At the beginning of May, I set out to burn 31,000 calories throughout the month, equating to burning 1,000 calories per day. Despite my optimism going into the month and plans for some mammoth workouts, often with these sorts of challenges, life gets in the way. Well I say life, but I suppose it’s a combination of life in addition to a good dose of laziness!
As you can see from the results below, I fell some 10,492 calories short of my goal of burning 31,000 calories. All in all, I’m a bit disappointed with my results. Whilst I was a bit more active throughout the month than usual, I undoubtedly lacked consistency. Granted, May was surprisingly wetter than usual and there were a few days in which I forgot to charge my Apple Watch fully (doh!), but that doesn’t excuse for the overall inconsistencies throughout the month.
If we look at the individual days in which I burned calories, the period from 15th May to 17th May was where I burnt the most calories and this can be pinpointed to a trip to Scotland. Prior to going to Scotland, I knew I was going to hit at least 1,000 calories a day as this was a primarily a hiking trip in which we were taking our full-of-energy Border Collie. Regardless, the sense of achievement on the 17th when I checked my Apple Watch felt great and definitely emphasised the feeling of accomplishment you can get from exercise.
On the flip side, if we look at some of the worst calorie burning days in the month, the 22nd and 23rd of May were simply awful. I took my Apple Watch off early in the day of the 22nd as I was going out with friends for a few drinks, hence the low-calorie burning count. On the 23rd, I was sporting a rather painful self-inflected hangover, so the only real exercise I did was getting up from the sofa and walking to the fridge!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, consistency is key when it comes to these sorts of challenges. You need to get off on the front foot right at the beginning of the month and have a dedicated workout regime and not take the “oh the weather looks nice, let’s go for a run” technique which I adopted. I’m frustrated at my overall lack of urgency for the challenge as prior to starting it, I was quietly confident.
Despite falling so short on my calorie burning goal, I still enjoyed the challenge and those moments of satisfaction like checking my watch during the day and seeing that I wasn’t a million miles away from my daily goal, felt great. I think if I was to do this challenge again, I would certainly formulate a manageable routine and maybe not set the bar so high!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my calorie burning challenge! Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever tried anything like this before and how you got on.
chazzabrown 