Goal Setting

The first chapter of the fat loss book I'm reading talks about goal setting. I'm good at goal setting, I do it all the time. I have a list of 114 goals for all areas of my life written down which I reviewed on the 1st of this month and I have my current ones, 26 of them taped to my bathroom wall next to my mirror.

Still, despite having read this all before, I always manage to pick out something new every time I read it. I've had the same fat loss goal since I originally set it back on the 7th July 2006 - to reach 25% bodyfat without losing any LBM (96lbs at the time). So far I've lost 20lbs but my bodyfat is 32%, still way off. In the book, the author says to set both your long term and short term goals, and also to set BIG goals.

My deadline is 7th July this year, just 11 weeks away so long term and short term are now the same thing. But thats taught me a lesson the hard way. I never set myself 3-month goals along the way - I just did the yearly one and now I've got less than 3 months to go.

So lets have some fun with that... 25% body fat, pah, thats crap really isn't it? That was only supposed to be an interim goal. 20% should be a maximum really. At 25% I'd still just be average. Average is better than fat but who wants to be average? I'm working too damn hard just to be average! No, I've changed it so now my new goal is 20% body fat which is interesting because in order to reach that wilst maintaining 96lbs lbm, I'd need to lose a further 22 lbs - in 11 weeks - when I've never lost more than 1lb a week!

Well if the theory is correct then by aiming for 2lbs a week I may actually manage 1 which would just about get me to my original goal. I figure I can endure a lot more for just 11 weeks. After that I can relax a bit and take things slowly again. Ideally I'd like to lose a bunch of fat and then switch to a mucle building cycle to get a few more lbs of muscle to help my metabolism and then try to lose some more fat after that but the problem is that I want my first goal - NOW, this summer.

There are no more summers! For ten years I have said "NEXT summer I will look good in a bikini". No no no no no! No more summers!!! I have to do it this summer! I'm gettting all emotional now which is probably a good thing but I'll shut up and start on chapter 2 :)