Christmas is just around the corner and New Year’s Eve is just behind it

Although I am a Summer person and can’t stand the cold, I love this time of the year. I love decorating my Christmas tree in advance, playing Christmas songs all day long from mid November onwards, and planning my Christmas lunch in detail. I just like the feeling of have something to wait for, something to magically turn the cold weather into warm emotions. However, this aren’t the only things I like about this time of the year. As winter is about to begin and the dark is reaching its apex to give way to the light and the new year to start, so, every year, I too rethink my past achievements and prepare for new ones to come. This is when I seriously express my gratitude for what the current year has allowed me to accomplish and set new goals for the next one. Interestingly, I’ve never missed a single goal that I’ve set for myself as part of my New Year’s resolution.

This year, this process has been a little bit more fun than usual, as I’m sharing part of my 2019 challenges with my best friend. It all started as a game, while I was advising her on weight loss. As we all know, sharing a challenge with someone else helps you track your progresses better, and prevents you from getting lost along the way or giving up your resolutions.

What Am I Grateful For?

2018 has been one of the years I’m most grateful for: it has brought me a lot of physical achievements and professional successes. The fitness goal I had set for myself around 1 year ago concerned my upper back and shoulders: I wanted to get bigger and stronger in those areas, and improve my performance on pull-ups/chin-ups and rack-pulls. And I did it! Although I didn’t increase my shoulder size that much, I definitely increased their muscular density and strength. On my upper back, instead, I managed to gain a few inches as well. Strength-wise I was able to improve my rack-pulls performance significantly: 1 year ago, I could do 6 sets of  5 reps with no more than 80 Kg, around the end of August this year, I reached 100 Kg for the same volume. As to my pull-ups and chin-ups, after 10 years of resistance training, in 2017, I still couldn’t perform one single complete rep. Now I can easily perform multiple sets of 7 reps.

Professionally, I had promised myself that I would have finalised two editorial projects I had been working on for a long time. Not only did I succeed in both, I even exceeded my expectations, in that I set up a small publishing house with my colleagues, which might even expand in the long run.

I’m grateful for all of the people I have been surrounded with this year, for their positive energy and influence on me. As naïve as it might sound, I’m grateful to my husband and my family, for just being there. I’m grateful to my body, for allowing me to accomplish my goals, and to my mind, for staying focused and motivated 365 days a year. I’m grateful for all the opportunities I have come across this past year, and for those that are yet to come.

My 2019 Resolutions

 

As I mentioned before, some of the expectations I decided to set for 2019 arose as a challenge with my best friend. Whilst she has some weight to lose, I’m not fully happy with my back and shoulder size yet, and wouldn’t mind to increase my arms too. To make our challenge more attainable and accountable, we decided to break down the year into 3-month periods, and to set a certain amount of Kg or cm to lose or gain for each period. Our first of such periods started on the 26th of November and will terminate on February, the 26th (2019). My goal is to increase my upper-back, shoulder and arm size by 1 cm for these first 3 months. Depending on how it goes, I might decide to challenge myself even more, by raising the attainable size up to 1.5-2 cm for the next trimesters.

To achieve our goals, I created a meal plan for my friend and one for myself. She committed to long walks, whereas I didn’t make any changes to my current workout routine, as it’s already shoulder and upper-back focused. I might incorporate more arm exercises later on, if I don’t see any significant change in the next month.

Other than this challenge, I committed myself to improving my skin appearance and getting rid of some awful stretch marks that I’ve had on my thighs for over 16 years. I’ve never had any patience with dry brushing and moisturising, but I just can’t stand the view of those stretch marks, and I’ve postponed for long enough…

As to my career, I have a clear plan in mind, but can’t really talk about it now, as I hope I’ll be able to share more details within the next 6 months or so. However, creating this website is already a dream come true to me, and I’ll do my best to find more time to write posts, recipes, and shoot videos in 2019.

Tracking Our Progresses

So far, I’ve gained about 4 mm on my upper back and around 2 mm on my shoulders. My arms haven’t really grown yet, but I’ve had a bunch of people making nice comments at the gym. My bestie is doing much better than me though, as she’s already lost much of the weight she was supposed to. 🙂

My skin challenge hasn’t started yet, as buying reliable, vegan, and highly effective oils costs a lot of money, and I’d rather spend that money on nice presents for my friends and family around this time of the year. However, I’ve already planned to buy a lotion I saw online with my January payslip — I’ll keep you updated.

 

Epilogue

Regardless of the outcome of my challenge, setting goals for oneself and pushing one’s own possibilities to the extreme is always a learning experience: it can show you what your limits are, and surprise you with some amount of strength and willpower that you didn’t know you possessed. Keeping your expectations attainable and accountable, however, is key to achieving your goals. Proceeding step by step, and measuring each and every daily improvement in your life will lead you to accomplish anything you want. If, on the other hand, you set too high goals for yourself and don’t allow yourself to keep measurable trace of your success, you’ll be more likely to give up. With that being said, however, even working on small, accountable bits of improvement can be hard at times. There’ll be inevitable moments, when you’ll lose your objective perspective and start comparing with others; in such moments, you’ll become your own enemy number 1. Don’t worry: those moments won’t last forever. In fact, if you practice daily mediation, and visualise in your mind your goal and your path leading to it, your focus will come back as soon as you detach from the negative emotions caused by comparing yourself with others and seeing your objective as unattainable. A good way to do so, is to dedicate at least 10 minutes a day to express your gratitude. This can be done first thing in the morning, during your day, or at night, when you’re in bed and about to fall asleep (it’s actually an excellent way to improve your sleep). Remember, gratitude is the farthest feeling from fear and oppression. Try to think of 3 different things in your life you’re grateful for everyday, and you’ll achieve whatever goal you set for yourself.

 

Bonus tip (this is actually something I’ve never shared before): in the last year of my PhD, when my stress levels were crazy high and couldn’t stay focused without panicking for more than a couple of hours a day, I used to visualise an entire stadium, crowded with supporters wearing T-shirts with my face printed on them, holding a jar of green smoothie or juice, chanting my name supportively while shaking their drinks proudly. As odd (and embarrassing) as it might sound, it really helped me find balance and accomplish all of the tasks I had set for myself at the time. Fun fact: this is also where my “keep calm and drink smoothies” motto originated. Find your own mantra to support you throughout your journey and you’ll reach your destination safe and sound! Good luck! 😉

PS As I wrote above, expressing gratitude before sleeping is an excellent form of meditation that can even improve your sleep quality. Mine has improved significantly, since I started using a nostril expander. The amount of oxygen that gets through your nose is impressively calming and relaxing. If you have trouble breathing with your nose, you might want to apply some surgical tape on your mouth, to keep it shut throughout the night (it’ll also prevent you from snoring!).