Health Goals 2012 Recap

In 2012, I broke up my goals into categories, because I figured it would be easier to complete each category instead of having a long list.  That seemed to work OK, but I think that perhaps a year-long focus was too much.  I may just set quarterly goals for 2013, to ensure that I’ll be able to focus on them completely instead of punting on a lot of goals without a hard deadline (which is what I did a bit of this year).

Running a marathon was probably my most successful goal throughout the year, and I think that is because I had a hard deadline (early june) and a concrete training plan for getting to where I needed to be (that mostly held up).  In 2013, I’ll try and make sure that all  of my goals have this component, instead of just a few of them.

1. The first health goal for the year will be to run a marathon.  This was the goal that I performed best on out of all the goals that I set for the past year, and as mentioned above, it was because I had a deadline and a plan.  A great learning experience for me while running, but also for looking back at the end of the year and trying to figure out why this one went through with flying colors and the others, well, didnt.
2. Be in Good shape for my honeymoon.  - This went ok, but not as good as I had hoped.  I was getting into pretty good shape training for the marathon, but before the honeymoon I basically took about 3 months off of my training.  That didnt work out so great.  Even then, I was still in pretty good shape.  I’m going to give myself a half pass for this.
3. I’d also like to eat more veggies.  Next summer, H and I are going to be getting veggies in our CSA along with our friut, and I’d like to make sure that none of that ends up in the compost heap.  In order to do this, I’ll need to eat more veggies next year, both as snacks and sides, as well as main dishes.  So, one of my goals for next year will be to eat vegetarian at dinner 3 times per week.
   Though I havent kept that great of track with this, I think this was a pass.  I have eaten veggie meals with H all year, and only eat meat when we go out to dinner or on some other rare occasion.  I cant honestly say that I feel lots different when I eat vegetarian vs when I dont, but it could be that the change in my body happened so long ago that I dont notice it anymore.  Either way, I do like eating less meat (mainly because it’s difficult to tell with meat what happens to it before you eat it) so I’ll probably keep this going for next year.  I’m going to call this a pass.

I did OK on my health goals, but not that great in terms of sticking to them for the whole year.  I was really great in Q1 and most of Q2, but didnt really keep it going for the long term.  There was one point where I had gone to the gym every day for more than 3 months, and there was another time where I didnt go to the gym at all in about 2 months.

Not exactly happy with the consistency, but I still did some great things this year.  My 5k time went down to a PR on thanksgiving, I finished a marathon, I did OK with my diet and didnt gain any weight (but unfortunately, didnt lose any either).  This list isnt all bad, but it does leave plenty of room to work for 2013.

Readers: What health goals do you have for 2013?  Are you trying to lose weight, workout more, or something else?  Do you have a running or other exercise goal (with a time) to beat, or are you just interested in picking up a new habit?

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