Tag Archives: goals

Forty-Eight Years Old

Had a great birthday today. I turned 48. Two years to go until the big 5-oh.

My day was simple, but lovely. The main highlight was spending time with my family. In the early afternoon we did a puzzle together. All six of us: Melanie, Justice, Haifa, Verity, Ocean and myself. At about 3pm we all went to the Feast of Sovereignty together. This was particularly wonderful since it is rare that we do so all together.

The day was full with other things too: shovelling snow, errands, a great dinner (steaks, mashed potatoes, and steamed veggies), and packing for my work trip tomorrow.

I’ve set two new goals for my 50th year:

I will do 50,000 push-ups by time I turn 50. So far I’ve done just 25 since I set the goal 0.05% – yay!

I will say 5,000 “remover of difficulties” prayers by time I turn 50. My first spiritual development goal. I will add more.

FWIW, I’m making great progress on my first goal: 500,000 sit-ups… although I’ve had to modify it slightly. I hurt my back so I can’t do proper sit-ups. I’m doing isometric stomach clenches instead. I usually do 1000/day. Here is the chart showing my current progress towards 500,000 (weeks on the horizontal axis, total on the vertical axis):

One other little point of note: I finally crossed the million mile threshold with Air Canada. I’m now a lifetime Elite 50k member. I haven’t yet received my “package”. When I do, I’ll share some photos of stuff.

4385/500000 and 17th Day of the Baha’i Fast

Last week I was on vacation so some discipline slipped. My sleep schedule became very poor: staying up til 4am, lots of long naps. And I missed a whole extra day of exercise besides my official rest day. And, I also accidentally had a sip of water one day when I was supposed to be fasting (I blame it on tiredness diminishing my mental awareness).

But, I still did well overall with my exercise. I did 900 reps in total for the week. Three days were 200 rep days, and the last day was 200 reps in 5 back-to-back sets of 20 sit-ups followed immediately by 5 back-to-back sets of 20 crunches. Admittedly, the last 50 crunches weren’t done with great form. However, I feel confident in setting a goal for 1200 reps this coming week. I’m getting serious enough that I’m starting to consider getting some equipment to help me, like a bench. I haven’t researched it yet, but if you have suggestions, I’d appreciate them! I’ve been putting off a proper start to my cardio work due to a foot injury. Tomorrow I finally see my GP about it, and hopefully I can start healing soon. I hope to start cycling soon since I think that will be okay for the type of injury I have. I’ll ask tomorrow.

Here are my records for the last two weeks:

20190305 232.6 day of rest

20190306 233.2 40SU + 30+20+20+20SU

20190307 50SU + 20+20+20+20SU

20190308 233.0 100SU + 15+15SU

20190309 232.8 30+20SU + 20+20+20+20SU

20190310 230.6 20+20SU + 20+20+20SU + 15+15CR

131/92 89bpm 30.57%

20190311 231.4 50+25+25SU + 25+25CR

20190312 day of rest

20190313 25SU+25CR + 25+25SU+25CR+25SU

20199314 none – failed to exercise

20190315 25SU+25CR+25SU + 25SU+25CR + 25CR+ 25SU+25CR

20190316 25CR+25SU + 25CR+25SU + 25CR+25SU

20190317 25CR+25SU + 25CR+25SU + 25CR+25SU + 25CR+25SU

20190318 20+20+20+20+20SU+20+20+20+20+20CR

I admit that the period of fasting has not been as spiritually rejuvenating as I would like. I think that’s partly due to my own lack of discipline wrt prayer. I’m typically not saying prayers in the mornings. However, I also think it’s because I haven’t been forming or strengthening bonds of friendship. So, I have a plan: I’m going to set aside Saturday nights for visiting. I’ll start by inviting friends and acquaintances out to dinner, and hopefully bringing along a family member or two. Eventually, I hope to have people coming over. I’ve realized that I’m actually pretty lonely. As an introvert it has kinda crept up on me.

In other news, I’ve done some nice ceramic art work. I’m working on another “vase”. It hasn’t been bisque-fired yet. I’ll post photos of it and some other pieces soon.

The featured image for this post is a double rainbow seen a few days ago from my deck.

3485/500000 and 10th Day of the Baha’i Fast

My day of rest was good and I’m taking another ont tomorrow (one a week). This past week I set two new records: 100 reps of sit-ups in a single set (!!!) and 800 reps total for the week. The 100 reps was really hard and I felt awful afterwards. I also did another 150 reps day. However, I’ve added crunches to the traditional sit-ups, and I’m just calling them all “sit-ups”. So now, I will do 100 proper sit-ups per day and start working on increasing my crunches. I’ve also lost a bit of weight, about 7 lbs, mostly due to eating only one meal per day due to…

The Baha’i Fast has been great this year. It’s a little harder than last year, truth be told, probably because of my week off of work. I find it hard to ignore hunger and tiredness when I don’t actually have to do anything during the day. The part I’m having a hard time with is really getting some good prayer time in. There are distractions, but also I’m just having a hard time remembering. I have, however, been trying to spend time with each member of my family during this week. I have to do something with Ocean and Justice still. I went for dinner with Melanie, dinner with Haifa, and a movie with Verity (Captain America – good, but not great, btw).

I’ve tried doing a bit of pottery/ceramic art, but I feel like I haven’t got the hang of it right now. I tried an experiment for making tentacle sculptures, but it didn’t work out so well. And this evening I started a new “vase”, but it’s too early to say if it will work out.

I finished reading “Great North Road” by Peter F Hamilton. Fantastic sci-fi/detective/creature novel. Some really touching moments. Nice long read too, and completely self-contained. No sequel to wait for. No really unique ideas, but extremely well-written and enjoyable. I highly recommend it!

1915/500000 New Records Set

600 sit-ups this week! 55 reps in a set! 105 reps in 4 sequential sets. Next week’s goal: every day 100+ sit-ups. Here’s the deets for this week completed:

Exercise record:

20190219 30 SU + 200m swim + 20 SU + 20+30 SU

20190220 30+15 SU + 25+30 SU

20190221 30 SU + 50 SU

20190222 30 SU + 20 SU + 30 SU

20190223 20 SU + 20+20+20 SU

20190224 238.0lbs 124/93 108bpm 34bmi 33% body fat 166lbs lean mass 55 SU

20190225 236.2lbs 25+20+20+20+20 SU

New 50 Goal: Lose 50 lbs by Age 50

So I’ve made some good progress on my goal to 50000 sit-ups by time I’m fifty years old. I’ve been thinking a lot about other goals and I will have several more… but for now, I can announce my second 50 goal: to lose 50 pounds by time I am 50 years old. I weighed 238lbs this morning and losing 50 would get me to 188lbs. This is a little higher than my ideal weight of about 170, but would still be an enormous improvement. My current weight is the highest it has ever been. So, as I work my way down, I hope to find ways to make it completely sustainable. I also know that I can lose fifty pounds much faster than the three years until I am fifty, but by making it a long term goal, I can also aim for sustainability. I will start by doing some things that have been successful in the past:

  • having green smoothies or green juices every day,
  • eating keto-style stir-fries regularly,
  • restrict my eating hours (probably noon to 8pm),
  • drinking lots of water, and
  • doing more and regular exercise (beyond my sit-ups goal).

For exercise, I know that cycling and swimming are good. But bad weather can kibosh those so I will also get back to using the elliptical. I’ll start tracking that exercise and reporting it here too.

(Photo is me today as I post this. I’m not going to share a full-body image. I think those are kinda gross. As my weight improves, it will be easily visible in my face. )

New Personal Goal. 500,000.

Today I did my first 20 sit-ups towards my goal of 500,000 by the time I turn 50. Over the next little bit, I’m going to try to figure out other 500,000 goals too.

It started last week. I was working at a client doing a bit of executive coaching (oh, by the way, my sabbatical is over!). One of the people I was working with is a guy who clearly takes care of his body. I asked him about it, and he said that he had actually originally wanted to be a physical trainer. He then gave me a very simple piece of advice (which I’m only partially taking): start by doing just a little bit of exercise every day. Don’t make it complicated: sit-ups or push-ups is fine. He also told me that he doesn’t use a gym. He just does stuff at home.

So then today I was thinking about my upcoming birthday where I’ll be turning 47. That’s pretty darn close to 50. Somehow that got me thinking about my goals for turning 50. Usually, my goals are health-related since that is the part of my life I take the least care of. I thought of a few different ideas, but the one that stuck? The goal of 500,000 by 50.

So, I did some mental math (I love math). 50 is three years away for me… roughly 1000 days. 500,000 divided by 1000 is 500. When I was a kid, I was able to do 70 sit-ups in a minute. I can get there again. That means that if I slowly by linearly get better at this, somewhere around the middle of my 3 years, I will need to do 500 sit-ups per day, and if I can only do 35/minute at that point, that’s a reasonable 15 minute-ish workout. Seems do-able. If I can continue to speed up, then 500,000 is do-able,… but still a tough goal to reach.

So that’s my first 500,000 goal.

I’m thinking of others, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

PS. I got an 81 as my final mark in my Math 3020 Introduction to Abstract Algebra class, and an 88 in my Math 2155 Introduction to Mathematical Structures class. Not bad for an old guy!