Start of Week 8

I need to be honest. These 90 days are not going so well.

Things just aren't the same as they had been when I started. Trying to fuel properly for endurance sports doesn't really coincide with eating a low calorie diet. With that, the goal is then hard to follow and my exercise goal has been hard to stick to because of a taper and a rest week. I'm already out of weeks where I can make a mistake. Not to mention that my weight loss is almost laughable.

It's time for me to really go back and look at these goals to see what I can salvage.

I'm keeping my weight loss goal. I want it, but I need to go about it differently. In reality, my other goals are "supporting goals" for the most part. They all are meant to help me continue to lose weight. The problem I'm starting to have is that certain days during the week, I have what my wife and I refer to as "hungry days." We called them that before we were swept up in the whole Hunger Games phenomenon. I know that losing more than 10 pounds in the next 5 weeks isn't going to be easy, maybe not even possible, but my training is picking back up this week and I'm excited about trying at least.

Hungry days are the days where I feel like someone has poured an entire truck load of coal on the fire that is my metabolism. I've got insatiable hunger. I try my best to satisfy it in a healthy way, but sometimes it takes a large quantity of food to get it to subside. This usually blows up my calorie limit for the day. At this point, I'm not sure I'd make it to the end of my calorie goal successfully. Since I have about 5 weeks left until the end of my 90 days, I'm going to rewrite my goal, start from scratch and give myself two high calorie days per week. I'll see how that does for now.

Starting today, I have 33 days left, which is just about 5 weeks. That means of the 33 days, I can make 10 of them high calorie days. So I need to stay within my calorie limit 23 of the next 33 days.

I'm going to remove my clean eating goal. I'll replace it with a new one that I'll write about at the end. When it comes down to it, I can't eat that cleanly. It was worth a shot, but it's not reasonable for me at this point in my life. I've made some changes, though. I eat better cereal in the morning and I'm more conscious of eating stuff with chemicals.

I don't feel like I need my exercise goal. I have a pretty intense training schedule that I am motivated to sticking to. I don't need a goal to keep me motivated to continue to do it. It's one of those things that I've figured out how to do on my own, which is kind of the point of the goals in the first place.

I'm also going to remove my time goal. What it really boils down to is that I'm simply not focused on that goal. It's not important enough to me at this point in time.

I need to make a new goal. This is a goal that I have had before, but in more than one way. I have found that if I drink anything other than water, I generally don't go back to water for the rest of the day. I have an addictive personality. I know this about myself. If I drink beer with dinner, I have beer for the rest of the night, or nothing. The same goes for juice, soda, and any other form of drink. So to combat this tendency, I'm going to write a goal for it. I'll call it "Liquids."

I may not have anything other than water until I've had my two liters for the day. Once I have done that, I may have whatever I'd like. Before I can have a second drink other than water, I must have another glass of water (my glasses are 20oz). This should save me some calories in the long run as well. I will accomplish this goal 28 out of the next 33 days. I have a reprieve from this goal during training... I drink Gatorade on longer bike rides and runs.

Hopefully these goals help me through the end of the 90 days with some success. My motives are different than they have been in the past, so I need to adapt for them. My number one priority is not weight loss right now. It's still important, but I have a marathon to run in 6.5 months, and I don't want to make a fool of myself.

For the record, I want to be between 200 and 210 by Marathon Day. Maybe lower. 232 again this morning.