January 20, 2009

The Importance of Goals

This should come as no surprise to most anyone but setting goals has played a very large part in my overall weight loss. What made this goal-making experience so different that any before is that I made sets of goals - large and small for various amounts of time. Putting a time constraint on a goal, an actual physical date has made the single, largest difference to achieving my goals than anything else. More than my desire to lose and more than seeing a "fat" picture of myself.

The first date I put on a goal was to walk 50 times around Greenlake by the time we left for Hawaii last April. We did it, too (on the last day)! During the 3 months we gave ourselves to walk these 50 laps around Greenlake a funny thing happened. I started making more, mini goals. They all fell within the realm of my original goal and included adding on jogs around Greenlake to make it harder on ourselves. Along with setting a time limit or a specific goal date I began tracking my workouts as well as my weight daily on a calendar. I will expand on those ideas later in a separate post because they are almost as important as setting goals with a set date on them.

Another thing I learned about myself is once a big goal is attained my tedency was to enjoy it then forget about all that I had worked so hard for. I maintained throughout all of summer and stayed steady around 255. I had reached my goal and went back to life, living as I wanted. As Summer was waning I read about this website called Fatbet.net. The idea of tracking my progress so other's could see what I'm up to would keep me honest, it would motivate me to get back on track and most importantly give me a new goal. It forced me to write what my weight goal is as well as set a date for me to reach it. Amazing results…I had lofty goals and nearly made it but the transformation during this last push hasn't slowed down in me at all. Since late August I've lost an additional 35 pounds.

My goal is still losing fat but as I lose more fat I'm seeing more muscle and bones. When this started happening, I took a more aggressive approach to my goals. I added in jogs, yoga, sit-ups, push-ups and some free weights. I'm sampling all sorts of different workouts to find the best fit for me. Below is my graph from Fatbet.net which shows my weight loss since late August to today. The link will take you to the most current Fatbet we have going.

http://www.fatbet.net/viewBet.aspx?BetId=1119&Digest=2HOA7OyvgW5C167vYhcdag

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