2022 New Year's Goals
Health comes first. I've written often about my health and have set all sorts of health related goals over the years. The thing that turned everything around for me was making exercise and healthier eating a part of my daily routine. That doesn't mean I always eat clean or even exercise every single day, it just means I try to more often than not. I'm never going to stop eating my favorite foods and some weeks I just won't feel like exercising. Losing weight/fat, meditating, completing exercise challenges, and starting therapy have all been a part of improving my overall health. A couple holes that I need to addressed are getting more sleep consistently and reducing screen time.
Since I've successfully been doing monthly exercise challenges for over a year, along with over a dozen 30+ day programs, I'm not setting a goal specific to the act of exercising. It's part of my lifestyle now, as are meditating and going to therapy. The three things I want to work on this year are:
Get Below 25% Body Fat
The acceptable body fat percentage for men is between 18-24%. Anything below that is moving towards athlete territory and let's be honest, that's not going to be me. Anything above 25% is considered obese. Currently I reside above that number, despite falling solidly in the middle of the overweight range on the BMI chart. This means I'm still carrying too much fat, especially on my upper body/midsection. I get comments on how good I look and while I appreciate the sentiment, I'm still unhappy with how I look. Getting compliments just reminds me of how much work I have left to do and how hard it's going to be. To me, I only look good by comparison to the awful state I allowed myself to get to in the first place.
To achieve this objective, I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing: exercising and trying to eat better while also getting back to calorie tracking. The next one will also contribute quite a bit.
Average Sleep Score Above 85
I've had an Amazon Halo fitness tracker for just over a year that tracks all sorts of data, including detailed sleep information. A sleep score of 85 or better means you slept really well. I've scored between 78 and 83 each month, so I already average a good sleep score. I'm not far away from obtaining a consistently great sleep score, which should help translate into fat loss. I also get the added benefit of having more energy, being less irritable, and a whole list of other benefits that come with better sleep.
To achieve this objective, I've set up reminders on my phone to a set bedtime. Sometimes I'll fall asleep prior to that, but without the reminders I can get lost in whatever time wasting activity I'm doing. Being on TikTok or mindlessly doom-scrolling social media just to name a couple. That's why the next objective will help with this one.
Reduce Phone Screen Time
The specific objective made the title way too long, but I'd like to reduce screen time outside of work to less than 2 hours per day outside of work. I'm already in front of a computer for 7-8 hours and a day at work. Then I typically use my phone after dinner and once everyone else goes to bed. In between, we might watch a hour or two of TV. I've written about too much screen time before and still think it's a problem. Reducing phone screen time before bed will help increase my sleep score which in turn can increase fat loss.
To achieve this objective, I've used the Digital Wellbeing app that comes with the Google Pixel phones to set up time restrictions on certain apps. It also tracks how long I'm using my phone (averaging over 4 hours total per day). Being able to turn off notifications from specific apps should also help.
Goal #2: Grow First State Pizza
This year is going to be devoted to working on my pizza project. If you're not familiar with what this, please go read about it here. I've been actively working on my dough and sauce recipes, dough shaping, and baking techniques. If you follow me on social media, you've probably seen the cross posts from the First State Pizza Instagram account where the project is mainly housed right now. It's been a lot of fun and probably the tastiest food related project I've done so far. While making, eating, and posting about what I'm doing is great, I want this to go somewhere. However, that's still to be determined while I work on my skills as a pizzaiolo. These are the objectives I want to focus on this year:
Invest in Better Equipment
Right now I'm using my home oven, an old inexpensive pizza stone, and a cheap wooden pizza peel. Through trial and error, I've made these things work, but it's time to upgrade.
Thanks in part to a very generous Christmas gift from friends of ours, I'll be purchasing a portable outdoor pizza oven from Ooni Pizza Ovens. Along side that I'm going to get a new peel and turning peel to use specifically with that oven. At some point, I would also like to get either a new pizza stone for the home oven or a pizza steel. Haven't decided on which, but my current stone is showing signs that it's on its way out.
Grow Social Media Presence
I've been waiting to really put effort into this as I tried to complete the goals for last year. Despite that, the FSP Instagram account just surpassed 400 followers in the four months that it's been up. My goal is to have 1000 followers by the end of the year. I'm not that familiar with Instagram, so I don't know if that's realistic or not. If I can continue to average 100 followers a month, this shouldn't be too difficult. Sharing more content will be key to making this one work.
Aside from Instagram, I'll be pushing Facebook presence soon so expect an invite if we're friends on there. Twitter doesn't really seem like the place for this type of project, but I'll continue the cross posting on there as well. Throw me a follow if you're not on either of the other two platforms.
Make 100 Pizzas
The only way to get better at something is practice, practice, practice. This is objective is going to my pretty much guaranteed cheat for this year. I always have one that's basically a definite. Since I've already been making about two pizzas a week, I shouldn't have any issue completing this one. I'd set the goal even higher, but we can only eat so much pizza and I did set improving overall health as my number one goal this year.
Ideally, I'd like to double that number and I think there is a good chance it could happen. With my new pizza oven, I'm doing slightly smaller pizzas that are bordering on personal size. So what was once two pizzas for the family will now be three to four. I'd also like to start making some for family, friends, and even neighbors at some point just so I can keep doing this thing that I really enjoy. That'll help me determine where to take this thing in the future.
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