67 days and counting…
It’s been a rough summer.
A summer of pitfalls and excuses, failings and fresh starts.
I honestly haven’t really felt good about my weight loss efforts in months.
That ends now.
Back in February I set a big goal that I wanted to lose 35 pounds by the time I go on my cruise at the end of September. In the last 5 months, I’ve seen a net loss of about 7 of those pounds (I say “about” because I’m honestly not entirely sure offhand what my current weight was when I set that goal). The point is, I had 31 weeks to lose 35 pounds, which resulted in a seemingly paltry 1.1 pounds/week, and yet now here I am about 9.5 weeks out from sailing and I still have roughly 28 pounds left to go.
…or 2.9 pounds per week…
😐
I still have faith that I can reach my goal, but it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of discipline that I’ve clearly been slacking on in the past. I know that 3 pounds/week is kind of insane, but I need to do something better than what I’ve been doing lately. It’s time to stop messing around and actually take this seriously for a change, which means no more neglecting my workouts, no more sneaking extra dessert because I’m extra stressed out that day, and no more staying up until 4:00am because it’s the only way that I can get anything done.
Last Friday I made an offer to my wife in hopes of helping her kickstart her own efforts – I told her that for every week that she lost 3 pounds/week, I’d give her $100 towards buying new clothes before we go on the cruise. We later amended the goal at her suggestion to be every 3 pounds instead of 3 pounds/week to avoid the demoralization of almost hitting 3/week and then plateauing thereafter. It seems only fair that I hold myself to the same standard, even if I don’t have the same financial incentive waiting there for me at the end.
Not for nothing, but buying new clothes isn’t really much of an incentive for a guy who just wears solid colored shirts and shorts, anyways! 😉
I know that I’ve made this promise a dozen times already, but for the sake of moving forward, here are my extremely aggressive goals for myself over the next 7 days…
- Keep my daily calorie intake under 2,200 calories every day. Ideally 2,000 calories, but I’m going to allow a little wiggle room as long as I do my exercise.
- 7 days of my regularly scheduled dog-walking cardio (3-5 miles per night).
- 6 days of strength training, alternating between sit-ups and push-ups.
- 2 random days of yoga, via WiiFit.
- 2 random days of extra cardio, most likely swimming this week.
- Each night go to bed a little earlier than I did the night before.
Tall order, but I’m done fucking around. It’s time to take this seriously and lose some mega weight in time for this cruise.
By the way, I weighed in this morning and was down 2.4 pounds from last week, so I figure that’s kind of a good start… 😀
I don’t know if I could go so far as to renounce the award that I worked the better part of my teenage years to achieve myself, but nonetheless I stand with these other Eagle Scouts with the same anger and disgust that this beloved organization that taught us so much and helped mold us into the men we are today continues to latch onto select primitive policies that even go against the very words that we all would recite over and over again in the Scout Oath and the Scout Law before and after each troop meeting.