Small Strokes Big Oaks

My yoga studio started a fall fitness challenge today. 21 classes in 30 days, and if you make it, you’re entered into a drawing for some pretty sweet prizes. So, I figured, since I’m looking for a way to kick my butt into shape before Speech season starts, and since I quit my gym membership in favor of only doing yoga, why not? I mean, it’s only 5 days a week (plus one) for a month, right? Right??

Since I’m doing this, I figured I might as well take these next 30 days to really overhaul my routine. Since Emily was born, I’ve had a couple of false starts – trying for a week or so to eat well, then caving and ordering pizza and shoving it in my face because I was too tired to do anything else. Making it to yoga maybe once or twice a week and calling it a win. Not writing, not thinking, not taking care of myself in general.

Not this time. I’m going to start a new routine and it starts today. For one month, I am going to eat food that fuels me rather than just fills me. I am going to go to yoga 21 times to complete the studio’s challenge. And I am going to blog about it.

I started today, which is great, but I’m not feeling any more introspective about it than usual, since Monday is my normal day to get my yoga on. However, as I was practicing tonight, I thought that now would be a good time to set some intentions for this challenge. In yoga, sometimes you set an intention for your practice – a word to meditate on, or a goal you want to accomplish. So here are my intentions for the month:

1. Feel better. This one is just a given.
2. Lose the last 5 baby pounds. (8 if we’re being honest, but I’d be happy with 5.)
3. Sleep more. OK, that’s probably impossible given my schedule, but sleeping better would be a plus.
4. Drink more water. 91 ounces a day. This seems specific, but it’s just a number some app gave me based on my activity levels and age/height/weight, so I’m going with it.
5. Eat better. No dairy, no grains. Nothing that typically makes me feel bloated.

I’m hoping to get a few things out of this with all these goals:

1. Better skin
2. Better fitting pants
3. Better body image
4. Better energy levels
5. Better routine of self-care

These may look like they are in order of least to most important, but they are, in fact, in order from most to least important. Better skin above all, and then the rest will follow.

This sounds like I’m joking. I’m not joking.

I’m going to try to blog about this journey. I won’t blog every day; that’s just unrealistic. But I will try to blog every day I go to yoga, or maybe just a few times a week to check in. We’ll see how it goes. I’m setting the bar low.

Feminists often talk about self-care and how radical it is to take care of yourself and love yourself. Well, I’m about to embark on that journey for the first time since my child was born almost two years ago. I doubt that it will be radical, but I think it might be necessary. They – whoever “they” are – say it takes 21 days to create a habit or something like that?

Well, here’s to a new habit.

Here’s to a better version of me.

Photo Credit: Hamza Butt