It’s that time again. Every month I look at my list of topics, ideas, and thoughts and see what didn’t have the horsepower to materialize into its own blog or newsletter. It’s not to say these three things are any less, they might even be more impactful in a short tense.

Either way, I’ll let you decide that. Here are 3 Things that have been bouncing around my head for the past month...

Enjoy!

1) My workouts have become more satisfying when I stopped thinking about HOW LONG I had to make each workout, and focused on what I wanted to ACCOMPLISH in each workout.

I’m a big fan of goal setting- you know this already because you’ve been sent my action map! I’m a believer that no goal can be too small and when I approach my own training, I set a goal that I want to accomplish in that session. Sometimes it is physical, sometimes it’s strength-based, and sometimes it’s just setting a timer and doing something for 15/20/30 minutes. To make this short story even shorter, set a goal for what you want to accomplish. Work to achieve it. Then get the hell out of the gym and on with your day.

2) My heart rate variability (HRV) and my weight tend to correlate with each other.

If you follow me on Instagram (@Purposeful.Strength) then you’ve probably seen my stories and highlights tracking my own fat loss process. Through my daily weigh-ins and weekly tracking, I’ve noticed that when my Fitbit gives me a high HRV, my scale weight tends to be at its lowest point for the week.

This isn’t too surprising, as HRV will show how well your body is handling stress (having a high HRV is good), so when it’s tracking high and my body is feeling good, I have a weight that doesn’t have a spike or fluctuation.

Morale of the story. Manage your stress and you’ll have a better chance at managing your weight.

3) Use technology to reinforce your floor and track your minimum requirements.

I had a great conversation with a friend last week about technology, specifically, how to make technology less intimidating. This friend of mine just purchased an Apple Watch and hated seeing all of the different bars, rings, circles that tracked steps, movement, calories, etc. After talking to him a little more about the benefits of everything (really shedding some light on why Apple puts them there), the topic came up on changing the metrics to be the floor of what he should do every day.

Hear me out, if a 10k step goal is super intimidating, and it’s something that you have to dramatically alter your life to do (which can be good or bad, but in this case, bad), change the goal to be 7k and know that 7k is the minimum you need to hit in relation to your health and fitness goals. Can you crush 7k and go over 10-12k steps? Sure thing. But if you look at your counter at 7pm and it says 4,267 steps then you know you need to get up and get moving to reach that floor.

Just a little mindset change that can help make technology work better for you.

Until next week, friends!

-Casey