Project 2020 – Day 0

Hello world!

This will  be my final post of the year. I want to go over a couple of goals more in-depth and get ready for 2020! In the next week I would like to consolidate everything into one place and even prioritize them since not all goals will likely be met.

The thing I wanted to discuss most was diet. I am now back to almost 190 lbs after being at 174 for the marathon in late November (!!!). I honestly can’t believe I put on that much weight that quickly, but here we are.

My fitness/nutrition goals of 2020 will encompass a few things, and they are all interwoven with each other. The goal is to get to 165 lbs (finally) and also run a marathon under four hours. The two are connected since if I get lighter, I will run faster. I also want to focus on better sleep habits and getting 7 hours of sleep a night. Sleeping well will help me recover, which will help me run harder, which will help me lose weight, and so on.

With that in mind, let’s get to the goals:

1. Get to 165 lbs by my birthday in August. How I will do this is by having some sub-goals:
   • Track calories on MyFitnessPal every day of 2020.
   • Bring lunch to work every day of January.
   • No soda/sugar/fried foods until Feb 1. I need a month-long detox from the garbage I have been eating. I have gone way overboard to the point where I feel bloated and like crap every day. I don’t know why I do this! After Feb. 1, I will re-assess my goals and get more specific but here’s some ideas: cheat day once every (other?) week with soda/ice cream/fried foods, but limit it to only that day except for special circumstances. I do better with having good guidelines for eating and not so good when I do whatever I like. In my journey so far, I have struggled with an all-or-nothing mentality toward food. When I am on a good path, I do fine, but that leads to a restriction mindset, so when I re-introduce foods, I overindulge and then end up back at square one. The most important thing is I want to build nutrition habits that I will retain for life. I don’t want this to be a short-term ‘diet’. I want to set up something for years. The most important part of my diet/fitness/health right now is eating/nutrition. Exercise always comes relatively easy to me since I love being active, but eating is much harder for me. This improved nutrition isn’t just for losing weight or fitness. I also have a bad stomach (probably IBS) and if I do not eat well, my digestive system goes crazy and I feel sick, sometimes for a couple of days. When I eat well, I can largely hold my issues in check. Symptoms don’t go completely away, but greatly recede. Over the last month I have been eating like garbage. So this leads me to gaining weight, flaring up my symptoms and even interfering with sleep. I am 41 years old so the most important time to get a handle on nutrition is now. I want to have good habits as I get deeper into middle age. So, as it stands now, I will have a January reset, then incorporate one cheat day a week or once every other week for February and then go from there. I want to have a plan that is moderate, sustainable, and healthy.
2. Sleep 7 hours a night. Sleep is something I am always fighting to have more of. Just this morning, it was extremely difficult to get out of bed even though I slept 7.5 hours. Why? I was at a sleep deficit after not sleeping much the previous week. I will probably always struggle with getting enough sleep but it is time I created good sleep habits. How will I do this?
   • Work nights – no screens after midnight. Books are ok, but no screens/activities after midnight. What is annoying is that I have a second job that goes until 10 pm two nights a week, and it cuts into my free time. I have to cut back on doing things I love like like playing guitar/reading/watching movies. But I have to cut from somewhere if I want to get good sleep. I hope I don’t have to work a second job forever, and I have cut back on hours, but someday I would like to have free time again.
   • Weekends – I don’t feel I have to do too much here. I do like to nap on weekends so I will continue to do that.
3. Run a marathon in the fall under four hours. This is pretty self-explanatory. I want to do a fall race and get back under four hours. So losing weight and sleeping well will help me get there.
4. Work out 15 minutes a day. This is a bit of a novelty goal, but I would like to do a workout for each day of the year. The goal is modest — 15 minutes every day — so it is achievable. I’m going to be pretty open to what a ‘workout’ is in this context. For instance, going out and doing a 15 minute walk would count. It has to be a deliberate 15 minutes of something physical I would not do normally during the day. I really would like to cobble together a bodyweight fitness routine and have that as my default go-to workout. So that’s my goal, 366 days (it’s a leap year!) of 15 minutes a day devoted to exercise is the goal. I do get sick a lot so I don’t know if I will be able to do it, but let’s give it a go.

I do want to do some other things, the foremost among them is getting a new job/career, paying down my student debt even further, and finally earning my blue belt in jiu jitsu. I will post about them in the coming week or two. But I want 2020 to be a fucking awesome year. One of my best years. All it will take is a proper dose of health, fitness, companionship and adventure.

 

Project 2020

Welp. I really dropped the ball here. I haven’t written in six months.

I’m not sure what has happened. I have lost a lot of the energy and drive devoted toward self-improvement. I have fallen into a daily haze of wake up, work, work more, sleep. I’m in a rut and can’t seem to get out of it. I want to get that momentum back, but lately it feels forced.

That said, I am still doing things — last month I ran a marathon and got down to my lowest weight in years — but I need to do more.

I want to get that sense of urgency back. I need to move toward something with focus and intensity. I hate that it seems to have left me. My mental health hasn’t been bad or low, so it’s a bit perplexing as to why this has happened. I’ve just been feeling flat: no fire, no drive, no focus.

I want that to stop. I want to start fighting for something.

With that in mind, I want to come up with some goals as we head into 2020 to be accomplished b the time I turn 42 in August.

1) New job/career. I need to prioritize this! This has to be goal number one. I have been stuck in a rut for too many years. I am literally wasting my time and potential. I would love to have something that either a) pays well or b) pays enough that I can quit my second job. I have done SO LITTLE toward improving this and I don’t understand why. But now is the time to make changes. I hope that I can get some momentum going and finally feel like I am fulfilling my potential.

2) Get under four hours in the marathon. I ran the Philly Marathon at the end of November and got a bit above 4 hours (almost 4:20 lol). I ran a 3:30 marathon in my 20s, and although I may never do that again, I know can get under four hours. I just need to eat right, stay uninjured and I should have a good shot in 2020. I need to drop some weight to get there though, which brings me to my next goal…

3) Get to 165 lbs. And stay there. I got down to 174 right before the marathon but now I am back to 180+. I had it going on for a couple of months and I need to get back to it. This comes down to nutrition, as always. I need to think through a nutrition plan to use to start 2020. I will post something on this in the next week.

4) Lift weights 4 days a week. Pretty self-explanatory. When I was training for the marathon I completely got away from lifting, which is understandable, but I want to get back to lifting consistently as I believe it is a critical part of overall health, especially as we get older. Plus I just like the feeling of being strong.

5) Play guitar 20 minutes a day/write 4 song pop punk EP. I am not a great guitarist and I have never been able to write any songs, but what I can do is be disciplined and play 20 minutes a day. This is a hybrid goal so even if I don’t write any songs, if I play 20 minutes a day I will be playing pretty well by August. I’ve been playing the last few weeks and feel like my skills are coming back. So even if I don’t write a single song, I can play better than I ever have by August.

6) Brazilian jiu jitsu blue belt. I have been threatening to do this for years. I really want to get the damned blue belt. And maybe retire after that. But to finally do it. I think I could do two days a week, Monday-Tuesday-Saturday are all free for me. I think I may be able to finally do this.

OK these are what I am going to start 2020 with. I want to think through a diet and come up with something concrete in the next few days. I also want to take a few minutes to look at my budget, and maybe I can cover that in a subsequent post.

It’ll take time but we’re going far
You and me, yes I know we are
In time we’ll be dancing in the streets all night