#67tybb

It’s the start of the 67 Try Your Best Bitch Challenge!!!! 

(I mean, technically yesterday was the start but I used that for planning and to make up for the timezone difference seeing as I’m 6 hours ahead soooo...)

Here are the guidelines for the challenge ✨

1. Create your "diet" guidelines and stick to them for the entire 67 days 2. 5 hours of physical activity per week (split up) 3. Practice reflection and accountability, look for solutions 4. Hydrate! Drink water 5. Measure your progress whichever way you feel comfortable 6. Read at least one book (fiction or non-fiction, audio or traditional) 7. 10 minutes of a mental health focused activity per day (meditation, journaling, deep breathing, etc.) 8. Try one new thing each week (new recipe, new workout, new hobby)

For this challenge I’m focussing on trying to slowly lose a little weight, improving my flexibility and balance, and trying new recipes! 🔥 Ultimately I want to feel better about my nutrition and become more confident in my cooking, and strengthen and rebalance my body to better support my joints before I restart running and higher impact workouts to prevent doing any more damage to my knees.

I’ve made a little wall chart to map out the days and record my weight, calories, sleep and 5 daily goals (read 10 minutes, duolingo practice, 7+ hours sleep, yoga, post an update here) throughout the challenge! Because it’s quite a long one I’m building in lots of opportunities to reflect and adapt my goals as I figure things out 💪

I’ve also taken body measurements and pictures so I’ll be comparing the progress as we go! Should be an interesting one 🥰

06/06 Update

Hi everyone from me + my silly knees!! Went to the physio this week finally and honestly it was such a relief, the actual movement and flexibility of my knees still looks good and I’ve got a program of exercises to follow now 🦵 It’s mostly focussing on building up the muscles at the backs of my legs and creating a better support structure to make sure I’ll be able to work back up towards running and high impact activity without stressing out other parts of my body. I’ve got a follow up in a few weeks but I’m already feeling a lot more optimistic! 💪💕

To take my mind off not being able to work out like usual I’ve been reading a ton and I started painting again!! This was a tiny card for one of my grandmas, this style really isn’t my strong suit but I’m going to do some portraits and human studies today which I’m much more comfortable with 🎨 Also I spotted hot air balloons from my bedroom today which always feel so magical 🙌✨

Day 15 of 67 try your best bitch challenge!!

Two weeks of the challenge doooooone! I lost 0.3kg/0.6lbs this week which is obviously super minor but I’m not trying to lose more than a few kgs over this whole challenge so small progress is perfect for me 💪 You can’t see any actual changes in the pictures from the start to now as expected (other than like posture), but I thought it’d be interesting anyway to put up some body pics at this stage for reference. They feel so silly to take but I like being able to look back.

Today was a really nice day, went out for a brunch which felt totally ~decadent~ and then lazed around before picking up energy in the evening for an absolutely killer workout! I don’t plan my workouts these days and just choose from a bunch of different youtube channels to fit my mood, and today just happened to get really hyped up 🔥🔥 Went for a night walk after dinner too, just to enjoy the spring air as everything started to cool off for the day. 

Day 27 of 67 try your best bitch challenge!!

Accidentally skipped posting last night because I got too excited catching up on my latest obsession (kingdom: legendary war, anyone? it’s dumb as hell and I can’t get enough of it haha) 😂 but we’re back!! Keeping up with reading, duolingo and eating really well this week, but I couldn’t sleep properly no matter how hard I tried and only managed to squeeze in a few short yoga sessions. On balance it’s going good but it’s so hard to hit all my targets! 

I’m still working out every day, normally rotating between dance workouts, body project workouts, arm/ab sessions and going for walks 🏞 My fitbit has been kind of iffy at recording my heartrate lately which is annoying but I’m at least moving plenty every day! I’m enjoying coming up with cute new foods too, check out this sexy lil blue cheese and fig salad from today 🥰 (don’t worry, I had a whole bowl of roast veg and chickpeas too, this was just an extravagant side dish to spoil myself haha). 

Day 6 of 67 try your best bitch challenge!!

Yo this is a very very quick drunk post!!! We all know a healthy lifestyle is all about balance so this kid did yoga this morning, a full day of work, went out for drinks, got home at 11pm and then did duolingo homework, and is going to still put out a daily post, squeeze in some reading and then get up at 5.50am again tomorrow for yoga before another day of work. 💪😎

You all know by now that I’m a stubborn lil weirdo so I’m going to get as many of my goals in one way or another (except for my sleep goals... they’ve gone all the way out the window this week oops). Promise I’ll do some slow relaxing things this weekend to make up for all the weird stuff I put my body through but honestly this challenge is going well so far! 

Day 5 of 67 try your best bitch challenge!!

Sleepy 6am selfie while setting up for yoga (for @eli-ironcheeks - thanks for the tag!) 💤 Love that it’s light in the morning now while I do this! Honestly never thought I’d be the kind of person who gets up super early to do yoga first thing but yoooo this body is full of surprises 💪

Had a really kick ass day at work today, I feel so lucky to have such a cool job and I’m genuinely really proud of how far I’ve made it over the last ~12 months because so much has changed!! Excited to see where it will go from here 🥰

Update 02/06

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven’t been around much, I keep trying to throw myself back into things and then crashing and burning because there’s too much going on ☔ Work is great but also all-consuming, with people still on furlough and shifts on saturdays I end up absorbing the responsibilities of 2 or 3 other people, plus I’m being trained to cover even more jobs for when my coworkers take their longer holidays over summer. 

☠ 🔥 depressing stuff ahead 🔥 ☠

I finally completely wrecked my knees and had to stop working out totally, and that honestly made me have quite a lot of a breakdown haha. I’ve had to recover from injuries so many times in my journey but I didn’t realise how much I was using exercise as a coping mechanism over lockdown until I tried taking a break to let my knees recover and was hit with the strongest waves of depression and just feeling so, so lost. Frustratingly my knees haven’t really improved at all so I’ve booked to see a physio (tomorrow) to figure out what my next steps are. 

Without my normal routine I’ve been completely chaotically going from extremes in most other stuff in a weird panic, so this last week has been a nightmare for my sleep schedule/eating/hobbies (eg. my bank holiday monday started with me getting up at 5am, taking 2 depression naps at 12 and 6pm and then staying up til 2am even though I had work the next day?? nice one). A lot of the time I’ve flipped between feeling kind of manic because I’ve lost the thing I normally channel my energy into, or completely fuzzy-brained and staring into space for ages. 

So!! Basically I’m tentatively stepping back in to say hi and I’ll let you guys know how recovery goes. I miss you all but it’s hard to find interesting stuff to post when I really can’t work out or stay focussed right now so I’m finding it hard to post at all. I’m still sort of doing the 67 try your best bitch challenge but I think I’ve mostly just learned that long challenges are too hard for me to stick to, so I’ll plan some shorter ones for after this is over.