I don't make new year resolutions

I don't make new year resolutions 🗓✔️

... mostly because I'm not a list maker, or rather I make lists but don't necessarily follow through and complete them.  I forget that I make lists.  I'm easily distracted.  Don't get me wrong - I get things done - I just don't tick them off lists... invariably I'll find that I have multiple remarkably similar lists with nothing physically crossed off but 90% of the tasks having been completed...

But I digress from my original point.  I don't make new year resolutions.  I find it unnatural, difficult to track progress... I also find it crushingly disappointing that I lose focus, get distracted (or just lose interest or just plain give up trying) then come back and find that I'm way off track.  That's certainly been the case in relation to weight loss goals.

Not making new year resolutions doesn't necessarily work in my favour - I can't say that I've been able to track the achievement of long-term goals.  Life has just... happened... Successes and failures have just come... the failures probably because (as the adage so wisely says) I failed to plan.

I woke up resolved

So yesterday - 31 December - I woke up resolved (yes - that verb) to make change.  The thinking had started the day before.  It might have been when I went to put my usual winter coat on and it was uncomfortably snug... or maybe it was my reflection in the mirror in the lift at work (there was no disguising the large, unsightly bulge a.k.a. my gut).

My resolution - to finally start the Couch to 5k running app.  I had to do something.  I could win any Olympic eating event, especially if carbs were involved.  I'm the right side of 55 (wrong side of 50), of Caribbean extraction, disease free and in good health, but I'm tempting fate tipping just over 100kg and 5ft 4ins.  I could see myself piling on pound after pound if I don't do something different.

Thanks Les!

So I set my alarm to get out of bed at a very dark 6:45 and start my journey to 5k, coached by the lovely Michael Johnson at 7:00...  I can't easily unpick the complexity of what happened in my head and my heart (shame, fear, a good case of my amygdala being hijacked), but at 10:30 I still hadn't gone and I desperately sent a text message to a friend who inspired me to download the app maybe a year ago (yes, the timeline to making a change in my life has an incredibly long tailback), begging her to encourage me:

[10:20, 31/12/2019]: Tell me I’m not an idiot. I want to go for a run - start the couch to 5K but feel like an idiot... 🙄
[10:21, 31/12/2019]: Thinking of all the people who will drive by and laugh at me 😩

She was amazing. She leapt into coach mode (she ran her first 10k a couple of months ago) and said all the right things.  In 10 minutes I had my trainers on and I was out the door.  Up-tempo gospel music spurring me on, along with the dulcet tones of Michael Johnson.

It was surprisingly difficult.  I was horrified when Michael's voice broke into my warm-up 5 minute walk... I was only half way through and I was seriously huffing and puffing and feeling it in the legs.  Surely I had walked for at least 10 minutes already!!!  😫  I seriously doubted my ability to do this.


The the first 60 second run
...was simply horrible.  I felt everything giggling - all the fat wobbling... I even felt it in my bowels, which were crying out to be evacuated.  It was a hard 30 minutes.  I was grateful for the 90 second walks and hated to have to start running again after each brisk walk.  My calves cried out with pain.  I felt terribly embarrassed and ashamed when I lumbered past a family of three with their two dogs and almost turned bailed out and turned around when I realised that I had to blubber past them again.

The highlight of the experience was a woman, who was older than me, who shouted, "Keep going!" as she jogged lithely past me.  I didn't hear exactly what she said as she went back in the other direction, passing me for the second time; I was probably focusing on not collapsing, or the music was a bit too loud.  Once I realised she was talking to me I thanked her and shouted, "It's my first time."  She was so generous with encouraging me and telling me that it will get easier (I guess it was obvious that I found the whole experience painful).

I kept with it and was relieved when Michael told me I had run for 8 whole minutes in total, and I was almost done.  I had a skip in my step as I did the warm down brisk walk, which got perkier as the searing pain in my calves lessened and I realised that I had taken the first step towards a healthier lifestyle.

I did it!  Me at the end of my first run.

London Marathon, here I come! 🙄

I have to be careful, as now I'm entertaining thoughts of being a marathon runner by the end of 2020 (call me a fantasist or over-achiever).  One really good piece of advice Les gave me was around goal setting... (back to resolutions and how badly I keep them).  At the end of every year she writes goals for the following year and checks in to see how she did and records her progress.  She doesn't condemn herself for not achieving some - just rolls them over to the following year (definitely a lesson I need to learn).  The great thing is that she can track her achievements.  My I-don't-do-resolutions "method" is more than a little hit or miss.  In fact, it's completely random.

Let's see how this goes

Which brings me to why I'm writing this blog (not with a little trepidation - I find exposing my thoughts to public completely intimidating and terrifying - the judgement, the shame, what will people think of me? What if they disagree with me? What if I'm wrong?)

I thought of getting a notebook to record some goals for this year, but I have tons of notebooks, and I can guarantee that I'll lose track of the notebook, use it for something else or forget I had goals.  I'm not quite sure what the plan is, but I've written this blog now and maybe this will help me to track my progress in relation to my health and fitness (I may need to rely on Les or another friend to prompt me to actually publish it).  I don't want to get ahead of myself, but being able to run a 5k in a park run before the end of 2020, and shed a few pounds, seems achievable.

What about you?  Do you make resolutions? Write goals? Track them?