New Goals: 90 Day Challenge #2

Tomorrow will begin my second 90 Day Challenge. The beginning date is, August 15. The challenge will end on Day 90, November 13. Some big things are going to be happening for me during these 90 days. I turn 26 on August 27. I will be participating in a 50 mile bike ride on my birthday. I also have the City to Shore (Please Donate!) on September 24th & 25th. Then we have Halloween and a big move! My wife got a job in New Jersey, so we’ll be moving at the end of October. This means big changes for us!

I’m excited about this challenge because I’m going to challenge myself in a lot of different ways. You may notice that this is not as much of a “creating good habits” challenge as it is a “health and fitness” challenge. I think I’ve built a good base with the habits I created in my last challenge, and now it’s time to go to the next level and get myself into gear.

For those of you who are creating goals of your own, I advocate for setting anywhere between 3 and 5 goals. I have 4 for this challenge.

Goal 1 – Running

Goal 2 – Push-ups

Goal 3 – Meals

Goal 4 – Weight

Defining the goals:

Goal 1 – Running:

My wife and I have been talking about running a lot lately. Arguably, her favorite form of exercise is running. She even ran the Philadelphia Marathon two years ago. Something that I greatly admire about her. For this running goal, I will be training for a half marathon. My wife would like to join me in this training. We may participate in the Philadelphia Half-Marathon, however, because it’s so expensive, we might also just run a half marathon on our own by mapping our own route.

I will post my training plan when I figure out which one I want to use.

Goal 2 – Push-ups:

I’m realizing that the shape of my upper body is not quite what I want it to be. I also don’t feel as strong as I want to. I don’t enjoy going to the gym anymore. There was a time in my life where going to the gym and pumping iron, so to speak, gave me a lot of enjoyment. But let’s be honest, lifting weights isn’t always practical. It’s also expensive to join a gym. I want to get into the habit of doing body weight workouts in my own home.

My push-up goal is to be able to do 100 push-ups in a single set.

At last glance, my weight was 254 pounds. According to some websites I’ve read, you push up about 66% of your weight. That means with every push-up I do, I’m lifting 167 lbs. Dang. Hopefully that weight goes down quickly during these 90 days. I’m sure the push-ups will be easier if I have less weight to lift!

In order to accomplish this goal, I found a website with a push-up program that I want to complete.  Here is a link: http://hundredpushups.com.

The program runs in a 6 week cycle, however, in order to move up to the next week on some weeks, you’re required to take an exhaustion test. If you pass, you can move on, if you don’t, you repeat the week until you can pass. This gives me an extra 6 weeks to pass through the weeks and meet my goal. Anyone interested in attempting this with me?

Goal 3 – Meals:

I want to create healthy meals for me and my wife. Last week I made a great Mexican inspired meal that I think was pretty healthy, with the exception of the tequila I put in it. Steak with rice and beans and a tequila lime sauce. I also added some jalapeno, red bell pepper, tomato, and cilantro.

 Yeah. I can cook.

I think it’s reasonable to ask myself to come up with an original dish at least once every other week. Since 90 days is approximately 13 weeks, I’ll be setting the goal of creating 7 new healthy, well rounded, meals during these 90 days.

Goal 4 – Weight

Since I didn’t accomplish my goal for weight loss last time, I will attempt it again with the same goal. I want to lose 26 pounds. This is an average of 2 pounds per week. I’m hoping that the half-marathon training along with the training for City to Shore at the end of September will allow me to accomplish this goal a little easier.

Here’s how I’ll be tracking my goals on the side bar.

Running – x/13.1 – x is equal to the longest distance run to that point.

Push-ups – x/100 – x is equal to the highest number of push-ups completed in one set to that point.

Meals – x/7 – x is equal to the number of healthy meals I’ve created to that point.

Weight – x/26 – x is equal to the number of pounds lost to that point.

Starting with a clean slate. All aboard the Matt Train. Here we go! Round 2! WOO WOO!