Goal Setting

Our contest's second to last weigh in is here and the numbers are a little disappointing. After two weeks of lax dieting and my focus shifting to weight lifting over aerobics, I've only lost .2 lbs. I had known that this week wouldn't be my best one but I must admit that my heart sank a bit at the sight of such a small change. I then had to try and keep my spirits up as I accepted what I felt was undeserved praise from my friends, teammates, and fiancé. At the end of the day I know that any improvement is a good thing, but when you're hoping for big numbers and wind up with much smaller results it can be a hard thing to get past. But just like every other week we're going to use these bad feels to come up with a plan to promote better results in the future!

Something that I've been lacking on is writing out my goals clearly so I can come up with a plan to achieve them! Rule number 1 of trying to achieve any sort of self improvement is to simply write it down. From there you can expand on it and really flesh out your goal.

When I started, my original goal was to lose weight. Now that is a poor goal if I've ever seen one. Where's the numbers? Where's the time limit? If I have such a vague idea I'll never follow through with it. When do you want to attain this goal? How are you going to do it?

In order to make an effective goal I'm quite fond of using the SMART system. SMART is a mnemonic you can use to set effective goals.
Specific: Be specific and explain exactly what you want to achieve.
Measurable: How will you gauge if you are succeeding?
Attainable: Your goal must be possible.
Relevant: The goal should be important to you.
Time-bound: What is your deadline?

Using the SMART mnemonic let's redo our goal. My new goal is to lose 2 lbs. a week every week right up until my wedding date of October 8th taking me from 317 lbs to 259 lbs in 29 weeks. Now that is a goal. An honest admission of my starting weight, with a clear start and end date, including how fast I plan to achieve it and what my end result will be.

Now that we've got out goal, we can't let it just be words. Find a place where we can see it everyday and write it nice and big. We're gonna need that reminder so that our goal is constantly at the forefront of our minds. Next up we have to keep track of it! Grab yourself notebook or your favourite software and start keeping track. I'm quite fond of microsoft excel for keeping track of numbers and dates so in goes our starting weight. Once that is done it's brainstorming time. What steps are we going to take in order achieve our goal? I've had success with calorie counting even though I've been forgetting to enter it so how about we aim for entering it 5/7 days a week? Going to the gym has been a big help so why don't we aim for going twice a week for an hour of cardio? Stairs are an easy addition so why not take the stairs once a day at work for a total of five times a week?

Now we've got a clear goal thanks to our use of the SMART mnemonic, a plan and checklist so we can hold ourselves accountable to that goal, reminders to keep us thinking about it, and I don't know about you but I'm feeling super motivated!

Don't let your dreams be dreams!
#weightlossjourney