My first 10 day challenge was to eat cleanly for 10 days. I succeeded.

My second 10 day challenge was to drink 60 oz of water a day. I think I succeeded.

First. Why 60 oz? Rule of thumb says 64oz a day. I have a 20oz (3x) bottle, and I rounded off.

But… I found 60 oz way too much. I haven’t been exercising (weather not permitting). So I halved it after the first 4-5 days. I didn’t feel thirsty or dehydrated. And I wasn’t running to the bathroom every 5 minutes. Plus I drink a lot of tea, which I didn’t count (some say pure water only, some say tea counts as water consumption).

Over-analyzing much? Yeah. I think I succeeded and have carried the new habit on throughout the last few days. Like I said in the last post, I can’t believe staying hydrated is a habit I needed to develop.

The goal is to have these 10 days challenges create momentum for permanent change. I kind of relapsed on eating well, but got that back on track. My excuse was that I had to “feed the cold” I got. Lame, I know. But I can’t be too hard on myself… What I was eating was not too too bad (just a little overboard on carbs–not sugar though). But it did take some effort to steer me back in the right direction.

So now I have two challenges checked off, my 3rd is to go to bed and wake up in a disciplined time frame. I would love to simply say “to bed by 11pm, up by 6:30 am,” but having a 2 month old and soon to be 5 year old makes that impossible. This is also tackling 2 habits at once, but I need to get some traction here. I am going to wake at 6:30 no matter what (no snooze, no delaying getting out of bed). And I am going to be all ready for bed at 11. So if the baby goes down, great. If not, at least I don’t waste extra time after he finally goes down. Lately I’ve been up to 12:30-1am, but I could have cut a lot of time if I had gotten ready for bed beforehand. From 11pm on, no TV, phone, computer, etc. All brushed, flossed, etc.

I wanted to have my next challenge be to meditate for 5 minutes a day. This is something I had on my to do/try list for a long time. Not for a real religious or zen experience, but to have it help with my focus. I need to find the time, carve it out, and do it. Without the discipline of getting to bed and waking up, squeezing this in would be too difficult. This will be my next challenge, hopefully.