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I am not exactly sure why, but I’ve been a bit reticent to set new goals. I haven’t had a real goal since the end of last year. I’ve made some uncertain ones – like losing my vacation weight, moving closer to my 10% goal, etc. But I haven’t made any concrete goals since then. That is not good.

Goals are important. Specific goals are even more important. Saying “I want to lose 100lbs” is great, but how do I get to that point? It doesn’t just happen overnight. There are intermediary steps along the way. These are goals that I need to keep in mind, that I need to work towards. “Losing a lot of weight” is a platitude. “Hitting my 10% target by the end of May” is a specific goal, one that I can concentrate and focus on, and strive towards.

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That’s my first new goal, by the way. My 10% goal is 298.6. I am currently around 302. That gives me two weeks to lose four pounds. This is well within Weight Watchers guidelines for safe weight loss. This is an attainable goal. This is an easily-measurable goal. And it will be mine.

Oh, yes, it will be mine.

My other goal is an ongoing one that might be a little harder to hit in the long term: average 1lb lost a week. That’s the equivalent of losing 52lbs a year: you don’t see too many people doing that. [grin] As with everything else, doing something long-term is harder and harder to do as the term grows longer and longer. I can easily keep the 1lb average over the next few weeks. My goal is to do that over the next few months. Slow and steady.

I should throw in some exercise goals, too, but I am not quite ready for that. Soon, compadre, but not today.

- M

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BOO-YAH!!! Please forgive me a little gloating here, but I am pretty sure I deserve at least a little self-indulgent celebrating here. I am down almost 5 pounds!  I am now officially down weight from the start of the year. Throw in a bit of a plateau and a little thing called a Caribbean cruise in there, and I still weigh less now than at the start of the year! I am trending exactly the way I need to be.

I am allowing myself a little extra back-patting this week for another reason: I worked damned hard to lose this weight. I followed the plan, tracked almost everything that I ate, added in some extra activity. Everything I am supposed to do, even when I didn’t want to. I stick with the plan, and the results show that.

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Not much else to say for right now, other than to note I am closing in on both my 30lb mark (just need to lose another pound) and my 10% goal (need 4 more lbs to hit that). I do have another vacation to deal with – a trip to California and Disneyland – but I like my chances at keeping control for this one.

For the most part, I’m just going to keep on keepin’ on. And I am going to allow myself to celebrate this loss for a while more. It was epic! And I deserve it.  :)

- M

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• Surprise weigh-in (April 12, 2011) (weightjournal.com)

One of my dear twitter friends, @Dabobie, sent me a tweet that has me thinking. Her tweet was pure encouragement: “you’re on a roll ) this is your year!” Aside from being super-sweet, this tweet made me stop and think, though. Will 2011 be my year? Is this the year I get down to my goal weight? And, even more important, is this the year I stay there?

It is definitely shaping up as such. I had a bit of a plateau at the end of the year and the first week of this year, but that was by choice. I had hit one of my major goals, and it was time to stop, celebrate that, catch my breath, and then get ready to work towards my next big goal. Once I decided it was time to move forward again, I started seeing immediate results.

I am within a whisker of hitting my 10% loss this time around at WeightWatchers. I am motivated to keep going. I have internalized some of those things I should know by now, including not going inside convenience stores! I am slacking a little when it comes to exercise, true. Otherwise, I think I am at a really good spot.

Things will get a little interesting in a couple of weeks. My wife and I are going on a vacation – one of those all-inclusive things. I can eat and drink as much as I want. No one is going to stop me, no one is going to charge me any money. Talk about free reign!

On the other hand, opportunities to exercise will be everywhere! A half-mile walking track. ATV driving through a jungle. Power-walking along a stingray beach. Activity points should be a breeze to gain.

Add those Activity Points plus 49 weekly points, and you’ve got a situation where I’d have to work very, very hard to gain weight on this vacation.

Just somebody please save me from Bailey’s Irish Cream!!!

- M

It is always possible that I am only noticing this on weeks where it is true, and I don’t notice “normal” Saturdays. So I am going to do something that I really don’t believe in: I am going to chart my daily weigh-ins. That’ll give me a feel for how my weight fluctuates during a given week, and I can aggregate that to see patterns over a number of weeks.

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A typical example is for Halloween. In the first cell, one would draw a picture of kids trick-or-treating. The next cell would be a picture of the left-over Halloween candy sitting in a bowl on the table. The next cell would be your strategy for avoiding the trap. For example, you might draw a picture of you grabbing an apple. Or taking the candy to the dentist for a candy buy-back program. Maybe throwing all the candy into the trash.

That is a very good storyboard. If you want to storyboard but haven’t done so yet. Or aren’t sure exactly how to do a storyboard, steal that previous paragraph. It’s good stuff, trust me. This can be done mentally, of course. If you think visually, that is a strategy that will work well.

I have to be contrarian, of course. I build storyboards in my head. But those storyboards are exactly wrong. I picture stopping at a gas station, going into the convenience store and grabbing a package of Zingers and a big carton of chocolate milk, and then snacking all the way home. I can visualize each step of the process. The sound of the bell when I open the door. The crinkles of the Zinger’s wrapper. The cold of the milk carton. The sound of the cash register. Hearing the clerk say “have a good day.” And then the feeding frenzy.

This is the kind of thing I have to fight against. Almost every week. Somewhere along the way, I am able to shake the cobwebs out, realize that I cannot give in to those thoughts. I have to rely on an impulse to kick in, to keep me from giving in.

Hmmm… maybe I should storyboard a strategy for dealing with negative storyboarding…

I sat down and mapped out a long term goal, and have that chopped up into a couple of short-term goals:

Long term goal: Lose 35 pounds by Halloween. The date is easy, since it is close to my son’s birthday. And he is part of the reason I really want to start getting back on track. I am picking the weight goal for a pragmatic reason. I want to have a heart scan done. The tables only hold a max weight of 300lbs, though, so I have to be under. 35 pounds would put me at 295, so I’d have room to spare.

Long term reward: Picking an appropriate long-term reward is kind of hard. It’s a guilt thing. Two-pronged actually. Guilt that I don’t really deserve a reward, since I’ve been a lot lighter than 295 in the past couple of years. That’s bullshit, of course. This is a new goal, it stands separately from everything except for my current weight. 35 pounds is a very good goal, and deserves to be celebrated. (The other reason I feel guilty is I hate spending money on myself.)

Okay, add all of that up, and I still need to set up a reward. And there’s only really one thing that stands out in my mind. If I am at 295 (or less) on Halloween 2010, I am going to buy myself a complete set of Legend of Zelda games for the Wii. This includes LoZ: Twilight Princess, and the earlier LoZ games on the Wii Virtual Console (I already have The Wind Waker). And no, I really don’t mind being labelled such. [grin]

Short term goal: There are seven months ’til Halloween, which  makes short-term goals easy.  5 pounds a month – approximately 1.25 pounds per week – and I am there. It sounds so easy on paper! It looks so easy on the computer screen. And it should be easy. At my weight, losing a pound or two a week should be a breeze. One less pop-tart, an extra 5 minutes walking a day, any of these will allow my body to get rid of this weight. It’s not natural to be this overweight, and one’s body will automatically start shedding weight if I just get out of its way.

Short term reward: At the end of each month, if I lost the 5 pounds I needed in that month, I’m gonna allow myself to buy any book I want. No guilt about spending the money, and no guilt about how silly or popcorn-ish the book might be.

Here’s to my first book!

So another year, another beginning. I decided that I needed to stop depressing myself by seeing just how far off I went in 2008. That means wiping the slate clean. I am starting out a new weight chart (though I am keeping the weight chart I’ve had running since ’97), and resetting my weight to my first Weight Watchers weigh-in of the year (316.6 pounds). From this point on, I am holding myself accountable.

The bummer is that, over the course of 2008, I gained back 18 pounds. Even though I am going to try to ignore that, I am not stupid. And my memory isn’t that bad. I’ll need to work at this a few months just to undo what I did last year. I hate that I once again let myself go. I am proud of myself for realizing what is going on, and forcing myself back to Weight Watchers, especially when I really don’t want to. I could’ve just ignored this and ended up heavier than when I started Weight Watchers at Work in 2007.

2008 is behind me, for better or for worse. 2009 is going to be my year!

Why I want to lose weight:

• So I don’t have a heart attack when I am 40
• So my children are not embarrassed of me when they are of school age
• So I can keep up with my kiddos while we play
• So my wife and I can snuggle closer
• So I have more stamina for physical activities
• So I can wear some of the cool clothes I have stored away in the basement
• So my lower back stops hurting
• So I can finally fit into the Hawaiian shirt that is actually from Hawaii
• So I can feel less self-conscious, and maybe even attractive
• So I can fit into rides at Elitch Gardens
• So I can prove to myself that I can manage my weight

That’s what comes to mind right now. Feel free to leave comments below, sharing the reasons you want to lose weight.

This was a very interesting week. I’ve had kind of a rough time keeping my snacking under control. Well, strike that. I’ve had a hell of a bad week food-wise. I’ve been snacking, and not making very good choices food-wise in general. For example, on the night of my WeightWatchers weigh-in, I had a spicy chicken sandwich and a double stack from Wendys. Why? ‘cuz I was friggin’ starving. I let too much time go between lunch and dinner. And I didn’t eat enough for lunch. So when it was time for dinner, I grabbed the first things that sounded good to me. And my choice was horrible!

The rest of my week kinda went that way. Not as bad – that was by far my worst meal. But I also have been going above and beyond my Points allotment for the day, and for the week. By all rights, I should have gained weight over this week! But I made one very important change: Exercise!

That’s right: for the first time in a very long time, I actually got in some regular exercise! I actually did this in two ways: First, I started taking the light rail train into work. The parking spot I chose is about a three-minute walk or so from the light rail station. My office is a good 20-25 minute walk from the light rail station. All told, I was getting in a good 40-45 minute walk each day. But that was quite expensive, both money-wise ($6 for a round trip) and time wise (this added a good hour to each leg of my commute). I was going to keep doing this, but it would’ve been a tremendous – and probably silly – thing to do.

I think I mentioned here before that my wife E and I have a new baby. E hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep because of this. I felt bad about waking E up in the morning – one of the few times she can actually get to sleep – to take my shower. I decided that taking my shower somewhere outside of the house would be a good idea. The perfect place to do that would be at the local rec center. And if I would be there to shower, why not exercise?

So exercise I did. I started out with a one-mile walk around the walking track. I added in a little strength training. I finished things up with a good soak in the hot tub. And I was able to get to work by 8:30. Everything worked so well, that I tried it again the next morning. And then two mornings later. By the third morning, I was up to a 35 minute walk! All in all, I felt great, too. Not just after the workout, but for the rest of the day.

All told, I figure I got in 45 minutes of exercise four times over the last week, plus some weight training thrown in, too. All that exercise helped burn up some calories, as can be seen in my weight for this week. I should’ve gained! But instead I lost.

Oh, and by the way: I am now down 50 friggin’ pounds from the start of 2007!!!!

I just realized that this is my last weigh-in for 2007! The year has come to a close much quicker than I expected. I constantly lose track of time and dates, the days and months go by much faster every year now, and I can never seem to keep up. So realizing that this is the last weigh-in for 2007 really did surprise the heck out of me. Fortunately, I finished on a positive note, to go along with a year of positive notes. It seems apropos to finish the year out with a loss!

So my year finishes down 45 pounds from the start. I have to admit, I am pretty damned proud of myself. I think I’ve earned the right to pat myself on the back. It was a hard struggle. Sometimes it seemed quite easy, but looking back on everything, I actually did do a lot of hard work. It was hard to make myself stay within a range of foods, and a range of portion sizes. As anyone who has read this journal for the past couple of years knows, portions and sweet snacks have always been my downfalls. Giving those up – or at least cutting back on them – was a major challenge for me. I fought against it, I struggled and lost every now and then. But overall, I overcame! I still have to watch myself, because those old habits are easy to fall back in to.

But I haven’t given up. I will never forget. 2007 was my affirmation year, my proof to myself that I can control my weight. That I don’t have to be so god damned fat. That I don’t have to be a slave to my gluttony. I control what I do. I can be strong. I can get past my inherent laziness. 2007 was the year I regained my confidence, 2007 was the year that I turned everything around again.

It’s not just my weight loss that I have to celebrate, either. There are a lot of other benefits from what I have done this year. I am down three pants sizes, from a 54 to a 50 (and am really close to being able to wear 48s). I am down from 3X shirts to 2X. I no longer am completely winded when I walk up a flight of stairs. I was able to fend off the start of diabetes. I can fit in spaces that I used to have to avoid. I can sit in a booth at a restaurant. Other people can see the difference in my appearance. I can see the difference in my appearance! And there are more… initimate… benefits, too.

So, to sum it up: 2007 has been an interesting year. It’s been both wonderful and tough  emotionally. But all in all, I wouldn’t trade 2007 in for anything.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s looking forward to a wonderful 2008!