Introducing: the NSHAPE challenge
*This has absolutely zero to do with that one 90s boy band
I've been trying to find ways to establish some sort of baseline of wellness. At the risk of being sucked into diet culture, I've been poking around a lot on the Internet, and of course, there are a million diets and fitness challenges and such.
One that keeps popping up on my radar is the 75 Hard challenge. I'm not going to go over it, because it's easily Google-able, but suffice it to say, I have zero interest in any challenge that doesn't let me read what I want to read. (Plus, I'm already doing a reading challenge this year anyway!) So that's out for me. Also, I don't want to selfie every day, man--I'm not even doing this for aesthetics. The whole idea of the 75 Hard actually made me feel really angry.
I saw that someone created a 75 Soft challenge, which was meant to be like the 75 Hard challenge except it's a little more reasonable and not as hard. Okay. But still not what I'm looking for.
So I decided to make my own challenge. And some people might say that it doesn't feel like a challenge, that it's not hard enough or there are no bragging points to be gained at the end of it, but I think that sticking with it, even when you don't always make the best choices, is the hard part.
I'm calling it the NSHAPE challenge because obviously I'm trying to get in shape, but also because each of those letters represents a goal area that I think contributes towards overall wellness:
N - nutrition
S - sleep
H - hydration
A - activity (as in physical movement)
P - personal enrichment
E - emotional well-being
My challenge is to pick a time frame, and to set one habit for each area above that you're going to work on for that time frame. That's it. I'm not giving any more rules than that because we are all grown and can make rules for our own minds and bodies.
I will, however, share what I'm setting up for myself, in case you need ideas. These are all minimums, btw, so I can definitely go above and beyond if I want to.
- Nutrition: 120g of protein per day. (Note: It was really important to me to set a nutrition goal that was about adding to my daily eating habits and not taking something away. And I think my number is within the window of "protein I should be consuming as a middle-aged athlete but also not an impossibly high amount.")
- Sleep: 7 hours a night. This is always, ALWAYS the one I struggle with the most, and yet, it's the baseline for all things health-related.
- Hydration: 72oz of water a day. Why 72? Because I typically carry a 40oz water bottle and a 32oz water bottle. They fit nicely in my bag *shrug*
- Activity: 30:00, five days a week. This is a pretty general guideline, btw--I didn't make that one up out of thin air. I am making sure to choose activities that I enjoy, and while I have training plans set up for myself, I am prepared to give myself grace if I decide to go off course for the day.
- Personal enrichment: 15:00 of something that I enjoy--knitting, crocheting, sewing, reading, art, language practice
- Emotional well-being: Daily journaling in whatever form--gratitude, brain dumping, memory keeping, art journaling, etc.
