1K

Today I hit a milestone which is totally arbitrary, but is a meaningful one for me personally: I achieved my “Move” goal on my Apple Watch for the thousandth time since I got my first Apple Watch in May, 2015.

It’s important to me because it’s enabled, or at the very least, coincided with, a pretty dramatic change in the way that I live day to day, and even more dramatic change in the way that I think about myself. Before 2015, I got to the gym a couple of times a week, but always struggled with consistency and achievement. I’ve gone through some periods of my life where I’ve been more consistent — training for a half marathon about 15 years ago, for instance — but I’ve always had a hard time with it, and more than that, have always viewed it as a little bit separate to my life.

But I like games and competitions and goals and streaks. So the idea of trying every day to hit my goal of physical output has worked for me in a big way. It hasn’t been 100% — otherwise I would’ve hit 1,000 a year ago — but it’s been consistent, and when I get out of sorts and miss a few days (or few weeks), it’s something powerful for me to come back to — for the past few years, I’ve wanted to get back to it, which is totally new to me.

There’ve been some other pieces that have been useful — we got a Peloton a few years ago, and I can’t recommend it highly enough — it’s an amazing and transformative piece of equipment, and, astonishingly, it’s proven durable.

And this year I got my diet into shape for the first time in years, which meant my year on the scale looked like this:

I’m up a little bit over the past few months, but after getting some guidance from Dr Suhas in February, everything got better. As good as it’s ever been for me, actually. Lots of people are amused that it was an Ayurvedic diet that unlocked things for me — not exactly a tradition that I come from — but my point of view is: whatever it takes. It helped my weight, lowered my cholesterol, and helped my head.

Lots more to unpack — and some work to do going forward, as I’d like to get down under 160 (and am pretty sure that I can) — but mainly I just wanted to write about this arbitrary milestone, and what it means to me, and say that I’m grateful for this little piece of technology on my wrist that keeps me honest and motivated.