Progress so far - Mid July 2015

Overall, this month so far has been great from a fitness standpoint. Every single weekday, i have been doing Surya Namaskar and starting my day on a very positive note. Apart from the few days where i worked out of office late, i have been going to the gym and working out well. It is exciting that i have been able to break out of the lazy, couch potato lifestyle that i used to lead. Even though it is early days, i have never felt more confident about my ability to continue following these habits and i can visualize the benefits once i sustain this for the next few months.

On the other hand, i realize that i have been overly optimistic on my weekend goals. For one, after 5 days of continuous exercise, i realize that my body needs rest and resists the idea of hiking or biking. I did complete one hike in the nearby regional ridge and planning to bike quite a bit this Sunday. From a travel standpoint, i took one of my friends to Big Sur and loved the drive, all the way. Pretty sure that i will not be going anywhere else this month. Hence i need to be more realistic about my weekend goals and this will probably reflect in my goals that i will set for August :)

Hope to continue the trend and keep improving my fitness every single day!

My Daily Goals-Habits for July

While going through a number of blogs on self improvement, one idea that i observed commonly on new habit formation is the concept of setting and tracking new habits for 30 days. 30 days is not too big a deal to follow through on a particular goal and post 30 days, we can always re-evaluate the goal and decide whether it makes sense to continue the habit. Last month, I decided to write my weekday and weekend habits that i wanted to imbibe and was pretty happy with my progress in June. A couple of things that i did not do was to track them continuously on a daily basis or to share them with a larger audience. And yes, both of these points are also recommended by multiple self improvement bloggers. So here goes ! (Click Image to view the goals/habits)

By July 15, I will share an update and i hope to have made good progress on these habits. Will keep you all posted!

Fitness Goals Update - June 2015 Update

June has been a fantastic month overall both in terms of diet and fitness. From a diet standpoint, i have continued to eat a vegan diet inspite of having strong cravings on a few days. It is still too early to talk about concrete benefits owing to giving up milk and milk based products but i have been experiencing moments of clarity compared to earlier. Also, i have been waking up much earlier than usual and that could also be due to easier digestion of the vegan diet. At this point of time, i definitely want to continue this diet for atleast the next 2-3 months.

From a fitness standpoint, i had multiple activities lined up this month. I wanted to do Surya Namaskar and Gym 5 days in a week as well as do hiking every weekend. I could not meet the goal of doing the exercises daily but ensured that i did surya namaskar 3-4 days in the weekday mornings and hit the gym 3-4 days in the evenings. I also covered one more peak in Pleasanton and that felt fantastic! While there is significant scope to improve my exercise routines, am pretty pleased with what i have done in this area in June.

July is a crazy month from a work perspective so i plan to adhere to the same goals that i had set in June. When this goes as well as planned, i will probably set stretch goals in August.   

Fitness Goals Update - June 2015 - Update 2

It has been a good week in terms of maintaining my diet and exercising. The best part of this week was that i scaled Mission Peak along with my wife and my best friends. It felt terrific to reach the top of the peak and while this is not a strenuous trek, i was happy to have made a good start. Hope to continue this trekking whenever i get a chance to, on weekends.

From a diet standpoint, while it feels good to be a vegan, i definitely do miss ghee and curd. Will continue this vegan diet for 2 more weeks and then decide on whether i want to be a Vegan for life or not.

Leadership

Leadership is not something that we look up to in others, but what we have to look within ourselves. Even if at times, we feel insecure, or inadequate, we have to believe that we are capable of becoming greater than what we are today. And the more control and responsibility that we take for our actions, the less we will need to blame others for the challenges/problems that come our way. I have realized that i need to take complete responsibility for my actions. Whatever situation that am in today, in whatever aspect of life is completely my own doing. And i will resolve to improve it, come what may. And I will strive to developing myself into a leader, day in and day out

Fitness and Diet related Goals in June - Week 1 Update

It has been a fairly interesting week to say the least. Over the last few weeks, there was little impact on my mood owing to the exercise/diet changes that i had made. However, this week, i found that my energy levels fluctuated a fair bit and i also experienced some mood swing (felt a lot of anger for little reason). However, the upside is that i kept the goals going and exercised for 4 days during the weekdays and trekked a bit during the weekend. I also explored alternative vegan options for milk/curd and have bought coconut milk that should do the trick for now. Need to keep this habit going and hopefully i will have a better handle on my emotions as well!

Fitness and Diet related Goals - June 2015

It has been more than 6 months since i moved to US and so far the changes have been great. Over the past few weeks especially, i have been far more successful in adhering to a few critical dietary and fitness related changes than i have ever been in the past.

I had long debated on going Vegan and decided to explore following a vegan based diet in May. Surprisingly, giving up coffee/tea and curd rice has been less difficult so far than what i thought it would be. Am yet to experience a really strong craving (recently took a friend to Ghirardelli in SFO and skipped the ice cream there) or a significant energy spike and maybe that is because it is still early days. So i have decided to continue this diet in June and explore how that will have an effect on my overall energy levels.

As regards exercising, early in the year, i had bought a hybrid bike to commute to my office that is fairly close by. While that has been beneficial, i have been having the feeling that i have a long way to go to improve my body flexibility especially given the nature of my sedentary workstyle. Over the past few weeks, i have been practicing one set of surya namaskar early in the morning. I have also been hitting the gym in the evenings and doing cardio and will be continuing these activities in June as well.

Hopefully, i will start experiencing more energy spikes in June! Excited to keep this going!