90 Days

"90 Days." That's the title of the article in Bicycling Magazine written by Tom Clynes that got me thinking. The article is about how long it takes to break bad habits, or create new ones. It says that it takes between 18 and 254 days to form or break a habit. 90 days is the average for solidifying complex habits such as exercise. Tom, who wrote the article, was trying to make cycling a bigger part of his life and vowed to ride, indoors or out, for 90 days to help solidify the habit in his life. I plan to do more than that.

I got married almost a year ago now, and I have completely let myself go. I don't know if it's due to comfort level, laziness, carelessness, work schedule, or a combination of those plus more. What I do know, is that in the past year, I've managed to gain about 30 pounds from an already heavy 230-240 pound body. I weighed in at about 270 the other day. HOLY CRAP. My family and friends from high school days remember when I weighed 300 pounds. I lost a lot of that weight at one point, down to 207 at my lightest, but clearly I've let pile back on

I want to set goals for myself to create new good habits in my life. Things that are realistic to maintain for a long period of time, but may not be easy to do in the beginning. All of these goals will focus on improving my health, losing weight, and working towards becoming The Matt Train (sounds like a super hero kind of doesn't it?).

I'm not sure yet how I want to define my goals, but here are the things I want to focus on...

• Water Consumption
• Exercise
• Alcohol Consumption
• Weight Loss

I will work on defining these goals and post them so that I can be held responsible for following through with them. 90 days is a long time to work towards these things, but my hope is that most of them become habits far before that 90 day mark!