This time last year, I wrote a piece about New Year’s Resolutions, which I personally modified to the called it the 2nd of January resolution. The reasoning behind that was that if you wanted to start a new plan that you want to absolutely stick to, you many not wanna start the first day with a hangover.
A year later, here I am writing about what I learned from that experience as this is the beauty of self-experimentation.
On that post I wrote about experimenting with accountability, and how it could be used as a powerful tool to stick to resolutions. So I started a small accountability group with a handful of friends and we had weekly call to check out on each other’s progress and so that no one falls behind.
By the second week of January we were only 3, and before February it was just me and a friend who kept postponing until the whole thing fell out.
There are two things I learned here, one is that if you spend so much time designing a plan that would set you up for better productivity and results, you might want to spend just as much time carefully analyzing the elements that are going to sustain that plan.
Otherwise it would be like designing an ultra-cool house on weak foundations.
Luckily for us, there are enough tools online where you can put stakes on your goals to help you to follow through.
Long story short, self-accountability works. However, it’s really a two-edged sword. So on this post one year later, I’ll talk about what I have learned from that experience.
Choose Your Goals Carefully
The first mistake I made was setting too many goals. As the saying goes: “You Can’t Kiss All the Girls”.
Right from the start, I set myself to accomplish a goal that was not precisely something I truly desired, but rather one the lines of that would be nice to achieve but not really important to me personally.
Standing in strong contrast with the other goals that I truly cared about.
I was one goal too many, and that goal was to be in a great shape. Very abstract I know, and it’s not a bad goal to have, but my mistake is that I failed to personalize the parameters to myself.
In order to avoid being too generic, I decided to do a lot of research before picking which specific plan to follow. So I compared a lot of diets from Tim Ferris’s to Ryan Reynolds’s.
Enter Mistake Number 2:
I picked my specific diet based on effectiveness and speed while I should’ve chosen one that would suit me personally.
So I went with the Ketogenic diet - there are a lot of variations of the keto diets I know - but the one I picked came with the specific checklist of an extremely small number of food items that you’re allowed to eat in order for your body to stay in Ketosis.
The diet consists of the following: Meat, fish, eggs and some veggies. And by “Some” I mean SIX.
Broccoli, Cauliflower, Asparagus, Sauerkraut, Kimchee and Kale.
From that list above I only eat Kale, while other Cruciferous veggies I like -such as Arugula or Watercress- we strictly forbidden.
Non-cruciferous veggies were forbidden as well, so that meant adiós to tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots, peppers… And pretty much anything you can imagine.
I gave up on Kale pretty quickly because whenever there’s some food that gets sensationally propagandized by the media, I tend to be a little cautious.
Just like soy in the 1990s, high-fructose corn syrup in the 80s or sugar in the 70s.
I don’t know, call me a conspiracy theorist but I just don’t want to place too much trust on Monsanto’s dietician.
So armed with my mini-list of the “allowed” food items, I set myself a six weeks goal to stick to the diet, a time frame that I thought was just long enough to see if there are visible changes beginning to take place... And just short enough, so I can switch diets in case that one wasn’t working out for me.
I have to say, it really worked wonders. In fact after three and a half weeks I started seeing changes already.
Though I have to admit that some other important factors that may have contributed as well.
I started running everyday, going to the gym three times a week, and unless completely necessary, using only the stand up desk.
(In full disclosure, I didn’t buy a standup desk, I just went to the bookshelf tossed some books aside and voilà).
Also there was no sugar nor sugar additives of any kind, no sauces, no juices, not even fruits. Alcohol was of course forbidden too.
At first, it went pretty smooth. Before starting the diet I thought I would be spending all week fantasizing about Cheat Day (there is one day a week where you can eat or drink anything you want) but surprisingly enough, it went much easier than I thought.
Seeing the positive changes take place in my body was enough motivation for me to keep it up, plus feeling physically better every day was a reward on its own.
So at the end of the six weeks, and with the satisfaction of not only meeting my goals but feeling great physically on top of it. I was a happy man.
Now, if only I could finish this post right at this moment.
Easy Come, Easy Go
You see, there was an important piece of information I ignored before embarking on that extreme diet, which is that once you finish the diet, you can’t just go back to the way that you used to eat before. Otherwise, you’re going to gain much more weight than you started the diet with.
So a few weeks later there I was, with more extra weight than I ever had in my life.
I gotta tell you, I did not see that one coming.
And now what do we do?
At this point, the only viable option is to go back to the same diet and exercise routine until such point when I get my normal shape back, and then I'd start to transition between that extreme diet, and normal food in a slow fashion, and then eventually make my exit from the inflexible rules of unforgiving diets .
Only that sounds much easier said than done.
Here’s another thing I didn’t expect, they say that the second time is much easier than the first, but that was not my experience… At all!
The first time I was curious, I had nothing to lose, plus I was motivated to be in better shape.
The second time however I was pretty much forced to do it all over again just to go back to my normal weight. So I was pretty much in for obligation instead of ambition.
The stick instead of the carrot, and let me tell you, I am not a stick person.
The days pass and it gets only worse. After a few days, you almost start to get angry when you remember that you have to eat chicken again. You get so tired of eating the same foods over and over again that sometimes you decide to skip meals all together.
Moral of the story, there is no such thing as a ‘best plan’ there is only what’s best for you.
For me, I learned that it’s far better to just eat healthy every day and exercise regularly than to engage into some extreme goal-setting programs and try to achieve them.
Goals are great, and you feel amazing when you achieve them and succeed like a champ.
But if there’s one thing to be learned from my experience is that sometimes you need to make sure that you are really passionate about those goals you’re setting.
Otherwise you could be missing out on important and beautiful things that were right in front of you just you were too busy trying to achieve someone else’s goals because of societal expectations and other traps.
But it was a great lesson nonetheless. Sometimes you just have to follow the good ol' heart.
