Habits challenge for 21 days, healthy

We were actually going to make this a 30-day challenge, but it’s already the 10th of July, so we’re doing 21 days until the end of the month. The goal of this 21-day challenge is to build healthy habits we’re proud of, self-trust and consistency to do the small beneficial things we keep neglecting in everyday life.

We want to focus for 21 days, but our actual goal is to go beyond that, so that we can see results.

Last year we did a similar challenge for 30 days and what we found out about myself was that we had gotten rebellious over the years. When we were younger, we'd do things we have to do, no questions asked. Now we question, we debate with myself – “we don’t feel like it”. “we're a grown up now, we can choose for myself, thank you.”

During last year’s challenge, when things got hard, we always wanted to give myself options telling myself there’s a way out of this. Basically making excuses.

We found the consistency part SO hard and it wasn’t even big hard things we were trying to do daily. It was the monotony, the consistency.

So this time, our main objective is to build consistency, so that we can see results and changes in our life.

We've not seen good results in a long time because we're constantly pulled in a thousand directions, trying to turn off fires on a daily basis. And we're just tired for no reason, without a good result. And TADAaa – 21-day challenge!

If you’re feeling like you need to change something and to build consistency with it, we'd love for you to join. But, you don’t need to follow everything. Make the challenge your own, fit your own schedule, fitness and life goals. We will report here by the end of every week and hopefully, this will help us stay even more consistent.

Now, off to the habits we're going to be building!

21 Day Healthy Habits Challenge

1. 10k Steps Daily. So we noticed that whenever we stop tracking our steps, we stay around 3-4000 steps a day. Which is sedentary and we almost immediately start gaining weight. Last year, when we did the challenge, we aimed for 10k steps a day and we finally was able to not only stop gaining weight, but also lose 8 pounds during the 30 days. It could be that a sedentary lifestyle promotes insulin resistance, it could be that we're not snacking while we're walking or that we're sleeping SO much better after walking outside. Whatever it is, it works and this will be our main habit to develop.
2. Early Dinner – 6 pm. Unfortunately, eating late – at around 10pm, has become a habit for us over the last few years. And it’s not great for you for multiple reasons – you can’t digest the food properly, you eat more, you can’t go to bed early, you don’t sleep well and you’re more likely to become insulin resistant. We developed that habit, since we've been on our own and also, because we don’t eat much during the day. Which is a bad habit. And that is why this is a big one.
3. Hypernourishment. We want to prioritize getting in more healing nutrients. In this case, we will be doing Dr. Goldner’s Hypernourishment – that means about a pound of dark green or cruciferous raw vegetables, flax or chia seeds for omega-3’s and lots of water. The goal is to reduce inflammation and to optimize your body’s ability to recover by providing all the needed nutrients. Last year we did this hypernourishment for a while, without excluding anything from our diet, and we were feeling great. But a reliable part was, when we checked our blood work, our Hashimoto antibodies had gone from 100 to about 35 for the first time in 5-6 years. And it didn’t feel like a huge change. We will try to do one smoothie and one big salad to make it happen and we hope it helps with our health “complaints”.
4. 8 Hours of Sleep. This has been a struggle, because we stay up until late at night and always try to wake up early. Especially since it’s SO hot outside now, we feel like we can only function from 6-10 am/pm. And sleep hasn’t been great, around 6h/day. Which is too little for us and we're in a bad mood and we seem to gain a lot of belly fat from it too. Add to that our nighttime dinner. Really bad. So we want to get into a consistent routine and if going to bed early doesn’t work, then we'll try siesta.
5. 20-30-Minute Workout. If you’re not already working out, the 10k steps might be exercise enough. But we've been working out almost on a daily basis and we like it, because we don’t have as much neck pain and we feel a lot stronger and more toned when we do it. Nothing huge, just 20-30 minutes of at home workouts with or without weights.
6. Fun! It’s summer, so we want to make the most of it and not just worry about everyday things. We want to enjoy it like we used to, to go to the beach, play sports, try new things, because it’s our favorite season.
7. Blogging. Last but not least, we will be writing a blog post every day. Nothing too crazy. We saw someone’s blog the other day and he had posted every day since at least 2019. And we love it. We want this consistency. The one we had when we first started blogging. When we didn’t overthink everything or tried to optimize it for search engines. We just want to do things we're proud of, that make us happy and where we're feeling creative, not like a robot.

And that’s pretty much it. We’ve got a pretty good day. 21 of them. If we try real hard we might combine some of these habits to be productive, like sleeping and walking. Or sleeping and blogging. We guess the fun can be anywhere.

Challenges Are To Know You

A few weeks ago, we were thinking about this challenge and a thought popped into our mind. It was that challenges are to get to know yourself, to learn about different parts of you. Things you didn’t know. To overcome fears, to overcome “laziness” and boredom and maybe even pride. You learn so much about yourself when you do things outside of your comfort zone and you build self-confidence, self-trust.

Whenever we've done things we didn’t feel like doing at all, we've learned important things about myself. Sometimes, we'd even surprise myself while we're saying things. In a good way. Not in a prideful, but a confident way. So, build consistency, build trust and see what you’re capable of.

It’s weird how we live with ourselves all our lives and we don’t know who we truly are and what we’re capable of. Unconsciously, we put ourselves in these boxes and definitions and stay there. But there’s so much more outside of that box. Maybe you start with this 21-day healthy habits challenge and you discover just how much you’re capable of. You’ll be surprised.

Here’s a recap of the daily habits:

1. 10k Steps
2. Dinner by 6pm
3. Hypernourishment
4. 8 Hours of sleep
5. 20-30 Minute Workout
6. Have Fun
7. Blogging (work on something that’s important to you!)

We will be tracking these every week, you can do this using a planner or just write in any notebook.