Sober October Challenge 2019

Like a lot of people this month, I am going to be attempting Sober October, but if you know me at this point, you will know that I am not really a drinker and in fact drink very sparingly. Instead, I will be using Sober October to compete with a few friends to improve my health and fitness and lose some weight as well. Let’s see what I have planned, shall we?

Step challenge

I love a good step challenge, I compete in my work one every year and always do well. This time I am competing against Victoria’s brother Simon who also likes to have a little dander around too. We pitched this challenge to each other as it should be fairly close and make it competitive. He works in a job where he is on his feet a lot and will generally go for a big walk in the evening with his fiancé, whereas I walk in and out from work and walk during lunch and try to run and walk in the morning or the evening.

We are using Samsung Health to track our steps as I really like the app (even if it is fairly obvious that people cheat using it). One of the reasons I like it is that if you join the monthly challenge, you are on a map and you just move along it depending on your progress. Plus even though I am competing against Simon, I will also be competing against others who are near me as I like having that type of competition.

The loser of the challenge has to pay for dinner for the four of us, so there could be quite a bit on the line here! I have seen his normal steps from September and I know he will try and go all out at the start to try and demoralise, but I know that if I keep it consistent, then I should be able to get past him. Keeping it steady midweek and then going on a big step day on one of the weekend days is my plan. It won’t be slow and steady as I do plan on getting 30,000 steps if possible a day, I also know that this won’t be 100% possible for the month as, you know, life happens. I just hope I don’t annoy Victoria with it! Anyway, I will update every Tuesday on how that is going!

Getting back to the gym

Yoga in September was great and I really enjoyed getting back, but I missed the gym and I missed running and Yoga kind of took over our lives as we were doing it every day! So with a return to the gym and a good bit of running, I am happy to get sorted again into a proper fitness routine. With Victoria moved in, I hope we can get our morning schedule sorted now and we will be using October to get us nice and physically fit before Christmas. Going to have to get our sweat on bae!

It is weird how much I miss certain types of exercises once I stop doing them. I miss running a lot since I have slowed that down in recent years, but a gym is just a happy place where I can just work myself silly and then get all those glorious endorphins for knowing that I worked my body hard and I will see those benefits down the line. I feel that after my walks in and from work already, but jeez how good would a cheeky gym session be as well! All the endorphins!

Eating better

I know Simon has been losing weight for his wedding and has been doing great with that and I think I maybe have been a little too inclined to buy myself treats when I go to the sop, so for October and hopefully for a good while I am going to try and cut that out and get me to drop some serious weight this month. I have targets in mind, but anything over 10 lbs I can only see as a good start. I have a target in mind to lose before Christmas and if I get anywhere near it, it will be a big win or me. I have been slowly losing weight in September and currently reside in a different stone, but the goal is to be back in a different chino size by the end of the month which isn’t too drastic as I was pretty close to it anyway.

I think I was buying things I shouldn’t because I was never prepared for work, but again with Victoria moving in, I should be better at this as I can do some “snack” meal prep for the both of us. I will, of course, go into more details of Victoria moving in and what that means for me at a later time. It just seems to be a good thing for both of us health-wise as we can keep each other accountable.

Anyway, what are you doing for Sober October? If you were already a sober person, then do you have any health challenges in mind? Sober can mean anything nowadays! Thanks for reading.