January in Review

Today I was looking at Olympic Skier Lindsey Vonn’s Lower Body Workout, and I realized that I do all of that as part of Rachel Cosgrove’s workout. Perhaps I will become an Olympic skier soon? I suppose we’ll see in a few weeks when I hit the Alps! 😉

Speaking of Rachel Cosgrove’s workout, it’s time for a check in on my New Year’s resolutions! Wow, can you believe how quickly January went by? This year, instead of waiting till the end of the year to open up my list like a time capsule, I’m trying to keep my resolutions front of mind at all times (for example, I’m keeping all 9 resolutions on a sticky note on my computer desktop where I see them a million times a day). I may not already be 100% successful with all of them, but at least by checking in every month I can see where I’m coming up short and try to adjust my tactics. So, without further ado:

1. Improve posture: take a dance or yoga class/month
I’ve been thinking about my posture a lot, but I haven’t yet taken a dance or yoga class. Oops! Hopefully I can do this in the upcoming month. Otherwise, I’d love to hear some tips for how I can work on my posture other than thinking about it whenever I can and straightening up? I think a lot of the Rachel Cosgrove exercises touch on posture, at least, but I’m still slumping at my desk.

2. Lose weight (work on pullups, plank, weights)
My commitment to Rachel Cosgrove has been pretty darn awesome! Ever since 12/27, I’ve been religiously doing three times a week without fail. Also, ever since probably the third workout, I’ve even done the warmup every single time – who would have ever thought that I’d get in the habit of warming up?! As far as progress, here are a few examples of how I changed from week 1 to week 6:
-Went from three point dumbbell row with 8 pounds to two point dumbbell row (meaning taking away the supporting hand0 with 30 pounds
-Went from very steep incline pushups to flat-on-the-floor T-pushups with 5 pound dumbbells
-Went from overhead squats with 15 pounds to dumbbell squats with an offset load of 40 pounds
-Went from single leg deadlifts with 15 pounds to single leg deadlifts with 50 pounds
-Went from doing one plank of 45 seconds to THREE planks of 2 minutes each (now, just to to put it all together to reach my goal of a 5 minute plank!)
-Went from woodchops with two hands on a 5 pound dumbbell to woodchops with one hand on a 25 pound dumbbell
So… overall, I am ROCKING this weight lifting routine! I am so excited about the changes I’ve seen in my body thus far, and can’t wait to see how much more it’s going to change as I start to get more on track on the dietary front (tougher than the workouts for me!).

3. Read 100 books
I read 8 books in January, which puts me on track to read 96 books this year. If I can step it up just a little bit more, I’ll be right on track. If I can’t, no biggie – 96 books this year would still be pretty awesome 🙂 The point is just to encourage myself to read more. Favorite books of the year so far: Crashers for fiction (think Dan Brown meets airline investigations – can you see why I loved it?), and Medium Raw for non-fiction (Anthony Bourdain’s essays on food – I am turning into quite the little foodie lately, so I ate this up).

4. Visit 4 new countries
Visited the Bahamas mid-month to run the marathon, which counts as one new country. Visited Mexico at the end of the month, but I had already been there. Still, that’s 1/4 of the way done – not bad for only one month into the year! And I booked myself to visit Switzerland, France, and Spain in just two weeks, so that will accomplish the goal right there. Woo hoo!

5. Stop swearing
Still a work in progress, but my goal is really just to avoid it as an automatic response to bad things… which is going decently. I think I need to come up with some alternate words that I think sound cute and fit my personality. This month: will try experimenting with that.

6. Floss
Woo hoo! Habit formed. Unfortunately, habit also broken about halfway through the month when I ran out and didn’t make it to a drugstore for a few days… but now that I stocked up, I’ll be back on the wagon. I feel pretty confident about this one.

7. 7 hours sleep/night
This kind of fell by the wayside when I was at the Dew Tour in Vermont with my brothers, but I’m trying to get back to it. I still think 7 hours of sleep is a good goal; I just haven’t been fully willing to make the commitment to carry it out. I can’t imagine this action-packed weekend in New York is going to be any better, but we’ll see…

8. Clean room and redo living room
Haven’t been home enough to do this one! I’ve only been home five days this month, believe it or not… I think my bed misses me. I am definitely looking forward to spending this whole weekend at home, Thursday through Sunday!

9. Put myself out there at least once/week
Hmmm. I’m not sure that I’ve necessarily “put myself out there” once/week, but I’ve been more active with online dating, and I have two dates lined up for this weekend when I’m home. Should be fun! I do want to get back to this “once a week do something quantifiable” idea though – I think it will really help me to stay focused.

What about you? How are your New Year’s resolutions and workout routines going?