Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Week 3: somewhere over the rainbow..

Hello Walking On Sunshine Team! I'm Julia, your Week 3 motivator. I was out of town Sunday and Monday, so I am just now getting around to writing this week's challenges!

This week's food challenge is to try to include 3 different colors per day. I was watching Dr. Oz one day (yes, I know it is a nerdy show) and he said a phrase that stuck in my head - he said, "Eat the rainbow." Take a conscious effort to look at your plate and see if you can make it more colorful! Stay away from having too much brown, yellow, and white (unless of course it is something like cauliflower, butternut squash, and a banana). Instead, go for colors like green (asparagus, spinach, celery), red (tomato, apple), orange (tangerine, orange, carrot, sweet potato), and even the more exotic colors blue (blueberries) or purple (eggplant, grapes)... maybe even tie-die, a combo of colors? Whatever you choose, have fun with it. I think the key to eating enough fruits and veggies is VARIETY.

This week's physical activity challenge is to think POSITIVE while exercising!! My greatest barrier to exercising is being in the right mindset. I was jogging at the gym today and I heard a woman telling her friend, "I can't do this, it's too hard." It was a major distraction, mainly because I was about 15 minutes into my run and that is the point where I'm usually like, I've had enough! Every time you catch those thoughts creeping in: "This is too hard," or "I'm going to quit early," then simply try to replace it with a positive thought: "I can do this," or "This will get easier with practice," or "My body needs this." In high school, I had a track coach who had one rule - no complaining! He said, if you think negative thoughts while running, it only makes it harder. When you voice a negative thought out loud, it makes that thought become 100 times more powerful. The same goes for positive thoughts, so it's ok to voice the positive ones out loud!

I will be sharing additional ideas on these challenges throughout the remainder of the week. So far, I've eaten orange and green.. now I'm going to go find one more color! Have a good evening!

1 comment:

  1. What a great way to look at things! I've had orange and purple today, and am planning some red and green for dinner tonight. This is such a fun way to think about getting more freggies in. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete