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… 😀
