The Official 2017 Healthy Habits Challenge/Goals!

[kyuuei]

There was enough questions and interest generated that, albeit a month late, who cares! Let's do this. No more New Years Resolution fall off, this is a year-long journey.

The challenge is with yourself! Towards yourself! For small, bite-sized, reasonable goals. Everyone is different, and there's no shame or negativity in this thread. You set a goal for yourself, read other peoples' goals for inspiration, and work through it and towards it at your own pace.

The only parameter is this: Whatever you choose for yourself, make it one you can work on for the entire year comfortably even if stuff in life comes up. For example... Please don't say "I will stop eating junk food!" .. This doesn't really lend itself to something reasonable and/or measurable. It's a admirable goal to have, but maybe break it down more. "I want to stop eating junk food. So, I am going to start by x and try to work my way up to y." You can have a vague goal, like, "I will say something nice when I look at the mirror" or "I will stop hopping on the scale everyday because it doesn't make sense to do that, I'll spread it out more." Or, you can do like I am doing and post your year-end goals, and see if you consistently do them month-to-month by the time the year end gets here. Whatever your style, make it so that you aren't going to feel bad about it during the journey. This isn't a pass/fail course. This is not a healthy/unhealthy binary. This is trying to get a little better every day.

Healthy habits can be anything that attributes to your health in the year. If that's getting more sleep, or consistent sleep, or what you eat, or even how you vent stress. This thread is mostly based on the more physical side of health, but there is a lot of bleed over with stress and mental self-defeating, so these aspects are not excluded. Building habits for your physical-mental wellbeing is important, and it's done in baby steps and slowly.

It's never too late to learn something new and incorporate something healthy into your life. So, post your goals, and your progress. If you fall short, that's okay. It's all a part of the fun of the journey.






As for me..

Last year I had vague goals of 'getting stronger' and 'eating healthy' and stuff. I think those vague goals worked well for me, but I've created some more specific, measurable ones this year.

I plan on competing in a tournament for HEMA and I will go to at least 1 practice a week as much as possible.
I am aiming to complete 2 8-week programs for Fitness Blender. I will try my best to complete each week, but I am giving myself a minimum of 3 days of working out for sure during the program.. I need a rest day somewhere and they run 6/7 days a week and HEMA will already be one of those days and I'll be running soon soo... At least a legs day, upper body day, and cardio/abs day.
I will drink a cup of water when I wake up in the morning, and I will drink 2 cups of water each day I get onto shift and again halfway through shift. Right now I've been halfway towards this. My water drinking tended to be done at night (so I'd wake up a bit shy of continuous sleep and have to pee... so I'm trying to structure things so I don't wake up from needing to pee vs on my own from the alarm.)
I will try to get 6-7 continuous hours of sleep depending on what my body is feeling, but try not to over sleep as I've had a problem with that the past year.
I will try to eat vegetables of some sort with every single dish I cook (lately I've been a bit lazy.. but this has become easier with the markets being open again and new products out in the frozen sections of the grocery store), and I aim to make 3 Japanese-style dishes a week. They can be the same dish. This month has been a variety of experiments.. but rice, pickled vegetables, enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon, miso soup, and curry were among the last month.. so this month, a different pickling technique, boiled shrimp, sushi with shrimp on top, curry, miso soup, steamed vegetables, calamari salad, and matcha pancakes are on the menu. Jan-Mar I'll be cooking at least 1 dish a week... by the summer work my way into eating an entire breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a Japanese style of cooking. Mostly because I learn new cooking techniques and have fun with healthy foods.
Finally, when the weather is warmer out, I aim to go running. I want to get back to running 2 miles like it's another day at the job... so I'll be using a couple flat trails I found near water sources here to do that. I'll start going 1-2x a week and work my way up from there.

[EJCC]

SO psyched that this thread exists.

[EJCC]

My goals:

- Go bouldering 1-2x/week
- Run a 10k, and if you manage that, try for a half marathon afterwards
- Do one pull-up, and if you can do more, then do more
- Do one real, non-modified push-up, and if you can do more, then do more
- Establish a routine throughout the year, and continue that routine in the winter (S.A.D. didn't help my eating or fitness this year -- thank goodness for having a climbing buddy, is all I have to say)

Might add more goals later.

I'm much more fit than I was at this time last year. My fitness journey has been exciting and will continue to be exciting.

I may or may not have written a poem about it.

The egotist
(that's me) is in
love with my new
musculature.

Friends joke about
my "shapely calves"
But they aren't wrong --
My curvature

has steepened from
low hills into
majestic peaks.
An aperture

has opened at
my knees, right where
the mountains slope.
I'll reassure

you now: I'm not
a jock, I'm not
an athlete. No,
I have endured

the lightness of
unbearably
weak and nerdy
being. Contours

were soft, then. No
unflinching peaks.
Athletics seemed,
somehow, impure --

ammunition
in our social
warfare. Brains, brawn,
head, heart? The cure

only emerged
when school days had
been left behind:
The amateur

(that's me) with all
my peaks, my hills,
my weakness and
my strength -- a tour

of muscular
topography --
is skilled when heart
and head ensure

a sharpened state --
not like a blade
but like a mind
awake.

Didn't think I could find that many words that rhymed with "musculature", did you?

Whether this is a shitty poem or not, that deserves a trophy, so I'm going to award myself one.

🏆

[entropie]

my goal:

- 10 muscleups

can do 5 now and finally gave up on loosing weight. Building muscle takes me a second, loosing weight is impossible. I am at 93 kg now and 3 years ago when I went down to 78 kg after my divorce, I had no sixpack. The fat was there all along. Just the muscles were gone.

[EJCC]

Ughhh.

My goals:

- Go bouldering 1-2x/week
- Run a 10k, and if you manage that, try for a half marathon afterwards
- Do one pull-up, and if you can do more, then do more
- Do one real, non-modified push-up, and if you can do more, then do more
- Establish a routine throughout the year, and continue that routine in the winter (S.A.D. didn't help my eating or fitness this year -- thank goodness for having a climbing buddy, is all I have to say)

In order to do these, I have to get up early.
In order to get up early, I have to get enough sleep.
In order to get enough sleep, I have to go to bed earlier.

This is going to be an ongoing struggle -- harder than any of my other goals, tbh.

[prplchknz]

Setting the bar low:not die

[magpie]

I managed to do six minutes of an exercise video today which included some standing segments!

I also did my normal 5 minutes on an exercise bike. This is awesome.

[Hiraeth]

I would like to continue eating a whole foods, plant-based vegan diet and to keep doing at least 4 days of vinyasa yoga. It would be ideal to increase it to 5 days like I used to do it weekly, but I'm a little too lazy and I just don't see it changing anytime soon at the moment, haha. Also, I would like to increase my overall strength and flexibility in order to get into more difficult poses, like being able to finally touch my head in scorpion pose. Oh, and to stay away from the peanut butter. That shit is like crack to me.

[captain curmudgeon]

I had vague goals , to use the OP's wording, of drinking less alcohol and getting more exercise. The latter is still sporadic, but nothing sucks the life out of the party like working second shift wed-sun. I've also been eating less, but I haven't lost more than a pound or two at most.

[Smilephantomhive]

I'm going to try and keep my daily sodium intake under 2,500 mg. I'm no longer going to eat at Quik Trip or Sonic after school.

I also feel like I should try and learn to cook, but I have to get comfortable working in the kitchen with my mom in the room before I even think of trying that.