My Living Goal: Lose 13 Pounds by April 1, 2008

The action of living is about our health; how we live. And our health is critical to the success of our other life goals. Living healthy means being fit for work and play. Taking care of yourself is fundamental to loving and caring for others. So the second personal goal I will share with you is my need to lose weight.

Goal: I will lose 13 pounds by April 1st, that is one pound a week.

Now, the truth is, I need to lose much more than this to be at a healthy weight. But as I talked about in the last post, “Setting Personal Goals the Smart Way“, it is best to make goals obtainable in the not so distant future. So, I will be working on this life goal all year, but my first target goal is to lose the 13 pounds. Then I can celebrate, and not with food. Actually, it is important for me not to use food as a reward for achieving any of my goals.

My action steps for losing the weight focus on two things: increasing physical activity and decreasing calorie intake. For activity I will be doing a few things. First, I will take more walks with my wife and the dogs and begin running again. I have done a lot of running in the past and even completed a half-marathon. However, I tend to stick with it for only 4-6 months and then lose interest. So this time I am not going to think of it as training, but instead, running will be more for recreation. I will also spend more time at a couple activities I really enjoy, backpacking and disc golf. I prefer to be active doing these things rather than doing more formal exercising.

Cutting calories will be fairly easy for me during the first few months. I have been eating a very unhealthy diet as of late, and I simply need to cut out the junk food. That means cutting back on the high carb snacks and soft drinks. I will also focus eating smaller meals at least three or four times a day.

So, that is the brief description of the action steps I have laid out for this life goal. What suggestions do you have for how I can stay focused and lose the weight?

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