Past year’s accomplishments

Even if I said “no, I don’t do any new year’s resolution”, deep inside I had my own goals, my own tasks that I wanted to do “to be a better person, and be happy”. Over the years, those goals have only made me feel disappointed and frustrated with myself, leading to very dark places. My only goal for this (nearly finishing) 2015 was to avoid those dark places, just enjoy life.

Why do we care so much about the future? Why can’t just embrace what we achieved so far, and build up from there? Life is a lot about compromises, there will be things you won’t achieve because things get in the way: work, friends, sickness, some party, unexpected events… Is good to have objectives, but people tend to use New Year as a perfect excuse to decide they will be better at something.

So as for this year, I will start doing past year’s accomplishments, as a way to remind ourselves what we’ve done in the last 365 days, and keep in perspective how much we can achieve without even trying that hard. Do you like this idea? Please, share yours! I wanna hear all about them!

#1 — 8.6kgs lost

According to my records on Fitbit, I weighted 85.6kgs in December 2014, and as for today, my weight is 77.1kgs. It’s not a massive lost, not even 1kg per month, but it did went down quite a lot in the first half of the year.

The bad side of this is that I had to buy loads of new clothes during the year. But it was a nice problem to have, I won’t lie.

#2 — Running

Even though I don’t consider myself a runner, I love running. It helps me disconnect, meditate or whatever you want to call it. After a shitty day, a good run can help to see your problems from a different point of view. All of the stress, anger, depression, self-loathing… goes away.

The only objective for 2015 was to run a half marathon, and to run 800km in total during the year. However in that plan I didn’t include I was going to roll over my ankle in May, which of course affected those numbers. The result of that was a small fracture of the fifth metatarsal.

However, according to Strava, I ran (as for December 24th) 394.7kms! In 2014 I ran 335.1kms. So even with the injury, I ran more than last year. I’ll take that.

#3 — Travelling

Amsterdam, Cologne, Bristol, Thailand… and above all, Japan! Since I was a teenager, I always wanted to visit Japan. As many people, I’ve always been curious about such a different culture in so many ways, and wanted to see it with my own eyes.

The trip was going to happen in May, but we had to postpone it because (as mentioned before) I broke my foot 3 days before traveling. Convenient, isn’t it? Anyway, we moved it to October and it was just amazing. You can check some of the pictures in my Flickr. However I still have loads to process and upload. Also, I kept a daily journal and I’m working on converting those into some sort of blog posts. I wish I had more time to do it.

#4 — Food, food, food!

I love food, it’s one of my favourite pleasures in life. It’s actually why I wanted to become fitter: being able to eat more without feeling bad with myself. At the same time, getting better at cooking helps to get fitter, as cooking more means more control over what you eat, and making healthy foods to taste better!

Last year, I would have never thought on baking my own bread, making pasta dough, or some nice pulled pork with homemade bbq sauce… But I kept learning and doing more and more things.

Feedback about my food is always positive, even though I’m very critical with myself, truth is, I’m getting better and I’m happy with the results of my time around the kitchen.

As a bonus point, I’m learning more about baking bread, and it’s really exciting me! Bread is awesome!

#5 — Left the comfort zone more often

During 2015, I did so many new things I can’t barely believe it. It takes me time to adventure myself to try something, or do something different. It kinds of scares me somehow, but this year I managed (without thinking about it) to:

• Weightlifting. “Getting into the weights room? What? No fucking way. There’s only big monsters in there, I’m just a fat bastard”. Somehow I decided myself to start doing StrongLifts 5x5, and I have never looked backed. I’m not doing any massive weights, but early in the year I got sore with just some squats without a bar, and now I can do 80kgs over my back. I feel stronger than ever!
• Yoga. I am the sort of idiots that thought that yoga was for girls. Man, I was so wrong. That stuff is tougher than it looks, but in a very good way. Helps you to learn how to listen to your body.
• Meditation. During I was homebound due the injury I started coming back to those “dark places”, not being able to go out for a run, feeling bad about myself for cancelling our Japan trip, disappointed with myself for not being able to run… Someone recommended me to start using Headspace, and get some time for myself to put my thoughts in order. Truth be told, I am not as consistent as I’d like, but it’s a beautiful thing I started doing this year and loving it.
• Rock climbing. Wasn’t sure if adding it here as I’ve only done it twice in December, but thanks to my good friend Sam, I gave it a go some weeks ago and loved it! It’s challenging, exciting and very different from other kinds of exercise. I’ll totally do more of it next year.

Next year?

I honestly don’t care. I don’t want to think about it. I really don’t. I just want to keep being healthy, enjoy life, eat well, have fun, keep learning and trying new things.

My only resolution for next year, is to recap again at the end of it, to write up my accomplishments during 2016.

Why don’t you share yours? I wanna read all about them!