Setting and working towards goals

"Goals not written down are just dreams ..."

I'm not sure who said that originally but lately I have found it very true for me .

Due to all the craziness going on in my life, and the way my brain works, I have lost focus on my weight loss goals over the last 10-12 months. Losing weight is very hard, and sometimes is seems as though it is too hard, especially the other day when I came back from the gym feeling as though I had failed because I was still at my starting point of six weeks ago. So I took a leaf from my friend Louise's book and said "Fuck the past, let's reconnect." (Great comment by the way Louise).

I sat down on Thursday night, and again later on Friday afternoon, and designed a new template for tracking all of my weight loss and fitness goals, food intake, and exercise performed, on the one page. I then set myself a goal weight and a time to achieve that by (the date is Splendour in the Grass Saturday 4th August, but the weight is not up for discussion yet - I'm still not prepared to share that yet. But if you want to tell me your weight I tell you mine!).

Next I set up goals for the three key areas of my program
1. Body
2. Food
3. Mind

The goals are as follows

BODY
7 cardio sessions a week (at least 30 minutes, but doesn't have to be a the gym)
1-2 stretching sessions a week (yoga, tai chi, body balance, or Pilate's)
3 gym sessions a week (with the personal trainer)

Now, I know that seems a LOT when you see it written down, but it's actually less than what I should be doing to lose weight. Generally speaking you should be doing 30 minutes of cardio a day to maintain weight and 60 minutes to lose weight.

A good training program should include cardio, muscle building, and stretching exercises. When my health returns I will up the cardio to 60 minutes a day, but right now, what I'm doing feels more than enough.

FOOD

Work on getting a better understanding and use of appropriate portion size (eg meat portions should be the size of the palm of your hand)

MIND

Meditate at least 5 minutes a day every day - Learn to relax and de-stress

Sorting this stuff out in my head and getting it down of paper has made it a reality for me, and seeing it every day as I write down my food intake re-focuses my mind on what is important and removes the stuff that isn't. It seems to be working at the moment, but I will re-visit every week to see how I'm progressing.

Also, I'm hoping that if I follow this guidelines and consume my 20 points a day that I will achieve a weight loss of .6 of a kilo every week. This amount will bring me to my goal weight for the Splendour weekend. This goal isn't my final goal weight, but just one that will allow me to feel more comfortable surrounded by girls in tank tops and shortie-shorts.

I will post more later, but it's the weekend and I have a bear to make lunch for (albeit a late lunch) .

Signing off until the story of the evil-bitch shop assistant.

Regards

Late