Don’t know if you noticed that I did NOT have any posted goals for October.  Ended the month on a heavy note, 166.6 lbs.  I pretty much gorged myself on Halloween candy that the kids brought home.

Now I am back on the wagon.  Time to lose the last 10+ pounds and hit 155 lbs by the end of 2007.

To meet that weight loss goal, I am not snacking in between meals, period.  Three days so far that I have done this.

I have noticed that the weekends have been my weak spot – I tend to do some “grazing” – visiting and sampling from the freezer, refrig, or shelves.  No more of that nonsense.

My stomach is barking at me right now.  I’m going to cook dinner tonight and make sure that I am filled up.

Also on the agenda for this month is exercising 5 times a week.  Today was a 55 minute run, last night was a 10,000 meter row on the ergometer.  Tomorrow is probably an afternoon mountain bike ride through the Boise foothills.  Afternoon ride because it is getting chilly.  When I left for a run this morning with the dog at 9:15, the temperature was below freezing, around 28F – brrrr.

Here’s the rowing effort from last night – a 10km row the other night, 45:21.3, 2:16.0 / 500 meters, 22 strokes per minute.

9:09.8 2:17.4 23 2000m
9:13.7 2:18.4 22 4000m
9:06.0 2:16.5 22 6000m
9:01.6 2:15.4 23 8000m
8:50.3 2:12.5 23 10000m

It’s getting time to get serious about weight loss.

For the last few months I have been hovering around the 165 lbs range – a little above and a little below. My original weight loss goal was to lose 23 lbs by the end of 2007. I hit that goal sometime in May 2007, well ahead of the target date. Wisdom says that should set another goal to keep the momentum going.

The current goal is to lose another 35 pounds by the end of 2007. I have barely made a dent in the new goal. What’s going on?

On the plus side, I am happy to say that I haven’t given back the gains (or losses depending on how you look at it) from my effort to shed a few pounds. Unfortunately, I really haven’t made any progress to speak of. Arrggghhh!

Might be time to notch up the efforts by consuming less food. This is the part I have been dreading, actually cutting back on my food consumption. Up until now, I have lost weight by making “lifestyle” changes. For instance, not eating after dinner and drinking a lot of water each day. I could still eat pretty much what I wanted.

Now might be the time to cut out the snack before dinner, or the donuts on Fridays, or the pantry grazing on the weekends. Additionally, I am going to need to keep up the exercise effort, the type of exercise that gets you good and tired. And not just the weekend warrior type stuff to make up for not exercising during the week. At least a few times during the work week, I’m going to have to do something like hit the YMCA and use the ergometer for one of those torturous rowing sessions.

Consider this a note to self to getting going again.

[tags]weight loss, goals[/tags]

Don’t wait until tomorrow, it might be too late.  While the following story has not ended – it should be a gentle reminder that the time we have now is all we have.

Randy Pausch set the tone early on yesterday at his farewell lecture at Carnegie Mellon University.

“If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you,” said Dr. Pausch, a 46-year-old computer science professor who has incurable pancreatic cancer.

Read the full story here.

I’m actually referring to a thirty day goal.  As mentioned previously, I hit my August thirty day goal of exercising every day of the month.  Did it help me lose weight?  No, probably not.  Still, I completed what I planned to do.

Had not thought about what my goal would be for September when September rolled around.  So, being the lazy one that I am, I decided to just continue on with the exercise goal – another thirty days of exercise every day of the month.

That was until yesterday when I noticed the muscles on the left side of my chest twitching.  It a pleasant feeling when your muscles twitch involuntarily – especially near the old ticker.  Makes me think I am having a heart attack.

I changed my thirty day goal for September from exercising every day to going to bed by 10:30 every night.  I figure my body is telling me I need to get more sleep if my muscles are speaking to me the way they were.

I hit my August 2007 thirty day goal of exercising every single day. Yeah!

I’ll also reviewed my weight loss effort to date and have the following chart to show.

weight loss chart

This is a hi/lo/close chart in stock market parlance. The extremes of each bar are the high and low, the tick mark on the right hand side is the weight for the last day of the month. As you can see, I was on a steady weight loss downtrend for seven straight months. I seem to have lost some momentum in July and August 2007 – I seem to be stuck in this 165-170 pound range for the last couple months.

Keep in mind that I have already hit my original goal (ending December 2007) of losing 23 llbs in 13 months. My new goal is to lose another 10 pounds and weight 155 lbs by the end of December 2007.

Think I can do it?

[tags]weight loss goals[/tags]

Dear reader,

If you are a repeat visitor of this online weight loss diary, then it should come as no surprise that I am a big fan of setting goals, in particular 30 day goals that get me off my duff and doing something.

This months goal is to exercise every single day.  I have also come to the conclusion – for me anyway – that a thirty day goal has to be something that I do every day for thirty day and not some goal that gives me thirty days to finish (I’ll just wait until the end and cram it all in).

So when I say great minds think alike, I mean the people over at lifehack.org think along the same lines as I do when spelling out 18 tricks to make new habits sticks.

Here’s the first two tricks mentioned.

1. Commit to Thirty Days – Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.

2. Make it Daily – Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.

Those ring true with me, how about you?