Ashleigh Kidd & Kimberly Bowman | 06-03-2022
Challengers,
That’s a wrap! Congrats team! You absolutely crushed Circuit Breaker, and we’re so proud to be on this journey with you. By now, we know you’ve seen some transformational changes not just physically (inside and out!), but also mentally. You’re likely experiencing better sleep quality, increased strength, a rise in steady energy (goodbye 3pm slump!), and so much more.
As we transition into the challenge maintenance next week, F45 HQ is here to support you and provide you with the best educational resources to stay on track over the next 6-weeks. It’s important to take some time now to reflect on the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the Circuit Breaker. Whether your goal was to improve strength, build aerobic fitness, achieve more quality sleep each night or focus on maintaining a healthy eating routine—reflecting on progress is essential for long-term success.
Maintaining Healthy Habits During Challenge Maintenance
Reflect on your goals, practice your mental fitness, & manage stress
Practicing mental fitness means recognizing changes in your emotional state while working towards your goals. When you start to push yourself out of a comfort zone during repeated bouts of high-intensity training, it’s important to acknowledge and understand that you’re always going to have days where you might feel less motivated. Developing a mental fitness routine can be a great way to help you persevere and stay accountable to your long-term goal, especially on the hard days. Here are some suggestions to help you reflect on your Circuit Breaker goals:
• Remind yourself of why you set your fitness goal from the beginning.
• Write down positive experiences that occurred throughout Circuit Breaker. Was there any specific workout you remember as the most successful?
• Reflect on the hard days where you may have felt less motivated. What factors made those workouts/days particularly difficult or held you back from achieving your best performance? How might you overcome this in the next Challenge?
Stress management
Meditation & breath work are scientifically supported as excellent methods for relieving anxious or stressed feelings. Even just 5 to 10 minutes of meditation or breath work can improve focus and ease anxious thoughts. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog about how you can start to implement meditation and/or breath work into your daily maintenance routine.
Adopt a mindful eating pattern
Adopting mindfulness means becoming more self-aware and focused on the task at hand while eliminating distractions. Research has found that utilizing a mindful eating approach is beneficial for weight maintenance. Specifically, bringing greater awareness towards your personal mealtime behaviors, hunger cues, and overall daily eating pattern has shown to promote healthier overall food choices and reduce mindless snacking. Starting to eat mindfully doesn’t mean completely changing your habits overnight. Before eating, check in with yourself, assess your hunger (on a scale out of 10), and ask what nourishment your body really needs at that moment in time. Turn off the TV and your phone so that you can truly focus on your meal without distractions. When you have finished, take a pause to assess how you are feeling again. Reflect on this compared to the way you would normally eat. Do you normally eat a lot faster? Do you normally eat more than this?
Prioritize a nutritious breakfast
A healthy breakfast is essential for jump-starting metabolism, initiating a productive day, and modulating hunger cravings. To avoid early-afternoon hunger cravings, prepare a healthy breakfast that includes a quality source of fiber and protein and consists of primarily unprocessed, whole foods. Soluble fiber provides bulk and sustenance to your meals which helps to slow down digestion and regulate blood sugar while protein helps to curb appetite and boost satiety. Fiber-packed oatmeal with some fresh fruit and plain greek yogurt is a prime example of a quality breakfast. It’s loaded with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that’ll give you an energy boost while also helping to maintain a healthy blood sugar balance.
Remember you can always refer back to our weekly grocery lists and recipe library for satisfying and nutrient dense meal inspiration (all filtered by dietary preferences, i.e vegetarian, vegan, etc.). Here’s a roundup of our FAVORITE Challenge recipes you can expect to see in the upcoming maintenance phase:
Chocolate Coated Peanut Butter Balls
Serve: 5
Ingredients
120 Gram rolled oats (dry)
80 Gram smooth peanut butter
40 Gram rice malt syrup
1-2 tsp. hot water
30 ml coconut oil (melted (chocolate coating))
8 Gram cacao powder (chocolate coating)
25 ml rice malt syrup (chocolate coating)
Full recipe preparation instructions
Serve: 1
Ingredients
150 Gram canned tuna in spring water (drained)
100 Gram cucumber (chopped)
140 Gram carrot (grated)
160 Gram canned chickpeas (425g = 225g chickpeas, drained) (rinsed and drained)
45 Gram feta cheese (chopped)
15 ml olive oil
3 tbsp. (45ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice
40 Gram baby spinach leaves (chopped)
Pinch himalayan salt & pepper
See recipe for preparation instructions
Serve: 1
Ingredients:
220 Gram chicken breast fillet (raw)
2 x 38g wholegrain bread slices
40 Gram baby spinach leaves
30 Gram red onion (sliced)
50 Gram tomato (sliced)
50 Gram cucumber (sliced)
20 Gram packaged basil pesto
5 ml olive oil (1 tsp.)
50 Gram Camembert Cheese (sliced)
See full recipe for preparation instructions
To learn more, browse the F45 Challenge Blog:
