That was all a bit of a train wreck, wasn’t it? The year from hell is finally over, and we can finally start to look forw… oh, another lockdown is imminent? FIVE tiers? In a three-tier system? How does that even…?
Okay, so 2021 isn’t getting off to the best start either. Personally, that’s not what I really need. Like almost everyone, my last year was literally hand-crafted by the Devil himself and I’m sure he was there giggling in the corner as I had to live through five months of furlough, redundancy from a job I loved, temporary jobs, countless applications and cover letters, all while not being able to see my mates.
Sounds like a carbon copy of a lot of people’s 2020, I know. Therefore, I’m going to shut up about it now and look forward to… putting myself through absolute hell again for the sake of personal challenge. Great.
Dry Dry January
One thing that did make 2020 considerably less terrible was that I got back into running. When I combined that with going to the gym once it re-opened, I found that all of my lockdown weight quickly receded – funny that.
The last temp job I had, though, was 12 hour shifts for five days a week, which isn’t really conducive to wanting to exercise five days a week too. Therefore, I had to sack it off for a while.
That was a shame because, for once, it had actually got to the point where I was enjoying it. I loved the feeling of achieving a goal I had set myself, like running 5km for the first time in over two years, or running for an hour straight. I want to get back to that, but this time I’m setting a more difficult challenge.
Dry January is probably something you’re familiar with – it’s a charity thing where people give up alcohol for one month and it generally sees them save money and feel healthier come the end of it.
I personally don’t drink too much alcohol anyway, particularly not at home (although many months trapped inside did its best to test that). So, I thought I’d make my already most dreaded month even more torturous by adding in some additional rules – and adding an extra ‘Dry’ into the name of it to emphasise that it’s more than just the alcohol, and so I could use the ‘Dry Dry Desert’ logo from Mario Kart as the main picture.
The rules
EXERCISE
Originally I’d planned to put the gym back into this, but seeing as that’s now not allowed, I’ll have to make do with stealing the medicine ball my dad got for Christmas. I’ve already tried a 15 minute session once and it nearly killed me, so that can go in on Tuesdays and Thursdays to break up the monotony of running.
Three runs a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) doing whatever the 10k training app tells me to do. I finished all the sessions on that before my last job but seeing as I haven’t done any running since then, I’ll start about halfway through and see how it goes.
DIET
This is the bigger issue for me. Exercise has never been much of a problem but the stuff I consume between that has always ruined it.
As well as no alcohol, I’ll be banning fizzy drinks and anything that isn’t water (apart from one coffee in the morning so that I can actually do the rest of the day).
Five a day+ is also an obvious one, and effectively just making sure I don’t eat anything I don’t need to.
SLEEP
Even though I hate doing it, I always find I’m more productive when I wake up early. So, 6.30am every day for a month – let’s see how that goes.
What do I want from it?
Mostly just to feel healthier. I find that when I start to feel healthier, I’m more motivated to keep it going, so maybe the things that I practice in January can be extended further into the year when things like daylight will also make them easier.
The obvious one, too, is to lose weight. I lost a bit in summer and autumn 2020, but I’m still not mad on how I look so I need to carry on working on that as well.
I won’t update on here every day about how it’s going because that’s painfully boring for you all (as I’m sure this whole article detailing it has been), but I’ll draw something up every week or so with what’s been happening, how many apples I’ve eaten, how many times I’ve fallen in the canal on a run, etc.
Hopefully 2021 is better for everyone. It certainly can’t be much worse than the last one. Not until Tier 15 becomes a reality, anyway.
I don’t know what I’ll be posting next. As with before, I haven’t really thought about it. We’ll see if anything interesting happens.
natgoodlad.com 