Goals Revisited

I put up a couple of posts not too long ago (here and here) about several goals that I have made for myself for the end of the year. I reckon now is as good a time as ever to see how I'm doing thus far.

As far as the first post goes, well, it's going. I have gotten better at getting out of bed at a more reasonable hour despite the fact that I'm not always up and going by 10 a.m. I did mail some baked goods and sent out postcards to other members on Couch. I do have to write a nice letter update to my former roommate who is Norwegian. This one is a little more difficult to put together because we've been sending each other Christmas/Birthday gifts the past few years, and I like to put together nice gift sets from the different places I've lived/visited. She does one-up me every time she includes European chocolate with my packages. Good God, they're so delicious! Right, back on track and no more dreaming of delicious chocolate. I have yet to call my credit card company and have not scheduled two interviews. My one true success is the flossing! Aha! I have been very good at flossing my teeth every single night no matter what. I must say, I am quite proud of that one.

The other set of goals for the month of December is moving quite nicely. I have been inputting my food every day in My Fitness Pal. I really do like their features and I love checking out the different reports and graphs (I am a nerd like that). I'm also super excited that other Couch members have joined MFP with me! Portions and food choices could always be better but I'm working on that one. My one big failure was the no bread rule (shocker). I literally broke that one within hours of posting my December goals. Oh well, all's fine and dandy in moderation I suppose. Here's hoping to some lovely results come December 31!

Accountability (And I Just Like Making Lists...)

Sahiti and I must be on the same brain wavelength because I decided to post about my current weight-loss update. Weight loss woes, if you will. So in my 7 1/2 weeks goal list seen here I posted that I plan to lose 10 pounds by December 31. A doable goal when you have 7 1/2 weeks. Throw in a bout of sickness, a vacation to Atlanta and Thanksgiving and you've got a setback of 4 pounds. 4 POUNDS!!! Ahhhhh!!!!! So 4 pounds gained + 5 full weeks before the end of the year... you do the math. After reading one random blog of an acquaintance doing some online research I found My Fitness Pal. I had been using Daily Mile when I was running less than regularly in Vermont but would get frustrated since it didn't really calculate/recognize anything other than mileage and time on workouts. It did show me how many donuts I burned (112.63), the number of times I traveled around the world (0.01), and the number of televisions I powered (712.07). My Fitness Pal is just more specific with a food diary, more workout recognition, progress charts (and who doesn't love a good chart?), etc.

So here's my challenge for the month of December (and the last few days of November):

1. Input meals into my food journal every day. I once lost 20 pounds a couple of years ago, and I had a food diary then. I was also buying my own groceries and cooking for myself at the time, plus I had gone vegetarian for Lent which pushed me to eat more veggies. My food journal looked pretty good then.

2. Actually work out 4x a week. Let's just say my discipline is less than par and we'll leave it at that.

3. Portion control Portion control. Portion control. There's not really much more that can be said with that.

4. Cut out bread. I know you're thinking I'm pretty much bat sh*t insane. I am, too. However, I have recently been eating more not-so-good-for-you bread lately. Plus, I really want to experiment with this and see if I could really do this (and to attempt to reach 5 goal items for the next 5 weeks). What's a blog if not for posting experiments and their potentially ludicrous results later?

5. Stop buying my milestone goal prizes early. Yes, I have already bought several "prizes" while saying to myself, "Oh, this is for that such-and-such milestone. It's here and I really want it so let's buy it." Just stop. I really can't keep doing that, especially if I keep getting sidetracked on my goals. The buying stops tonight. The looking and drooling will inevitably continue. Crap.