Tag Archives: healthy living

Healthy living goals reflection 2021

It’s that time of year again when I look back at my healthy living goals sticker chart, and also plan for next year.

This was the post at the end of 2020. And this was for 2019, the year I started this.

2021 in review:

Workouts: 287days or 78.6%

Writing: Daily blog 100%

Meditation: 346 days or 94.8%

Archery: 129 days or 35.3% (Goal was 100 days so actually 129%.)

This was an awesome year for fitness. I am about 6-8 pounds heavier, with a fair bit of increase in size in my upper body and small but noticeable increases in my quads. I feel fit and strong, and I think I only had a couple minor slow downs from back pain, with minimal recovery time. I still need to stretch more, and I still rely a bit too much on deep massage therapy to keep the pain away, but I know that slow, careful strength progress, and more time using my standing desk at work, has significantly reduced the amount of regular pain I’ve had to deal with in my lower back.

Last year I did one more workout in the year… but it was a leap year so I’m going to call it even. I hope to maintain this next year too. Working out slightly more than 3 out of every 4 days for a full year is an excellent goal.

My daily blog has been going strong since July 2019… and while I could probably stop tracking this, I want to keep it as a goal for next year. The chart is a good motivator, and there is nothing wrong with having one of my goals be something that I commit to every single day.

Meditation: I missed 13 days from January to November, and 6 more in December. It has not been a good month for meditation. My goal this year was supposed to be tracking days when I meditate more than once to increase my time. I did this 6 times in January and didn’t continue. It did not become a habit. This year I want to increase the total time by going longer than 10 minutes on weekends, and doing more self-guided meditations mid week, so that mini lessons on the Calm App are not part of my meditation time. This is a more realistic way to take my daily meditation to the next level.

Archery was a new goal this year and I hoped to shoot a total of 100 days. I’m thrilled that I hit 129 days, and my goal next year will be 120.

So, no new goals next year, just a couple adjustments on my current goals. I do plan to write more, but I’m going to calendar that, rather than chart it. So 2022 will be about keeping the good habits going… if you have a few goals you’d like to track, buy yourself a year long calendar and make it happen! (Here are my tips.)

May your 2022 be amazing!

Head Games

Today I tied my personal best score in archery at 18 metres (20 yards) on a 3 spot Vegas target. I scored a 289 for the 4th time. 290 has been elusive.

My one bad shot was way off. I punched the trigger rather than using back tension to release the arrow. That’s all it takes at this point, one off shot and I don’t break my record. Also, 5 of my 9’s were on my third target. That’s worth noting. But it wasn’t one shot that was my problem, it was my headspace. I had just scored a 287 before this. Then after 4 ends, with two 30’s and two 29’s, I knew that I was ahead of getting 290. I let that get in my head.

I put a lot of pressure on myself and I didn’t perform to the level I could. It wasn’t the one 8, it wasn’t the five 9’s on my third arrow, it was the head games I put myself through when I thought I could beat my record.

This is a part of my sport I need to get better at… reducing the self-imposed pressure and thinking more about just one thing… the shot I’m taking.

290 is in reach, but it need to get there one arrow at a time. More focus on what I’m doing, and less focus on the score.

Push

If I’ve learned one thing about myself, when it comes to physical effort, I’m very externally motivated. Working out in my basement alone, I have to go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to get myself to put out a good effort. Working out with a buddy, I can really push myself. It’s not about competition. Many of my workout buddies have been significantly bigger and stronger than me, and I don’t have the body or muscles to match what they do. But having them there with me is the push I need to give my all.

The same is true in sports. I have to be in just the right frame of mind to give my all in a solo sport. However in a team sport I will do all I need to do to, and more, so that I don’t let the team down. It’s not a part of my personality most people see in my current position, but I literally would do whatever it took to win.

But I’m not on a team sport now. My hobby is archery. I don’t have that push in my day to day. So, my challenge now is to find a way to create that push internally. I worked out in a gym this morning, and there were a couple other people in there. They were doing their own thing and not even in positions where they could see me for most of my workout, and yet I gave far more effort than my workouts alone recently. This isn’t the time for me to join a gym, and my best workout time is before I leave for work each morning, so I’m going to be working out solo 95% of the time or more. I need to figure out ways to push myself. I’m open to suggestions. Music helps, but what strategies do you use to pump up your effort when working out alone?

The 65 percent that makes it happen

I’ve been up for almost an hour and a half. On a regular work day, I would have written this post, meditated, and would be at least half-finished my workout. I’m still lying down with my phone in my hand. I barely have time to write this before heading out to archery (which is good because this is another healthy living goal that I have), But dang, this messes my day up. I’ll need to set a timer for tonight or I’ll forget to meditate. And I don’t know if I’ll have time to work out.

Before imbedding these habits into my work days, I used to only work out regularly during the holidays and would always stop my good routines during my ‘busy times’… and I seemed to get busy a lot! Now I know that my morning routine prepares me for a good day, and sets me up for success during my busiest of times. Then a get on holidays and my routines all fall apart.

This no longer works for me. I need to update my thinking and my habits and routines on my breaks. Saying this ‘out loud’ is a first step, but follow through is important. If I’m occasionally going to skip a workout, that’s ok. If I’m going to miss a morning workout and think about trying to make it up all day, that’s annoying and not very restful. I’m not on holidays from my healthy living goals, and I don’t want to be.

Knowing this isn’t half the battle, it’s the first 10% of the battle. Committing to a routine is the next 65% of the battle… that’s the real work. And the last 25%? That’s the effort put into the routine, and that’s allowed to fluctuate. Committing the time and getting there, that’s the work that brings the rewards… and lets me start my day in a positive way, whether I’m working or on holidays.

Making it public

When you want to see changes in your life, make them public.

I was unsatisfied with my routines, so I shared them here. I followed up with a couple great workouts, where I pushed myself.

A comment on that post inspired another post, and I started a fictional audio book that I had in my cue for the holidays. I listened while eating my dinner, (family was out), doing the dishes, and for an hour and a half of entertainment afterwards. This was far more than I listened to for most of the week.

It’s an easy but important step in achieving your goals. If you want something to happen, if you want to push yourself to meet a goal, then let others know about it. It doesn’t have to be a blog post, it can be a conversation with your spouse or a friend. It an be a challenge with a coworker, (several of my colleagues bought Fitbits and are sharing their step counts with each other).

If you really want to change something, put it out into the world, and see how that motivates you to actually do it!

Waves and fluctuations

I’m an avid audio book listener, and I usually get through almost a book a week unless I am reading something that’s really long, then it could be two weeks. But I just took three weeks to listen to a 5-hour long book, and didn’t feel I got as much out of it as I had hoped.

One of my healthy living goals this year was to shoot arrows 100 days of the year. I’ve far exceeded that target, but last week I only shot once, and I think I might only get to shoot once this week. The long gaps have led me to be more inconsistent and two out of the last three outings have produced some of my lowest scores in months.

I’ve been doing really well in the gym and have added a few pounds in the past few months, but the past couple weeks I’ve been missing a few workouts or I’m working out, but not really pushing myself.

I’ve missed more meditations in the last 6 weeks than I’ve missed for the rest of the year. When I do meditate, it’s more like I am am having a quiet moment to think about random things. I can’t seem to focus on my breath any more than I could when I started my daily meditation routine almost 3 years ago.

I know that I can’t always be doing everything at my best, but usually the fluctuations vary and I am doing some things well while struggling in other areas. The only thing I’m still doing consistently is writing daily… but I’m finding that I’m quite slow and everything else in my morning routine needs to be rushed.

This isn’t some bigger issue that I’m aware of, I’m not feeling depressed or sad. I’m just in the wave trough of effort and enthusiasm of my routines, and hopefully going to move up to the crest soon. It’s just unusual to find myself ‘down here’ in so many aspects at once. I tend to find some balance that is missing. The question is, what do I do to get out of it? Do I focus on just one thing? Do I wake up earlier and give myself more time? Do I just accept the fluctuations and allow myself another week of going through the motions, knowing that I’ll find my way back, knowing that I can’t always bring my ‘A’ game to everything I do?

My indifference to trying to get out of this rut suggests to me that I need to allow myself this time. I’ll make sure that I don’t miss another meditation. I’ll try to see if I can get an extra session of shooting arrows in this week, even if it’s for half the time I usually shoot for. I’ll start a fictional novel even though I usually wait for the holidays to choose a book that I’m not learning from. None of these are huge steps, but each of them offer me an opportunity to move from trough to crest in one of these areas that I seem to be under-performing in.

The Crunch

My buddy Dave and I have a goal to get together every week of the school year and do The Coquitlam Crunch, a 5k round trip up and down the south-facing side of the lower Westwood Plateau. We first did this starting in late January and in August we decided to commit to missing a maximum of 4 weeks the whole school year. We’ve only missed one so far.

Usually we go after school on a Friday, and the last few have been in the dark, because we can’t get there early enough when the days get dark so fast. However, I couldn’t go Friday, and so we went at 8am this morning. According to the thermometer in my car, it was just 2 degrees Celsius when we started, but when you start your walk going up, it doesn’t take long to get warm.

These walks have been one of the things that have helped me get through the last year. Beyond my immediate family, I can count the number of social events I have done during work weeks this year on one or maybe two hands. It has been an isolating experience, and except for another connection through my archery, nothing social is regularly scheduled.

On these walks Dave and I might ‘talk shop’ for a little bit, but then the conversations can go anywhere… and they usually do. Good conversations, good exercise, fresh air, and quality time that has strengthened an already amazing friendship… The Crunch has become a bonding experience and a tradition that probably never would have happened had covid-19 not limited our ability to be social.

It comes down to this

I just deleted 3 paragraphs that led up to me writing this:

If you can’t take care of yourself during your busiest times, then you aren’t actually taking care of yourself.

That’s the whole post. No excuses, no postponing, no making up for it later. Take care of yourself. You’ll get more done and feel better doing it.

Sleep cycle

I know that I don’t sleep enough, and I know that this can have long term health affects, but I can’t seem to get to bed early. And, I continue to wake up before my alarm, no matter what time I decide to wake up. My alarm has gone off once in 3 weeks and it was a night where I decided to change my wake up time during the night, rather than before bed.

But this morning I feel tired even if it was easy to beat my alarm. I actually stayed in bed until my wife’s alarm went off, but that extra time wasn’t restful as I thought about getting writing and meditation done to start the day. I run weight club today at lunch with the students and I’ll get a small workout in so that’s the time I can make up this morning.

I love working late at night. I enjoy the quiet after everyone is in bed. I usually enjoy waking up early and doing more to start my day before most people even wake up. I don’t love that doing both of these things end up giving me 7 or less hours sleep each night. I’m going to try reading in bed at night, and see if I can get myself to sleep earlier.

Just because I can consistently sleep less than 7 hours a night doesn’t mean that I should do so. There’s too much evidence to suggest this isn’t good for my long term health, and it seems silly to spend so much time exercising and taking care of myself, yet undermining my future with a lack of sleep.

Do it for 2 minutes

Taking my own advice here. I’ve been staring at the blank page for nearly 20 minutes with nothing to write. But I just gave a friend who is struggling to exercise regularly some advice. I said do 2 minutes. That’s it. Do a 2 minute workout, but do it. In reality, you’ll do a bit more, but if it’s just 2 minutes, it still keeps the streak going.

Too many people talk themselves out of workouts, or journaling, or reading, or eating healthy… because it’s too much work. It takes too much time. Everyone has two minutes to spare. Everyone has 5 minutes to spare. Everyone can build a habit if the habit starts at 2 minutes.

I’ve already written for more than 2 minutes, now that I’ve actually started. Procrastination isn’t just about putting something off, it’s about stealing time from you, time that could be productive enough to complete the task and still have what would have been more procrastination time left over.

It can start with just 2 minutes.