Fitness & Fatherhood Part 4: Goal Setting & Re-Establishing Good Habits

Five months into fatherhood and it’s time for some self evaluation and reassessment. I’ve done a decent job so far at maintaining my fitness level despite the sleepless nights. And the fatherhood thing? Well, I’m giving it my best to be sure. One unintended consequence of being a father is that I’ve watched more football this year than I have in probably the last 10 years. This is because there’s nothing else to do on a Saturday or Sunday when your holding a baby all day. I’d just prop my feet up, give our daughter a bottle, and watch a game. That being said I’ve also let some other things in my life slip. Good habits that I worked hard to establish have been pushed to the wayside.

I’ve always been pretty decent at writing down my goals. This is something I started in college and continued throughout my adult life. I’d always have a little booklet or notebook that I would write down my goals and I’d always have it on me. If you noticed I wrote this whole paragraph in the past tense because I haven’t been writing down and tracking any goals the last several months. In addition, I’ve stopped doing other habits I had established such as tracking my food, and adhering to a weekly food menu.

So I’m going to get back on track with my goal setting and re-establish some other good habits that I’ve slacked on. First and foremost is that I have decided on and wrote down several goals for myself for this year. These goals operate in congruence with pre-established long term goals that I’ve had for quiet some time. I won’t share all of them here since many are personal or financial in nature, but I will share a few that are relevant to this blog.

For example, in the fatherhood department I have a goal of reading to my daughter every night. Reading is so important to me. I have a personal goal of reading 20 books this year, and I want to pass down this habit to my daughter. So every night my wife and I are going to read to her. Another goal is to take my daughter on a walk at least 5 days a week. Getting outside is something that is really important to me. I try to be as active as possible, and I want to have an active child. Of course, right now it’s winter and it’s been cold and rainy lately, but I still want to make an effort to get her outside.

I have a lot of goals in other areas of my life such as fitness/health. So an example of a couple of fitness/health goals is meal planning and prepping. I could write a whole blog on this, but you get the idea. A fitness goal is 10 pull ups weighted with 45lbs. This is something I’ve been working on since getting sick a few years ago. My all time record was 17 pull ups with a 45lbs weight, however nowadays I can only get about 5 or 6. So that has got to improve.

I have a lot more fitness and fatherhood goals than these, but I didn’t want to turn this blog post into a big list, but I thought that I’d at least put a couple goals out there for the sake of accountability. The more important point is I’ve started to write down my goals again, and started to hold myself to some accountability. My thought is if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards, and you should never be satisfied. I know I’m not. Thanks for reading!