2024-04-02
in
7 min read
I knew going into March that there would be challenges meeting or exceeding how well I did in February. The month was as full of travel and stressors as I had anticipated, maybe even more so. I’m pleased to report that while I didn’t maintain my February good grades across the board I was able to keep it together more than I did in January.
Methodology
This is a quick refresher of how this works. The “Goal Accountability” method is to give myself five focus areas each day which help contribute to longevity. Technically it can be any five things but for me these have historically always fallen into the categories of: diet, sleep, cardio movement, strength movement, and mind exercises. For each day one is given a numerical grade like in school from 0.0 (F) to 4.0 (A). By keeping track of those things we can see how we do by week and over the year. To give myself opportunities for feeling the “new years resolution” type psychological prodding more than just once a year the whole year is broken up into four week “phases”. Therefore I can see how things are going over the year and at an approximately one month interval have an opportunity to start with a clean slate and “get a good grade”.
March Closeout
As I wrote in Febuary/March’s closeout/kickoff the relatively quiet life circumstances of February were going to be going out the window for March. I don’t feel comfortable getting into the details on the internet but I will say that there was a lot of travel and life stress that was unavoidable. Along with that there was intentional increases in personal stressors with respect to wanting to continue progressing towards being able to run a half marathon. The increased exercise requirements drove a tweak to my diet goal which made my goals for March look just slightly different than the previous month:
- Goal 1 (Diet): Eat a plant dominant Mediterranean diet averaging at least 100 grams of protein a day
- Goal 2 (Sleep): Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
- Goal 3 (Cardio Health): 30 minutes of focused cardio exercise (indoor cycling, running, swimming, etc), with one hard session per week minimum and a stretch goal of two hard sessions per week
- Goal 4 (Non-Cardio Health): 20-30 minutes of weight training, calisthenics, or yoga
- Goal 5 (Brain Health): 15-20 minutes of meditation, stretch goal of 2x 15-20 minutes of meditation; increase reading time by decreasing TV/YouTube/Social Media time
This is obviously a bit of a mix bag in the overall daily grade compared to February. I didn’t have a huge divot day like I did in February. Overall the trend line stayed much closer to the 3.7 (A-) line though, which is an improvement. However that is aliasing some hit on my Diet and Sleep scores against improvements in my cardio/non-cardio health scores:
| January | February | March | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal 1 (Diet) | 2.89 (B-) | 3.43 (B+) | 3.30 (B) |
| Goal 2 (Sleep) | 3.52 (B+) | 3.65 (B+) | 3.53 (B+) |
| Goal 3 (Cardio Fitness) | 3.74 (A-) | 3.86 (A-) | 3.91 (A-) |
| Goal 4 (Non-Cardio Fitness) | 3.74 (A-) | 3.86 (A-) | 3.93 (A-) |
| Goal 5 (Brain Health) | 3.39 (B+) | 3.79 (A-) | 3.76 (A-) |
| Total GPA | 3.46 (B+) | 3.72 (A-) | 3.69 (B+) |
The weakest category again was yet again Goal #1 (Diet). I didn’t dive as bad as it was in January. With all the stressors it is a wonder that it actually wasn’t worse, actually. Much of this was not driven by good or necessary indulgences, like trying a new fancy restaurant or a special occassion. No, this was more eating out too much and giving into the urge to indulge in crap food, especially desserts a bit too often. In all honesty they weren’t even that good of desserts except for one case. I can’t even blame my dining companions since I was a bit of an instigator. There were a couple instances of stress eating in there too but I did manage to mitigate that somewhat. No, despite my joking post to the contrary, I don’t consider Wheat Thins a health food. But I could have done worse that eating half a box of Wheat Thins. I did actually, by eating bunches of Twizzlers as well. A couple pieces of either isn’t the end of the world and I wouldn’t ding myself grade wise for that. Sixteen however definitely requires a ding. Again, I have done far worse under far less stressful circumstances, so overall I’m not complaining. In fact the worst grade through all that on any day was a C. So compared to previous years that is actually doing pretty well. I would like to get my meditation practice stronger to be able to rely on those tools rather than compulsive eating to dissipate stress though. Still a string of C’s and some not so big dings on other days dropped me down to a 3.30 (B).
The second weakest category, Goal #2 (Sleep), saw some diminishment as well. This is related to the same stressors as the eating. Some nights I didn’t sleep well through the night or got up early despite going to bed late. Generally it wasn’t that schedules required the start or stop times. It was more I couldn’t get to or stay asleep quite yet. Overall a 3.53 (B+) grade.
The exercise goals Goal #3 (Cardio) and Goal #4(Non-Cardio) were in great shape, and then some. I didn’t miss a single day. I had a couple of days where I couldn’t do a complete workout so instead opted for partial ones. On the cardio front the running days are starting to go well north of the 30 minute goal, especially the long run days. My longest running days now include upwards of 2.5+ hours of cardio. I’m not going to allow such over-the-goal levels to be smeared into other miss days though. The point is to be moving every day, even if it is extremely light yoga and focused walking it is better than just sitting on the couch doing nothing. That wasn’t a factor this month, I’m just proactively putting that out there for future months. These 3.91 (A-) and 3.93 (A-) grades are ones I am very proud of.
I was able to essentially keep up Goal #5 (Brain health) as well. It technically dropped just a little. There was one total whiff F day that dragged the average down. Other than that I was able to get my sessions in, even a few times some extra. The other bonuses I didn’t hit at all though. The net effect of this however was that there were times where I was able to leverage my meditation practice to help me get through some of the stressful periods. I was able to resist being reactive in times when it wouldn’t be productive. I definitely wasn’t able to use it entirely to get through tha but I’m still pleased with how well I did work.
Despite the stressors I was able to maintain a grade that was just a hundredth of a point shy of an A-: 3.69 (B+) for the aggregate grade. I’m mostly pleased with that but with a little more discipline on the unnecessary dessert indulgences I could have done a good deal better than I actually did.
April Kickoff
Things are settling down a bit in April compared to March. I still have some travel and life stressors but they aren’t at the level they were at in March. I’m also looking at potentially getting my half marathon in this month, depending on how schedules go. Overall the goals for March will carry forward unchanged. I’m hoping that with reduced travel and stressors I can at least rise back up to February’s levels on Diet and Sleep.
Therefore the goals for April’s Goal Accountability is:
- Goal 1 (Diet): Eat a plant dominant Mediterranean diet averaging at least 100 grams of protein a day
- Goal 2 (Sleep): Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
- Goal 3 (Cardio Health): 30 minutes of focused cardio exercise (indoor cycling, running, swimming, etc), with one hard session per week minimum and a stretch goal of two hard sessions per week
- Goal 4 (Non-Cardio Health): 20-30 minutes of weight training, calisthenics, or yoga
- Goal 5 (Brain Health): 15-20 minutes of meditation, stretch goal of 2x 15-20 minutes of meditation; increase reading time by decreasing TV/YouTube/Social Media time