Time To Update Some Goals!

14 January 2020 • Personal

alt text

I KNEW that doing the smaller goals in 2020 would pay off in spades.

My entire goal for this year was to set small, achievable goals every quarter. Then, if I hit a goal, I could set a new one for the remaining time, or if I missed a goal in a quarter, I could analyze why and reevaluate if I should continue to aim to achieve it or replace it with something else.

To that end, I said that one of my “Get Healthy” goals was to lose 6 lbs in the first quarter of 2020.

I did it in 2 weeks.

Honestly, it wasn’t all that difficult. I’ve been logging all of my meals in an app called MyPlate, aiming to get both my standing and movement goals fully closed every day on my Apple Watch, and just be smarter about the fuel I put into my body. I had a few days where I splurged (watching the Patriots get beat in the AFC Wild Card game was not conducive to a positive food or alcohol intake), and as such, my weight chart wasn’t a flawless downward trend. But overall, I made a nice downward progression, and I achieved my goal in 1/6th the time I allotted for it.

I think the best decision I made (thanks to the suggestion of my wife) was to use MyPlate. I’ve tried doing the apps before, but nothing really clicked with me. This one did, though, because it includes a spot to log your weight right on the main page of the app when you load it up. They also will pipe in your calories burned from your Apple Watch (on the iPhone version, at least), and include a spot to log your water intake.

MyPlate Screenshot

For me, I’m the kind of person that likes to have all of these tangible things in front of me to play with daily. Plus, the app will notify me if I forgot to log something, which is a nice touch as well.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve found myself actively thinking more about what it is that I’m eating or thinking about making. Like last night; I wanted a bag of popcorn (which is all carbs, btw), but we didn’t have anything. So I thought about making eggs and toast. Or peanut butter toast. Or a wide variety of other things. Instead, I settled on just having a cheese stick. I’ve found myself actively walking away from doughnuts, soda, chocolate, or chips at work because I know that I’ll have to log them, and I’ll be unhappy with myself if I do.

But the other really cool thing that I’m a huge fan of is the “Burned” and “Net” calorie sections, and how your progress bar updates throughout the day with your movement and exercise. It’s nice to see how going to yoga basically doubles my “Burned” calories, or that working a shift at the brewery will triple or even quadruple it depending on how busy we are. Small little things that help you reaffirm the “Duh” aspects of how exercise can affect your weight loss journey.


ALSO! I’m modifying another one of my goals.

My final long-term goal for the year was “Write More”, which I think was a good one to set. But instead of allocating it to just doing blog posts, I’m going to mix it up a bit.

I discovered a great little website called 750words thanks to a random blog post I came across on Twitter. The premise is simple: every day, you go to this site and write (at least) 750 words about whatever you want. Some people use it as a blog. Others use it to help them write a book. Apparently the community is big on participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November), which is something that I’ve tried and failed at twice before when I was younger. They’ll send you email reminders every day if you want, which I leave sitting unread in my inbox until I’ve had an opportunity to pop over and get my writing in.

As far as topics? A few days, I’ve just journaled. Today, I wrote this blog post. On a couple of days, I’ve popped over to the Writing Prompts subreddit and snagged an idea that looked fun from there (and they have indeed been fun). I try not to be too critical about what I write, I just write. The important thing is to get the words down on the page; I can always go back at a later date and edit them if I really need to.

So yeah. 2020 is off to a great start. I’ve already made 4 of 6 recipes and finished a game (The Outer Worlds, which was really fun). I’m going to need to buckle down and make sure I do some reading, as well as spending some outside-of-work time working on some code projects. But so far, so good!

How are all of your 2020 goals & resolutions going? Are any of you doing smaller goals like I am? Have you had great success or serious setbacks? Hit me up on Twitter and let me know!