When I started the year I had grand plans for my health and fitness. I don't do New Years Resolutions, but the Christmas break is a great time to review my goals and to set new ones. Sadly, I've made barely any progress toward any of these goals, and in fact have regressed on some of them.
If you don't mind too much, I'd like to share the story with you. This isn't so much by way of making excuses as getting things clear for me, and sorting out some kind of accountability.
The first set-back was a wrist injury that happened pretty much as soon as I got back from Australia. It prevented me from kick-boxing for a couple of weeks and stopped me from starting any strength training. Perhaps for these reasons, I got fairly depressed in general, and started eating junk and drinking a little too much as a way of seeking comfort. Yuck.
Once I got back from that I went straight into grading preparation mode for kick-boxing. Grading is physically exhausting, and demands heaps of energy, so I just shoved food into my mouth for four weeks, desperately trying to get enough calories. It's also really stressful and time-consuming, so I didn't start that strength training I wanted to.
All this meant that I never got back on to my clean, pre-Christmas eating habits, nor my regular progress tracking. The latter is important, since it's an early warning system and is very motivating.
After the grading prep (and missing the actual grading day itself!), I dropped my kick-boxing training right back so as to help out more with wedding preparation and to find a place and move into the new flat where Joliette & I live now. That was heaps of fun, but I didn't take the opportunity to start new exercise habits, go back to tracking progress or clean up my eating. I think I went back on to drinking coffee at some point here.
Moving house also got me stress eating again (way too much pizza), which kept up right on to the final stages of wedding preparation too. Although happily that last turned from stress eating into celebration eating as friends and family started to arrive.
A couple of weeks before the wedding, I cracked a rib while sparring. That hurt a lot, and stopped me from doing any exercise. There's not much you can do when it hurts to raise your arms over your head, or to twist your torso.
And then on the honeymoon I spent a couple of blissful weeks doing nothing and eating everything.
I really don't want to make excuses. I didn't choose to crack my rib or sprain my wrist, I could have chosen to respond to them better, and I certainly could have chosen to respond to the various stresses in my life in a different, healthier way.
In the meantime, it's been really inspiring to watch the progress of friends and colleagues (especially Sean and Robbie) who have been getting fitter. I've never really much liked the idea of sharing my progress before – it just seems to personal a thing. But since their example helped me, maybe I'll figure something out.
What's next then? Well, I'm already eating better, am back at kick-boxing and Jolie is being very supportive. I'm going to look over my goals again and see what I can salvage. I might even make a bet or try to find someone to compete against in order to get a bit of extra motivation.