2017-02-26
in
4 min read
Phase 1 of 2017’s Goal Accountability project was a disaster, as I chronicled here . Phase 1 ended weak, really non-existent adherence, which rolled into Phase 2 beginning equally weak; but I got my butt in gear one week in and finished it strong!
I don’t know why after three weeks of dutifully grading my piss poor performance every day I finally got my butt into gear but that is exactly what happened. I’m sure that breaking 200 pounds had something to do with it, along with the commensurate fat gain. It could have been my overall feeling not healthy. I think it could have been also reflecting on a friend just a couple years older than me having a massive nearly fatal heart attack at the end of January (now, why that didn’t kick my butt in gear at that exact moment is beyond me). Either way, the accountability thing actually started working and I went from getting failing to low-C level grades to consistent high B’s and A’s. All that definitely shows in the grade improvements.
To recap, the five goals I’m actively grading myself against are:
- Goal 1: Dial in the diet to be ~80/20 rule plant based whole foods diet. Think “Eat-to-Live” mainstream diet method.
- Goal 2: Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
- Goal 3: Physical activity levels such that either get 10K or more steps in a day or burn more than 2800 calories. This translates into either moving more or working out or both.
- Goal 4: Daily calisthenics or yoga in order to increase agility, muscle balance, and strength.
- Goal 5: Meditation or yoga in order to increase mental acuity and relaxation
For each day I give myself a grade on a standard school-like four point A through F system for each category. The grade for the day is the average of those five grades.
- Goal 1: Average grade was 3.10 (B). I really started dialing in my diet after the first week. Yes there were three “vacation” days in there, but far less than the previous month. I don’t know why it’s so hard to eat right when I feel so much better every time I do it…
- Goal 2: Average grade was 3.53 (B+). I really started getting better on the sleep front too, especially as I dialed in the accountability.
- Goal 3: Average grade was a 2.68 (C+). Getting my move goals in is still a problem. I didn’t make a firm enough commitment to this like I did some of these other categories. This is definitely the category I’m going to have to concentrate more on moving forward.
- Goal 4: Average grade 2.71 (B-). After my initial lull of not doing any exercise at all I finally got into the habit of doing my five minutes of calisthenics or yoga every day. It’s not a huge volume of activity but already I’m starting to see some differences. This is probably the second easiest thing for me to drop after my movement goal, big surprise they correlate to getting off my butt.
- Goal 5: Average grade 2.71 (B-). Again after not meditating at all I finally got into a daily routine of meditating. I am finding doing meditation in the morning and then my calisthenics really makes it easy to guarantee getting it in. If only I could rotate my schedule around a bit more to get movement goals targeted, but that’d take getting back into running as well probably…
So the my GPA for Phase 2 of the 2017 Goal Accountability project was 2.95 (B-), nearly a B. That was up from a 1.92 (C-), nearly C from Phase 1. I’m really happy the way it came together in the end though, and increasing by a full letter grade in one cycle has me very happy. Here’s to working on getting an even better score in Phase 3!