Wave-ing Goodbye To 2019
Well it seems like only yesterday that I was sitting down writing a blog about what I planned to do throughout 2019, time really can get away from you.
2019 was the second year that I had set myself some goals, but it was really the first year that I have seriously tried to follow through with anything I had written down. What started off with good intentions in 2018 faded within the first few months, but for some reason I felt like this year was going to be different.
There were only a few specific goals I set myself for 2019:
Take control of my diet and eat better
Continue to be alcohol free
Improve my triathlon personal best
Minimise how much time I spend on my phone
So how did I go?
1. Diet: Well I had set this as a goal because more often than not I didn't take lunch to work, which meant not only was I spending excess money on lunch but I was also buying rubbish
I've tried dieting before and I have never had something that I stuck with, but at the start of 2019 I decided to reduce down my processed food intake, in particular cutting back all sugar, I decided to nearly eliminate carbohydrates which for me was breads and pastries and unfortunately thing like hot chips, and I would cut out milk.
For me having solid rules around what you can and can't eat rather than calorie counting worked great, in total I dropped around 12-14kg which is around a 15% reduction.
For me this was a lifestyle choice and something I was really proud to achieve. Don't get me wrong, I still have a meal here and there that doesn't meet my guidelines, but in terms of overall health I feel great, I don't have sugar crashes or food comas and I feel like my moods and clarity of mind has improved.
2. Alcohol free: I get lots of different responses when I tell people I do t drink. Some think I used to be an alcoholic, some think I must have had a really bad out of control drunken experience, the truth it is none of these (I'll write a separate blog post about the full story) I just felt like it was something I no longer needed in my life.
This was the easiest goal for me to achieve, Id already been alcohol free for over 9 months so it was only a matter of continuing on, but nonetheless it was great to be able to say that 2019 was completely alcohol free!
Similar to improving my diet the trick to success with this is to create yourself a plan, rather than alcohol what are you going to drink? Know when you would normally have had a drink and replace that situation with something else, to begin with that was kombucha, now it's sparkling water.
3. Triathlon: The goal of trying to improve my personal best in a 70.3 triathlon was a big one for me, and is one of the proudest things I have done in 2019.
For a long time I have said to people that I am a better person when I am doing triathlons, and what I mean by that is that doing races makes me happy, and when you are happy you are a better person to be around.
The unfortunate thing for me is that my personal best for a half ironman or 70.3 distance (on an accurate length course) was set back in 2007, I have since done between 10-15 of this race but never improved on my time having always failed to commit enough time to train the required amount to set a decent time.
So what changed in 2019? Well my triathlon focus for 2018 was to do 4 races 3 months apart so I could get back in the habit of training, this gave me a great platform to build my base fitness back up. My time for 70.3 Western Sydney at the end of 2018 was 6 hours and 17 minutes.
Fast forward through 2019 and I progressively improved my time across all four races, New Zealand in March, Port Macquarie in May, Sunshine Coast in September and lastly Western Sydney in November with a time of 5 hours and 14 minutes, over an hour faster than the year before and 17 minutes faster than my PB (and 25 year old self).
There was special formula, consistent diet as I mentioned above meant I raced at a lighter weight but also had better overall nutrition, also I gave up on Strava and focussed my attention on the training data I collect through Garmin. One of the biggest impacts was also positive mindset and belief. Never underestimate how much you can achieve when you believe in your own ability, consistent training and racing helped to build confidence in my ability which has a positive spiral to success.
4. Time on my phone: It sounds like a strange commitment to make but I was pretty focussed on reducing my time on my mobile device throughout 2018.
Why? Well I associated my phone use with scrolling through social media aimlessly or playing pointless games like candy crush and both of those could be time better spent on achieve goals that actually mean something to me. This was one of the reasons why I mentioned above that I stopped using Strava, who really cares what anyone else is doing? I also find that the conversation on social platforms has more negative comments than positive, so rather than get frustrated with the negativity I just limited my time on the platform or frequently had to cleanse the pages and people I followed on them.
One side benefit of this was that my commutes became time spent listening to interesting people on podcasts. It definitely wasn't easy to reduce, I had to use all sorts of tactics like time limits etc for different apps and websites so that I had reminders prompting me to stop, I tracked my usage through screen time functions on my iPhone, but one of my favourite activities to do was to write in my journal and spend time reflecting or writing to do lists, which also have a side benefit of keeping me focussed on what's important and reducing my anxiety.
So that's 2019 and the key things I had accomplished that I set out to be better at from the start of the year.
I loved every moment of having the small goals that kept me focussed during the year, keeping track of my performance and then seeing the improvements.
My advice is that you should take your time to set your goals, but take the time to understand why they are important to you and why you would want to follow through with them, and give yourself time to find a solid plan to execute, remember there will be set backs, but its understanding how to deal with them when they happened that will make your year more successful.
All the best for 2020!