My two big goals for this month are to complete a 12-core workout challenge and to increase my step count.

16 Weeks Out

  • Core Challenge: 12 Workouts
  • 8-10K step challenge
  • SF 5K?
  • Pushing myself harder in the gym. Lacking motivation. YouTube is helping me

I am back and forth on the SF 5K. It feels like something worth training for, but we’ll see. As of today, I still haven’t signed up, and it’s at the end of next month.

I am feeling something familiar return because I have been lacking motivation and inspiration, so I’ve gone back to YouTube to follow fitness personalities that inspire me.  I am pushing myself harder in the gym and even in my home workouts. Something is brewing.

15 Weeks Out

Prep Season Upgrades

  • Core Challenge: 12 Workouts
  • 8-10K step challenge
  • Add in another Cardio Session in Preparation for the SF 5K
  • Measure out Carbs

Nutrition and Training Updates

  • Stepping it up: Adding another Cardio session in preparation for the SF 5K
  • Measure out Carbs (Rice/potatoes 120g)

Environment and team are everything

This summer, I am concentrating on what I call my “real life”. One of my goals is to join a great team, and I am beginning to see that the great team I want to join is in my “real life.” Yes, it would be great if I joined a great professional team, but it’s even more imperative to join or create a great team in my real life.

I am coming to a clear conclusion that joining a great team isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have because it’s true that the best determinants of “luck” are the people you are surrounded by. It’s the people, stupid!

In the last few years, I have gotten pretty complacent. I have forgotten what it’s like to demand MORE from myself, and that’s true in and out of the gym. I’ve been coasting because my environment has been lackluster and mediocre. This is my own fault for becoming passive and valuing complacency and convenience over growth.

Perhaps I needed this complacency to serve as a wake-up call that I do not need to settle for the short stick.

Before I get too hard on myself, I also know that timing is everything. The pandemic, getting caught up in a church and leaving, losing my mother, and knowing I was ready to transition careers were too much to deal with already, and there was no way I could possibly take on more challenges while trying to deal with all that. I would have just ended up becoming overstimulated and burning out.

Is Optimization Creating Better Health Or Less Resilience?

A great question in the Arnold Schwarzenegger Pump Club Newsletter. The author of this article commented that he woke up one morning, and according to his fitness tracker, he was one step up from dead based on the skulls and crossbones on the device.

The issue was that the author felt good and energized, but the tracker told him he was in bad shape.

He questioned whether, by trying to “optimize” our fitness, we are creating less resilience. Sometimes, to reach that next level, we do need to push ourselves harder.

I had my own experience wondering if a fitness tracker is more distracting than helpful.

The face fell off my Apple Watch, and I didn’t have it for a workout. I kept looking at my wrist, but something funny started happening midway through the workout. I got lost in the music and the actual workout. I was really focused.

I thought I was ready to replace the watch that day, but then I decided to try a week without it. I almost wonder if quantifying everything is making us more distracted and less present.

14 Weeks Out

Prep Season Upgrades

  • Core Challenge: 12 Workouts
  • 8-10K step challenge
  • Add in another Cardio Session in Preparation for the SF 5K
  • Measure out Carbs
  • Making sure to get fat in with meals and not so much with carbs. Better for my blood sugar and cravings
  • The Additional Cardio session per week is fasted
  • Don’t take my phone into my bedroom at night

Nutrition and Training Updates

  • Making sure to get fat in with meals and not so much with carbs. Better for my blood sugar and cravings
  • The Additional Cardio session per week is fasted

Repetition is the answer to greatness

Have I mentioned that I love the Arnold Schwarzenegger Pump Club newsletter? I especially love the calls to action and the reminder that it’s about repetition and doing the boring stuff that will help us move forward. This week I knew exactly what behavior I needed to change for the weekly homework assignment.

Name one basic behavior you’ve gotten inconsistent with. Not a fresh plan, but an old one you half-abandoned, or one you heard about that sounded too basic, that you ignored.  Then do only that for the next 14 days. No additions allowed. Let the results remind you what you already had.

Taking my phone into the bedroom at night. I can make all the excuses I want, but I end up scrolling, and if I have it in my bedroom at night, I wake up and scroll instead of doing my morning routine.

The phone is back out in the living room.

Apple really needs to bring back the iPod because I want to listen to music before bed.

13 Weeks Out

Prep Season Upgrades

  • Core Challenge: 12 Workouts
  • 8-10K step challenge
  • Add in another Cardio Session in Preparation for the SF 5K
  • Measure out Carbs
  • Making sure to get fat in with meals and not so much with carbs. Better for my blood sugar and cravings
  • The Additional Cardio session per week is fasted
  • Don’t take my phone into my bedroom at night

Nutrition and Training Updates

  • Supposedly working on flexibility
  • Got my period, but doing low-impact cardio and stretching for one day, then I was back to reality.

I haven’t done a great job with flexibility this week, so I will keep that as a focus for the next week.

A switch has flipped

It feels like a switch has flipped on. I cannot explain it to you, but I feel a familiar energy returning. I’ve heard from the woo-woo crowd that we are returning to a 2014-15 energy, and I have to say that is tracking for me. I felt a switch flip on in my head, and I’m feeling an energy I haven’t felt in over ten years. It’s the energy of momentum, hope, and the drive to go to the next level.

It really is the workout

A few weeks ago, Arnold said the workout would be the game-changer, and it is. The workout is helping me get my spark back. The workout is what is helping me come alive again and know that something is brewing and taking shape.

It sounds crazy, but sometimes the last ten years feel like a really bad dream I woke up from, because so many people have returned to my life from before 2020.  Unfortunately, I know it wasn’t a bad dream because every day I am hit with the reality that my mother is no longer here.

However, I have felt more glimmers of hope in the last six months than in the previous six years.  Even my gastrointestinal issues are acting right! I give partial credit to Panorama’s sourdough bread. I believe the sourdough cultures are good for those of us with gut issues. The gentleman who sells the bread at the Farmers Market told me that even those with celiac disease who cannot eat wheat can eat their bread with no issues.

I do think that the biggest factor, though, is that I am aligning with my true self. The body does keep score.

12 Weeks Out

Prep Season Upgrades

  • Core Challenge: 12 Workouts
  • 8-10K step challenge
  • Add in another Cardio Session in Preparation for the SF 5K
  • Measure out Carbs
  • Making sure to get fat in with meals and not so much with carbs. Better for my blood sugar and cravings
  • 120-5 Minutes of Cardio Per week
  • 15 Flexibility Workouts this month
  • 2 Days of Fasted AM Cardio and Strength in the afternoon are officially on the table

Nutrition and Training Updates

  • 120-5 Minutes of Cardio Per week
  • 15 Flexibility Workouts this month
  • 2 Days of Fasted AM Cardio and Strength in the afternoon are officially on the table

The goal is 120-125 minutes of Cardio per week. The further we get into the prep, the more that will increase.

It’s also on the table to do AM Cardio and then strength-train in the afternoon, as I did back in the day. I may be ten to fifteen years older, but I can do it and so I will.

This week I did 135 minutes of cardio and only stretched 2 days. This has to improve. My goal is 15 Flexibility workouts this month.

The Fire is Lit

I’ve been watching YouTube videos from some of my favorite women in fitness, like Cyd Gillon, Andrea Shaw, and Lauralie Chapados. Seeing the work these women put in without making excuses has made me want to work harder. I am definitely not on their level, but there’s something about seeing others who are working at a high level that helps light my fire.

I remember the days of Fasted AM cardio and strength training later that day, or maybe teaching classes and still having to train in the gym that day and do cardio. I pushed myself to do more than I ever thought I was capable of, and I need that same kind of fire right now.

When Arnold said the workout would be the difference-maker for the change we’re looking for in our lives, it hit me so hard because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s true for me. Being faithful and pouring my efforts into the workout will lead me to my destiny. Before you think I’m crazy or doing too much, I know it down deep in my bones.

Even though I can’t see it yet, the fire inside has come alive since I committed to what I know is true: this fall will have a major acceleration

Remember, this is a prep season for the Fall Acceleration.  I do not know what is in store this fall. I just know I need to be ready for September.

11 Weeks Out

Prep Season Upgrades

  • Core Challenge: 12 Workouts
  • 8-10K step challenge
  • Add in another Cardio Session in Preparation for the SF 5K
  • Measure out Carbs
  • Making sure to get fat in with meals and not so much with carbs. Better for my blood sugar and cravings
  • The Additional Cardio session per week is fasted
  • Don’t take my phone into my bedroom at night
  • Black Coffee Only

Nutrition and Training Updates

  • Black Coffee only: no more half-and-half
  • Change up Workout Split: 2 Legs Days and 100-120 minutes of Cardio per week

“Why am I even doing this?”

This was my thought on the Arc Trainer one day this last week. There is no event, no prize, no anything, except to complete this 16-week prep season.

Since I started, I have lost about 1-2 pounds, but weight loss isn’t the goal.

The goal is to commit to completion.

The goal is to come into the Fall prepared for major change and acceleration.

It’s not about praise.It’s not about applause

It’s about committing and finishing something I set out to do.

 Little strokes fell great oaks

“Why am I even doing this? Every day is the same. Nothing changes.”

These are the negative thoughts I had this week because I am putting in the work, but nothing appears to be changing. Results aren’t coming fast enough, and I want life to move ahead.

I call this season the void, and others call it the messy middle.

I have the goal.

I have been consistent for a few weeks

Results are lagging behind my efforts.

The middle is where most people quit programs.

I used to tell people in 12-week programs that if you can just make it to Week 9, you’ve made it. Weeks 5-8 are brutal. You’ve come so far, but it still feels like there’s so far to go.  I feel the same way about half marathons. It’s much easier to envision the finish after mile 8.

Little strokes fell great oaks. – Ben Franklin

We’ve been sold a world where everything happens quickly: fast deliveries, fast fashions, a fast track to stardom through going viral, and fast money. As a result, all of us think mild effort should produce quick results. One stroke of the axe and the whole tree should come crashing down.

Life doesn’t work like that.

As Adam wrote in this week’s Pump Club Newsletter, the magic is refusing to quit chipping away at the tree.

“The magic isn’t in any single stroke. It’s in the refusal to stop before the tree comes down. “

 For any goal, the process is what we should focus on, not the results. If we focus on the process of showing up, being consistent, getting the reps and rehearsal in, doing what needs to be done, then the results will follow.

When I was having my moments of doubt during cardio this week, I wondered what the point was because, to be truthful, I don’t have any goals beyond completing the 16 Week prep.

I’ve made up my mind to keep swinging each week.

I have a sense that after the tree comes down, the real results will reveal themselves.

I won’t be doing the SF 5K. I don’t want to pay for it because I have financial goals that I want to hit. If there are other 5K’s in the fall, I may sign up for one of those.

 

Revisiting My Health and Wellness Goals for 2026

  • Prioritizing Healthy Relationships: Reconnecting with my favorite people and meeting new favorite people
  • Reconnecting with my body: Allowing myself to feel again.
  • Living my inner mantra: I am vibrant, and I radiate vitality
  • Continue planning menus and preparing meals to avoid coming home unsure what to do.
    • I now have a calendar in the kitchen where I write down the meals for the week.
  • Fresh Fish once per week
  • Squat 135 easy for 10 reps
  • Lift at least 3 days per week
  • No more Mayonnaise: chocolate, sparkles, a hint of spiciness, and a touch of leopard.