an…
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5/21 Monday Day 21 SLBC: Please Share Your Accomplishments
And now we cross the finish line of Sit Less Boot Camp! Theme: Our Sit Less Accomplishments! Today’s Challenge: On the last day of Sit Less Boot Camp, please share the progress you’ve made in sitting less and moving more. Nothing is too small or too big to be noted and celebrated. And if you’ve encountered some frustration…
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5/19 Saturday Day 19 SLBC: Spring Project 3
Theme: Spring Cleaning Project 3! Today's Challenge: What's the last spring cleaning project will you accomplish today for this month's challenge? We've all got small projects around the house that we've been meaning to get to...now's the time! After this challenge, you will now have completed three house projects that…
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5/20 Sunday Day 20 SLBC: Keeping the Movement Going
Theme: Keeping the Movement Going Today's Challenge: As Sit Less Boot Camp draws to a close, it's a good time to think about what comes next. How is your transition out of the chair going? Are you sitting less and moving more? Are you still practicing your “One Thing” or has it become a habit you just do now without…
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5/18 Friday Day 18 SLBC: The Great Outdoors
Theme: The Great Outdoors Today's Challenge: Outdoor activities offer lots of health benefits. Whether you enjoy going for a walk, run, or bike ride, tending to your garden, doing a little yard work or grass mowing, or participating in sports, getting outside regularly will give you fresh air, sunshine, Vitamin D, and…
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5/17 Thursday Day 17 SLBC: Make Your Day Harder
Theme: Make Your Day Harder Last week I mentioned that there are 3 strategies to keep in mind if you want to make sitting less a lifestyle change. We've already explored 2 of them: Now let's add the third: A colleague might email you about an issue and you respond by going to talk to them in person. You might need to…
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5/16 Wednesday Day 16 SLBC: Stopping Cues
Theme: Stopping Cues Today's Challenge: How we consume media and information certainly has changed over the last few decades. I grew up in the 70s when you couldn't sit for hours and binge watch your favorite TV show or lose track of time completely going down an internet rabbit hole or getting sucked into social media…
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5/14 Monday Day 14 SLBC: Sit Less at Work and Move It Monday
Theme: Sitting Less at Work and Move It Monday! Today's Challenge: Many of us sit a lot at work. For today's challenge, look for ways you can reduce your work-time sitting. Maybe walk over and talk with a co-worker rather than sending them an email? Have a walking meeting? Use a restroom on a different floor or further…
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5/12 & 5/13 SLBC: Spring Project 2 and Weekend
Theme: Spring Cleaning Project 2! Today's Challenge: What Spring project will you accomplish today? We've all got small projects around the house that we've been meaning to get to...let's get it done! It's a great way to keep moving and you'll feel great afterward. Since we don't have a formal challenge this Sunday, I…
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5/8 Tuesday Day 8 SLBC: How's Your One Thing Going?
Theme: How's Your “One Thing” Going? Today's Challenge: You selected one action to focus on this month that should result in you sitting less. How is this priority action going? Is it becoming easier to do and maybe even a habit? For today’s challenge, focus on your “One Thing”. Stick with it and give it some attention…
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5/9 Wednesday Day 9 SLBC: Out of Reach
Theme: Out of Reach Today's Challenge: Where do you keep your phone? Chances are it's kept very close to you – in your pocket, in your purse, or somewhere else within easy grasp. It's handy having our phones and tablets with us all the time, but it also adds to sitting more and moving less. We simply reach for our phones.…
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5/10 Thursday Day 10 SLBC: Up Every Thirty
Theme: Up Every 30! There are 3 strategies to keep in mind if you want to make sitting less a lifestyle change. Selecting and practicing your “One Thing” is an example of the first strategy: My hope is that Boot Camp will be just the beginning and that after you've made your one thing a habit, you'll add another thing, and…
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5/4 Friday Day 4 SLBC: Make Your Plan
Theme: Create Your Sit Less Plan Today's Challenge: Over the last few days we've looked at how bad sitting disease is for our health and we've explored how habits work. We've used the components of habits to create our "One Things" -- a strategy for sitting less that we will prioritize over the rest of Boot Camp. Today's…
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5/11 Friday Day 11 SLBC: Walk This Way
Theme: Walk This Way! Today's Challenge: Ah, walking. Even though we’ve woven walking into several of our daily challenges, walking is such a beneficial activity that it deserves its own spotlight today. Walking is free, requires no special equipment, can be done almost anywhere, and the health benefits are profound.…
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5/7 Monday Day 7 SLBC: Check Your Environment
Theme: Check Your Environment Your environment, the physical space and surroundings that you live and work in, has a big impact on whether you sit most the time or regularly get up and move. Consider your living room. Don't most of the chairs in your living room face the TV? That makes it really easy to sit and stay…
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5/3 Thursday Day 3 SLBC: Choose Your One Thing
Theme: Pick Your 'One Thing' Today’s Challenge: Yesterday's challenge gave us an overview of how habits work and the three components of every habit: the trigger, the routine, and the reward. Today we are going to build on that challenge by selecting just one sit-less action that we will prioritize over the next 3 weeks.…
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5/6 Sunday Day 6 SLBC Weekend
Theme: WEEKEND! Today's Challenge: Enjoy your Sunday but make it an active one. There are lots of ways to keep moving today. Gardening and yard tending, walking with a friend, checking out a local farmer's market or going for a bike ride are a few of the many possibilities! How will you spend today? Supplemental Weekend…
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5/5 Saturday Day 5 SLBC: Spring Project 1
Theme: Spring Cleaning Project 1! Today's Challenge: We've all got small projects around the house that we've been meaning to get to. It might be reorganizing a closet, sweeping the garage, washing the car, preparing the garden, or something else. It's spring cleaning season so let's take a few times this month to finish…
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5/2 Wednesday Day 2 SLBC: How Habits Work
Theme: How Habits Work Today’s Challenge: Since sitting is a habit we want to change, today we are going to explore how habits work and the three components of every habit. There's been a revolution the last 20 years in the scientific understanding of habits and below are some key insights from that research. There's a lot…
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Welcome to Sit Less Boot Camp and a Pre-Challenge Challenge!
Welcome to Sit Less Boot Camp! We will officially begin this Tuesday, May 1 with a series of daily sit-less challenges. I can't wait to begin. So many of you have signed up, sent me email reminder requests, watched the Boot Camp video, and enthusiastically told me that you are IN. Your enthusiasm is very motivating to me!…
