Count On Yourself

Week One. Completed.

I told you all earlier that the EA Active 2 goals for this week were 4 workouts, total of 2 hours, and to burn 600 calories in the process. The 4 workouts were no problem. I picked the four days that I thought would be easiest and got up in the 4's a couple of mornings to get them in. I had planned on one of the nights being Wednesday but I put in an extremely long day, out of town, and I was just too exhausted. Even though I did it the next morning, it still counted as a miss, but I did get all four in.

I started to get concerned about the other two goals by the third day. The programs that it had for me didn't last 30 minutes a piece and the anticipated calorie burn was less than 150 each. On the last day, when I discovered the workout was not going to meet the last two goals I actually got angry.

My initial reaction was that the game had set me up to fail. It didn't structure my plan to meet the goals!

And then it hit me. I wasn't supposed to ONLY count on the game. I had to count on myself as well. There was nothing to say I could ONLY do 4 workouts, that was just one of the goals. And, furthermore, the goals for the week were actually 3 separate and distinct goals. Not one collective goal.

It hit me on the last day when I burned up more calories than expected (144 compared to 139). Maybe it was the anger fueling it, but I had pushed myself harder than what was expected of me. I could have been doing it all week.

That would have solved the calorie goal issue. I was less than 50 from that benchmark. The time, though, would have only been met with one extra workout. And not even a long one. Each day the workout got a few minutes longer than the previous so I probably only needed about 15 minutes.

All I needed was to raise my own bar above the expectation. Simple enough. The only person responsible for that is me.

I learned today that I have some control over the setting of the goals. I didn't have to just accept the "trainer's" recommendation. Since I didn't know yesterday that I was supposed to reset the goals myself, yesterday's workout didn't count. So I dialed all the levels back a little to account for it. It's not really cheating, I did the workout. 30 minutes and over 150 calories burned.

3 workouts, 499 calories, and 90 minutes to go.