Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
“Wait, you’re telling me that I can add a meaningful layer to my personality in just one month, all by hash-tagging #30daychallenge whenever I make a social media post, and telling anybody that will listen about my quest for a new healthy habit? I’m in!”
In all seriousness – there was something about a thirty-day challenge that grabbed my interest.
In the past, I had never really encountered issues when it came to setting goals. I grew up playing sports, so I was used to mixing discipline, practice, and planning to set objectives and work towards achieving them.
But the 30-day challenge was hard to ignore – I had seen so many different themes for monthly behavior change in the past year or so, mostly on social media and mostly from fit-personalities, Crossfitters, or the instructor of the local trampoline-fitness class for moms.
I stopped and did a quick mental sweep of my life, and I referred to a daily happiness checklist I had made for myself. The list allowed me to reflect upon and analyze all that I was doing in my day and helped me identify what I could do to contribute to my daily happiness.
After some reflection, I settled on a monthly challenge for myself: consume no refined sugar for 30 days. I typically have a very clean diet – except when I see a bag of candy, then my discipline is nowhere to be found and my blood sugar is through the roof shortly after.
So, I figured why not? Let’s forget about the sweet tooth for the month.
But I realized that a challenge of nothingness is not very interesting. At the end of the month, if I was to be successful with my challenge, I would have consumed a grand total of zero grams of sugar. I don’t know, it just doesn’t sound as good as working towards an actual quantity of something.
So, I decided that I would make this a double-challenge month: consume no refined sugar AND meditate for 30 minutes daily.
I had spent some time meditating in the past, but 30 minutes every day was much more than I was used to. 15 hours over the course of a month seemed like quite a lot, but hey, it was just a monthly challenge – how hard could 30 days of discipline be?
The Over Warm-Up
It was at the beginning of the month that I stumbled upon an Instagram post from the popular fitness authority Paul Carter, otherwise known as LiftRunBang online. The post was about the “over warm-up”, and I realized right away that it applied to what I was doing with my month of discipline.
Carter’s post suggests that one warms up past the weight that they intend to use for the working sets of their workout.
Structuring a warm-up like so primes the body to use the working weight much more efficiently than after a typical warm-up.
It is because of the contrast of the heavier weight that the working weight appears easier to lift. This is where things clicked for me.
What I Learned in 30 Days
I didn’t necessarily want to completely avoid sugar for the rest of my life, and meditating for 30 minutes every single day wasn’t a habit I absolutely needed to have.
But I wanted to form habits of meditating on a more consistent basis, and eating less sugar in general wouldn’t hurt my future self.
I realized that my month of no sugar and a lot of meditation was my unintentional version of an “over warm-up”.
Because I had tried so hard to meet these difficult standards for 30 days, the next 90 would seem easy in comparison, especially if my goals switched on December first to a more reasonable: eat less sugar in general and try to meditate 10-15 minutes every day or two.
Just as the author of this article didn’t necessarily plan on continuing to drink a gallon of water every single day after her challenge was finished, 30 days of doing so made her realize how much better she felt as a fully-hydrated human, leading to her own positive behavior change.
No, I wasn’t perfect. I did end up eating some sugar during the month, and there were times that I missed a day of meditation.
But I realized that the important takeaway from the month was what I got from pursuing my goal, not necessarily achieving it (or not achieving it).
Working towards these goals helped change my habits and helped me learn how great I feel when I take time to focus on my breath instead of running through life in a constant cycle of busy stress and blood sugar peaks and valleys.
I never thought I would be saying this, but after a month like this, I’m looking forward to the next 30-day challenge.
I’ve always understood the value of working towards an objective, but now I have a much fonder appreciation for the process of pursuing a goal, and I place far less emphasis on the outcome.
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