Tag Archives: fitness

Healthy Living Goals – 2025 Reflection

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Itā€™s that time of year again where I go to my big tracking calendar and add up my totals for the year.

Once again I was very consistent with my workouts and meditation, and Iā€™ve yet again maintained my daily writing for another year. Iā€™ll break a few things down as I reflect on the year.

Workouts: After taking a look at my 2024 calendar, I realize that I havenā€™t missed 2 days in a row in over 2 years. This year I was a little less strict in my definition of a workout, sometimes only doing 15 minutes of cardio, and sometimes not doing both weights and cardio, but still committing to a workout 326/365 days in 2025.

In my 2024 post I said regarding one of two goals, ā€œGain 7-8 pounds of muscleā€¦ Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds.ā€

For the last couple weeks Iā€™ve been bouncing around 173-175 but I hit 178 a couple months ago and Iā€™ll get back there after the holiday break. So, I totally achieved this goal, and couldnā€™t be happier. For 2026 I hope to be in the 183-185 range. I think this is a huge challenge, my body seems to like the 174-176 range and Iā€™ll have to work more on a consistent diet rather than just focusing on weights and training.

Meditation: This is something I need to improve. While statistically I did well with frequency of meditations, about 85-90% of these were done when walking on my treadmill. Although I listened to a guided meditation, I was almost always distracted and allowed my monkey brain to wander instead of truly meditating.

Iā€™m actually not going to try to change this at all in the next 6 months, but once I retire Iā€™ll attempt to meditate for longer, and be more dedicated to meditation. This will include a more formal setup and a setting other than on the treadmill. For now Iā€™ll stick with the status quo.

Daily-Ink: Iā€™ll continue to write every single day for 2026. This started in July 2019, and I have no plans to change this in the short term.

Creativity: This was a failed goal but Iā€™m still happy to track it. I wanted this to increase, but it decreased. Essentially, the only thing I tracked this year was meetings with my uncle where we discuss our Book of Codes project and just as importantly, life, the universe, and everything. Again, Iā€™ll have new goals after retirement, but for now Iā€™m in maintenance mode and just want to keep going as-is.

So, my main goals this year are calorie tracking and building muscle mass. I only want to get to 185lbs, this isnā€™t a plan to keep gaining weight after that. I actually like the weight Iā€™m at right now, but at 58 with a not-so-great back, I realize that Iā€™m one injury away from having to take a few months off and potentially dropping 8-10 pounds. Hopefully such an incident is a couple decades away, but even if itā€™s only 5 years away Iā€™m keenly aware that I will have a much harder time regaining weight in my older years. So if I can sit at 185lbs as my normal weight, I know that I likely wonā€™t drop below 175ā€¦ which again is a weight Iā€™m quite happy to be at.

185lbs by the end of 2026 is my goal, and to get there I will focus on hypertrophy in the gym and a higher protein and calorie intake than I have normally consumed.

Fitness, meditation, and writing are things I no longer need to track to ensure that Iā€™m on track. For this reason, I think I might be retiring my large calendar and stickers. I recently got a Garmin watch with Lifestyle Tracking and Iā€™ll still record these daily, but itā€™s time to put an end to the calendar. It has served me well but having joined a gym, I no longer go to my basement every day and tracking this month has been less diligent since I could go a full week without adding stickers. That said, if you are starting a new goal, I canā€™t recommend this strategy enough.

2026 is going to be a great year of continued progressā€¦ Gradual at first, but picking up speed after my mid-year retirement.

Tracking training

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Iā€™ve got to say that I love my new watch, the Garmin Venu 4. Iā€™ve been very interested in tracking my training, but have only been tracking my number of training days until getting the watch. Now I get to see what my speed and heart rate are during my workouts, among other things.

I try to do most of my workouts in Zone 2, but my watch says Iā€™m actually in Zone 3. My next bit of research is determining if Iā€™m going harder than I should or if I am just in good condition for my age. More data needed before I decide.

Today was my second time with my watch on an interval run. I do a warm up walk then 8 intervals, high intensity for 1:15 and low intensity for 1:10 eight times, then a cool down walk. The high intensity is really just for a minute and about 3 seconds because it takes 12 seconds to get the treadmill from 3.4 at low intensity to a range between 8.6 to 9.4 for my progressively faster high intensity intervals.

Whatā€™s really awesome is getting the data about my workouts from my watch. Here is just some of the data:

This is just my second data point for intervals so Iā€™m creating a baseline from which I can hopefully see progress. Until now my only data has been how tired I feel. Now I can dig a lot deeper and actually see gains. I can also make sure that Iā€™m training at the right pace. High intensity intervals arenā€™t exactly fun. Collecting data on them and getting results to compare over time will make them just a little bit more enjoyable.

Completely unaware

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I recently joined a gym and got a few sessions with a trainer. Itā€™s interesting being taught by a guy younger than my daughters, although I have to say he has an impressive amount of knowledge. The first time I met with him he asked me to track my food, and suggested the app MyFitnessPal, which I dutifully downloaded that night and started using it.

I know how important food is in taking care of myself. I saw the impact of supplementing my protein with a morning shake and paying attention to how much protein I take in. The results have been impressive. And yet I have been blissfully unaware of both the nutritional value and portion sizes of my meals until I had to track what I ate in an app.

I had no idea what 2 cups of pasta looked like on a plate? Not a clue what 2oz of pistachios looks like? Not a hint what the calorie or protein amount is in a Booster Juice AƧai Avalanche Smoothie?

I was clueless.

Today I finally figured out how to connect my new Garmin watch data to MyFitnessPal. I had some issues with signing into both accounts to get them to speak. And now that Iā€™ve figured it out I can identify if my calorie expenditure is more or less than what Iā€™m burning. Again, something I know very little about.

So Iā€™m actively doing something about my cluelessness, and hopefully heading in an even healthier direction. I have already been on a good pathā€¦ yet I still have a lot to learn, and I think diet and tracking of my food has been the missing ingredient in my health journey.

Light but right

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I just joined a gym and they had a great promotion on 5 sessions with a personal trainer, so I took advantage of the deal. Today I met my trainer, but not until after Iā€™d already done the Coquitlam Crunch (3x up, once down – 9 kilometres with 3/4 of the time going up hill).

So I wasnā€™t exactly fresh and ready, but I was excited to get started.

My trainer asked what I wanted to work on. I definitely didnā€™t want to do legs after the crunch, and my buddy and I did a hard chest and back workout yesterday, so I chose shoulders. He had me doing some exercises with 2.5lb weights, and some face pulls that Iā€™d normally do with 60 or 80lbs, but he had me working with 20lbs doing a technique Iā€™d never tried before.

Hereā€™s the thing, I definitely got a good shoulder workout in. I donā€™t need to go heavy, I just needed to focus on technique and to work my muscles in a way that Iā€™m really not used to. It was hard to get a full set in with these light weights and both my form and technique definitely faltered as I progressed.

Itā€™s a nice, humbling reminder that itā€™s better to go light, and do it right, than it is to slap more weight on and have crappy technique. Iā€™d say, ā€˜lesson learnedā€™, but I know thatā€™s actually just an observation rather than a shift in practice. Itā€™s going to take a few more sessions for me to really understand how to push my body properly with lighter weight rather than muscling through workouts sloppily, with heavier weights.

To be ever better you better neverā€¦

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In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares the idea of getting 1% better. Whatā€™s fascinating about this is that the evidence of improvement is not something you see early on.

Going to the gym 6 days a week for 2 weeks will not have your muscles bulging out of your previously loose shirt, but 2 years later you might need a new wardrobe. Reading just 10 minutes a day doesnā€™t make you an avid reader in 2 weeks, but 2 years later youā€™ve read a couple dozen books.

The idea of working to be just 1% better is fantastic, and it has some great long term benefits, with no downside. However, there is one thing to consider and that is avoiding pitfalls that set you backwards. The simple example is that you are making great progress in the gym then you push too hard and get an injury. Now it takes months of rehab before you can get back to where you were before the injury. Thatā€™s a lot of days not getting 1% better. Sometimes these injuries are from pushing too hard, sometimes itā€™s from a simple movement that your body wasnā€™t expecting. These are understandable, and not always avoidable.

On the other hand, sometimes these injuries fall in the ā€˜you better neverā€™ category, fully avoidable and preventable.

You better never pick up a football and throw it to almost your maximum distance without warming up with a dozen or so short passes first.

You better never challenge someone half your age to a race and go from zero to full speed in 12 seconds.

You better never do that Instagram challenge where you contort your body and try to pick something up off the floor with your teeth.

Essentially, you better never do dumb shit that your body used to do easily when you were half your age, letting your ego get ahead of your current abilities.

On a journey to be ever better, you better never choose to do something where 10 seconds of misguided effort sets you back months of consistent progress.

Mind muscle connection

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Iā€™m a poster boy ā€˜non-exampleā€™ of why you should put kids into sports early. I grew up on a tropical island with no organized sports. When I moved to Toronto my parents didnā€™t know that kids were put into things like soccer, baseball, and hockey. The extent of my learning sports came from playing kid-organized baseball and street hockey with friends that lived on my street. No coaches, no lessons, just stick a glove on my (wrong) hand (having only played cricket before moving to Canada) or lend me a hockey stick and Iā€™ll do my best.

I didnā€™t do any organized sports beyond physical education classes until I joined the school water polo team in Grade 11. And then I was deservedly last off the bench for the whole first year because I sucked. The worst part of it was that I had a crappy swim stroke, so not only was I uncoordinated with the ball, I was the slowest person on the team.

But I loved the sport, I trained really hard, and I got to play at a fairly high level, but always as defensive player who learned to watch the play and anticipate what was happening to compensate for my slowness and lack of talent. A few quotes from different coaches:

ā€œIf air were denser than water, you would swim backwards.ā€

ā€œIf the pool was on a 45Ā° angle, youā€™d be the fastest to the top.ā€

And my personal favourite:

ā€œDave, there are two kinds of people in this world, the talented and the hard workersā€¦ You are a hard worker!ā€

Yes, I was the slowest person on the team, but I trained with faster people and was forced to do swim sets where I had half or a third of the rest that everybody else would get. That just made me have incredible cardio, and allowed me to push myself and keep going when others couldnā€™t.

No, I didnā€™t have a lot of talent, but I compensated by really understanding the game. And while some hotheads would try to do more than they were capable of, I understood I had a role to play and coaches learned that they could count on me to play that role.

But itā€™s only the last few years that I realized that my limits and talent didnā€™t come from being talentless, but rather from not really having a good mind-body connection. What it comes down to is: I know what my body is supposed to do, I just donā€™t communicate it well to my body. A great example of this is that when I weight train, rather than really focussing on the muscle that Iā€™m working on, I tend to compensate with my whole body. For example, if Iā€™m trying to do a bicep curl, and Iā€™m struggling on the final set, rather than making a good connection with my bicep what I do is I start to use my body position and shoulder muscles. I compensate with other muscles rather than connect with the muscle Iā€™m supposed to use.

Essentially, when other kids were getting coaching and learning drills that helped them connect their body to their actions, I was at home watching tv, or playing sports without any drills or coaching to help me make that connection. Even living in Barbados, where I swam all the time, I never once had a swim lesson, never got coached, and learned to swim to survive, not to move efficiently or effectively.

I donā€™t regret any of my childhood, I think I had it pretty good when I compare what I had to some of the stories of my friends, but if there is one lesson I can take from this itā€™s to help kids find a physical activity they love and foster their physical growth through that sport or physical activity. It doesnā€™t matter if itā€™s a team sport, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, or swimming. What matters is that at a young age they have an opportunity to be coached about how to make a good connection between their minds and their physical bodies. This simple opportunity, early in life, will pay dividends for a lifetime.

What I need

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Iā€™m going to be joining a gym. I feel that I need to.

Sure I have a pretty good home gym. Sure I have been disciplined, working out on average 6 days a week. Sure itā€™s convenient not to leave the house early in the morning, and not add 25 minutes in my car getting to and from the gym. These are all wonderful perks of working out at home, and theyā€™ve served me well for almost 7 yearsā€¦ but I need something else.

I need the camaraderie of working out with a friend.

I need a facility that will provide me with machines that I can work my legs without putting pressure on my back.

I need a place where Iā€™m motivated to do more than my one-muscle-group workouts Iā€™ve been doing at home.

I need to be around other people working hard to make themselves feel better.

But above all that, what I also need is to rebalance my morning routine to include longer workouts and travel time. Iā€™ve loved my morning routine. Iā€™ve developed great habits where my motivation to get going sits at zero and I still get everything doneā€¦ itā€™s robotic, finish one task, immediately head to the next. Stacked habits that just happen once I wake up in the morning.

This morning I went to the gym for the first time and Iā€™m writing this when Iā€™m usually getting out of the shower to go to work. Iā€™ll be arriving at work later than usual today, not late for work, just later than the norm. I also havenā€™t done my morning meditation, which will need to be moved to the evening. So already I see that things will need to change. And with that change, the autopilot gets turned off.

So, I need to create new systems, a different stacking of my habits, such that it gets re-automated. Iā€™m sure Iā€™ll have to pump up my motivation until that happens, but Iā€™m so ready for this change.

This is what I need right now.

My new watch

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I bought myself a new watch. This is the first time that Iā€™m going to be regularly wearing a watch in over 20 years. I chose the Garmin Venu 4, for a few reasons, mostly related to health tracking. I would have chosen the Apple Watch, but I want sleep data and my family members all have the Apple Watch and end up having to charge it every night. The Venu 4 has a 12 day battery life, and even if I use it on full brightness, Iā€™m sure it will last well over a week, which is something I really wanted.

Right now I feel like I bought a race car and Iā€™m only driving it in a school zone. This watch has so many capabilities that Iā€™m not yet using. Thatā€™s because I got it late yesterday afternoon and I had a dinner function to go to, so I really havenā€™t had time to play with it and set up all the fancy bells and whistles it comes with.

So far what I like is that I can easily check my heart rate. This is an important feature for me because I think that Iā€™m not getting myself into the heart rate zone that I want to be in when Iā€™m on the treadmill. Now Iā€™ll be able to monitor this. Also, the sleep data from last night suggests that most the night I was in a light sleep and I woke up quite a lot. This is something I really want to monitor. I already tend to get only 7 hours sleep a night, Iā€™m hoping I can figure out a way to use that time more effectively, sleeping more deeply. Monitoring my sleep data will help me on that journey.

Iā€™ll be learning more about how to fully take advantage of all the features this watch has over the next few workouts and evenings. My only disappointment so far is that it isnā€™t compatible with Apple Music, because Apple doesnā€™t share music with non-Apple products. But this isnā€™t a huge deal since I keep my phone with me anyway. Other than that, Iā€™m pretty excited to see what this watch can do, and how Iā€™m going to use it to track my health living journey.

Itā€™s time to start

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Iā€™ve been working out between 5-7 times a week for almost 7 years. It has been at least 2 years since I skipped two days in a row. To count a workout I do cardio, a stretch, and pick one muscle group to work pretty hard. Over 95% of my workouts are at home in my small basement gym. It has been a great routine and Iā€™ve enjoyed it.

But I am feeling stuck now. I feel the limits of my small gym. I seem to fall into the trap of focusing in on a few workouts I like and avoiding getting to many muscles that Iā€™d normally work out in a bigger gym. Itā€™s not that I havenā€™t seen gains, I have. The gains just havenā€™t been evenly distributed.

I think itā€™s time for me to sign up at a gym. I feel the need to do more than my home gym provides. I donā€™t yet know how this will upset my morning routine? Maybe Iā€™ll have to write at night? Maybe Iā€™ll do cardio at a different time? Even with just a 15 minute drive to the gym, thatā€™s still a half hour daily of driving to add to my routine.

Iā€™ll admit that Iā€™m a bit apprehensive about changing my morning routine, but I know this is a step I need to take. It will only be a challenge until the end of this school year, when I retire. The question I then ask myself is, why donā€™t I just wait until then to join the gym? The answer is, I just know that now is the right time.

We often spend much of our life waiting for the right time, rather than just doing the thing we want to do. My only holdback right now is that most gyms have deals at Christmas/New Years and Iā€™d rather not pay a lot more than necessary because I didnā€™t wait a few days. Holding off for less than a month seems reasonable. Holding off for 7 months doesnā€™t. Even if I only use the gym 2-4 times a week to start, I think it will fill a void Iā€™ve been feeling with my workouts, and will push me in a way that Iā€™m struggling to push myself after 7 years in my tiny home gym.

Time under tension

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One of the principles of exercising to develop muscle is time under tension. How much time are you working the muscle for?

Learning is similar. For how long are we challenging ourselves before giving up?

Resilience is similar. We cannot strengthen our resilience unless we face things that are challenging us for longer than we could previously tolerate.

I think sometimes we focus too much on making experiences easier, when what we really need is to create greater time under tension.