Welcome to Fit by 40! This is a blog about getting fit as you approach middle-age. If you’re in your 30s and 40s, then you know how hard it can be to stay fit and healthy as you get older. I’m sure a great majority of us wish that we are in better shape, right?
When I was in my 20s, I went to the gym 4-5 days per week and I was a lot more active in general. Now that I’m older, I have more responsibilities and it is really difficult to find time to exercise. Life has become a lot more sedentary especially since we had a kid 5 years ago. He just started kindergarten a few months ago, though. This is the perfect opportunity for me to shape up and get more healthy.
Fitness Goals
In 2016, I had a very modest fitness goal. I got a Garmin Vivofit 2 for Christmas and I’m using it to track my activity level. The vivofit is really awesome. It’s one of the cheapest fitness tracker and you don’t have to charge it. It uses a regular watch battery so you just need to change it once per year. The vivofit has been extremely useful and it reminded me to keep moving and try to get out more.
My 2016 fitness goal was to average at least 6,000 steps per day. The good news is that I accomplished that goal. I walked almost 2,500,000 steps and averaged 6,654 steps per day. Yes! I think that was a good start, but I have do more this year.
For 2017, I’m going to set more challenging fitness goals. I’m sure blogging about this will help the whole process. After all, blogging about my finance at Retire by 40 completely changed my life for the better. If it works for finance, it should work for fitness too, right?
Here are my goals for 2017
- Averages 7,000 steps per day.
- Pull up 15 times in a row. This might be impossible at my age, but I will push it in 2017. I can do about 10 good pull ups in a row before Thanksgiving 2016. Vacation and holidays wreck havoc on my workout schedule and I need to start over again…
- Exercise when the kid goes to school.
The last one might be a bit tough because it will be difficult to keep track of. I’ll probably have to update this blog every week and put it online. I think this is a really good goal for me. Once we get into the routine, then I’ll be active almost every weekday.
Unfortunately, I’m already off to a horrible start in 2017. I’m sick and I’m putting off exercising until next week. It has also been really cold in Portland and I don’t even want to step out of our home. All these 3 goals are starting off in a hole…
What do you think about these goals? Should I add more goals for 2017? Do you have some fitness goals this year
Mine at age 31 are to hit 180lb at 6-8% body fat and get into good cardio shape- I think for parents or people with busier lifestyles full body workouts 3x a week is best, while staying active on off days (walking sports etc). Good luck with your goals- every day is a fresh start
Good luck! You must be in a great shape already to shoot for 6-8% body fat. That’s awesome.
Strong work not only on your goals, Joe, but also your current condition. 10 good pullups is no joke — I got up to 10 last year, but the last few were pretty herky jerky.
My workout routines tend to be pretty streaky. Changing of the seasons, responsibilities, vacations… all it takes is one thing to get in the way, and the whole routine goes kaput.
Here’s hoping it gets easier as an early retiree!
-PoF
Hi J,
Those goals look awesome and the new year is the perfect time to start. You may want to add Yoga twice a week for flexibility and to prevent injury. I also took your words of wisdom and started my new blog using Siteground. Visit my blog and I welcome constructive criticism.
fitbela.org
I love yoga, but they don’t have the class at the right time for me. Maybe I need to get a DVD or something like that. Thank you for using my link! 🙂