Making 2016 Amazing: Thinking About Goals

  
Oh my gosh!  It’s only the day after Christmas and already I’m yammering on about resolutions, goals fresh starts…  All of that malarkey.  Yep, it’s that time of year!  How will I make 2016 amazing?  Well, for starters, I won’t Hoover up food like I did yesterday…  It’s like a valve opens or something and I have to get everything through in time.  Yesterday I decided to let myself party and eat whatever, and party I did.  I ate a lot of cookies.  Cookies are my thing, after all, and I made sure to eat a lot of them.  Then there was the cheese plate with lots of different kinds of (heavenly) cheeses to try.  And the olives.  And the cheese ball.  And….  Eventually I had to come upstairs to my bedroom, deciding to be done with the eating.  And as I sat in my room watching A Walk in the Woods, my tummy had a little room appear and it seemed really important to fill that void.  I wanted to go downstairs to eat more food.  I had already eaten plenty; I didn’t need more, but my goodness if I didn’t want more.  Right then I decided that my holiday ‘eat anything I want’ moment had to end.  I decided no more cookies, no more indulging, Christmas was over.  It had to be.  Of course, then I turned to goals. 

  
It’s safe to call the bet now: there’s no way I’ll be weighing 190 by 1/1/16.  No way.  Yesterday morning I braved the scale and discovered that I’m either retaining a lot of water or I’ve gained five pounds.  The water retention is an actual possibility.  I ate a lot of salty and different foods, that makes me retain water.  I also started working out really solidly, again, which makes me retain water as my muscles adjust to the new routine.  But I also have introduced more sugar and fat of late, which doesn’t help anything.  And, while I’ve been tracking my food, I’ve been tracking it right past my target.  My intake has been exceeding my activity level by a significant amount.  So, yeah, it could go either way: fat or water.  I’ll find out soon enough, but I’m not going to weigh 190 when the chips finally fall.  That said, I knew it was a long shot to make that goal.  I’m just pleased as punch that I made it this far and I still am under 200!  Now that is something remarkable!  🙂

  
So that makes me think about what I want next.  After Zumba today, over coffee, a friend and I were discussing our goals for the upcoming year.  She wants to weigh less than her husband, something I understand very well. Bradley and I switch constantly, who weighs more and who weighs less, but I want to be the one weighing less.  Always.  Lol!  We are currently, always within two pounds of one another!  My goal is to weigh 170.  Right now that’s 28 pounds away.  That said, my goal always seems to be to lose weight in an attempt to be healthier, but health is, ultimately, always my goal.  At the end of the year, regardless of my weight, I want to be able to say I made healthy choices.  The weight doesn’t always come off of me, but I need to be able to say I succeeded, nonetheless.  The area I always need to push myself in is exercise, so I want to make a non-scale victory centered around that.  During our conversation we came up with a number of things we could work on for our goals:

• Weightloss
• Exercise consistency
• Faster mileage
• More mileage
• Consistently integrate weights into workout
• Food tracking/journaling
• Making time for self-care more consistently 
• Building a supportive community
• Blogging/Diary goals
• Accountability
• Staying motivated/determined 
• Honesty (about what you’re really doing versus what you tell yourself you’re doing)
• Completing a specific exercise event (like a 5k, 1/2 marathon or hike or something)

  
That said, I don’t need to choose all of those, but for anyone looking to make a goal or two, that might help you start thinking about your goals.  I am a goal queen.  Early on, I found that anything I did to make a plan would drive my week in a positive direction.  I realized that the weeks I made goals were my most successful, while I would stagnate or gain weight during non-goal weeks.  When making goals to last the  entire week was too hard, I’d make goals for the next day.  When a whole day was too hard to get through, I’d make a morning goal, assess, then make an afternoon goal, then an evening goal.  I even make hour by hour/ 15 minute goals when things are really challenging for me.  The more opportunities I give myself to be successful, the more I build a habit of success and start to feel successful.  The appearance of success, even to myself, drives me forward, no matter how small the victory.  So, for me, goal setting is a huge component of any success.

*** Side note: I’ve written about goal setting before and how statistics show that people who set New Years resolutions actually are statistically more likely to be successful than people who do not.  Consider making a resolution- it could make a big difference where you want to see one.