23 pounds

Great Minds Think Alike

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?

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Where Am I?

I’m sticking to the 30 day goal of exercising every day of this month. It has actually been relatively easy. I think because I made it a goal that I do every day.

It seems that I need to have a goal that requires constant effort, not one that I can do say twice a week at my leisure. No sirree. I’m just too lazy for something like that to work.

Like I said, I have exercised every day of the month, mostly mountain biking in the Boise foothills and a bunch of rides with my wife.

I have to tell you that having kids that are in the double digits makes it very easy to go out with your spouse on a regular basis. Last night we told the kids to put themselves in bed before we got home from our ride, sometime around 9 PM. Can you picture that? “Kids, your mom and I are going for a ride, we’ll be back in a couple of hours, take care of yourself and put yourself to bed by 9.”

I love it.

That’s the theory anyway. What actually happened is when we got home, the kids were not there. The back door was unlocked and the lights were on. We noticed that the dog had her bark collar on which means that the kids went somewhere.

“Ring, ring”. The phone rang and who was it on the other end of the line? Our oldest kid, or course. “Dad, we’ll be home in a few minutes, we went down to the Y and went swimming and didn’t notice what time it was.”

Fast forward two hours later after 11PM and the kids are finally getting themselves in bed. Oh well, we got our ride in.

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30 Day Weight Loss Goal

It’s that time of the month - time for another 30 day weight loss goal.

I’ve come to the temporary conclusion that my thirty day goal needs to be consistent throughout the month.  In other words, it has to be something I do every day.

For August, my goal is to exercise every day of the month.  This is the same goal I had for January 2007.  This presents a challenge since I have plans for certains days of the month that might make it difficult to complete - just means I have to plan ahead.

For the first day of August I … drumroll, please … ergometer - surprise!  10km  in 41:59.5, the first 5km in 21:20 and the last 5km in 20:39 averaging 2:05.9 for 500 meters at a rate of 23 strokes per minute.

8:41.9 2:10.4 22 2000m
8:35.2 2:08.8 24 4000m
8:40.7 2:10.1 23 6000m
8:14.6 2:03.6 23 8000m
7:47.1 1:56.7 24 10000m

I have an epic mountain bike ride planned for tomorrow through the Boise foothills.

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Slow The Rising Weight

I know the feeling Jimmy … welcome to my world.  No offense, but what took you 2 years to figure out, I figured out in about 2 months.

Ever since I lost 180 pounds on the Atkins diet in 2004, it seems I have reached a point where my weight just refuses to go down beyond a certain point. I’ve been okay with this for over two years, but I believe now it’s time for me to act.

Looks like somebody set the bar to low.  I hit my thirteen month weight loss goal of losing 23 pounds in just 6 months.  I could have been happy with the results, but I realize that doesn’t do me any good.  If I don’t have to stretch myself (in hindsight, losing 23 pounds seems relatively easy because of all the small little things I did to accomplish my weight loss goal), then I’ll likely slip back to my old ways.

On the other hand, if I have to work hard to accomplish my goal, then it is unlikely I will undo all of my hard work.

I realize that it isn’t the most “friendly” line of thinking, but it is what works for me.  So Jimmy, my hats off to your Kimkins journey and your public commitment to:

“I fully EXPECT to lose at least 50 pounds quite possibly by this Fall.”

Don’t worry, I’ll be watching for your results.

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I Hit My Weight Loss Goal And Why It Wasn’t Worth It

That might sound like a strange way to react to accomplishing my goal, but let me explain.

I weighed in today at 167.4 lbs, close enough to my goal of losing 23 lbs. I started this effort to lose 23 lbs on December 1 2006 when I weighed 190 lbs. As far as I am concerned, 167.4 lbs is close enough - kind of like horsehoes and grenades. And remember that my plan was to lose 23 lbs by the end of December 2007. Obviously I exceeded that goal.

And that is the problem. I set the bar too low. My weight loss momentum has slowed down and now it is time to setup a new goal, one that should be challenging enough that I need to go beyond my comfort zone to obtain it. With that said, my new weight loss goal is to weigh 155 pounds, 12 pounds less than I currently weigh, by the end of December 2007.

I can tell from the last couple of months that this new goal is going to be a challenge. For the first four months of my first weight loss goal, I had no problem losing 4 pounds per month like clockwork. I just set a thirty day “lifestyle” change goal, and magic, I would lose 4 pounds. This April and May, my weight loss rate has decreased. I haven’t been losing 4 pounds per month like I was previously. I have still been setting 30 day goals, but the weight loss has not been as great. I still think the 30 day goals that have had the biggest impact on my weight loss are (1) not eating after dinner, and (2) drinking at least an additional 64 ounces of water a day (by the way, yesterday I drank almost an additional 100 ounces of water and that seems to becoming the new norm).

My thirty day goal for June 2007 is to do an intense workout similar to Tim Ferriss twice a week for 30 minutes per session. Nothing like a little weight lifting to get the metabolism fired up.

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