Today begins the first day of my fourth 90 day cycle. By the end of this cycle, I will have been doing goals and 90 day “challenges” if you will, for an entire year. Also, hopefully, I will have lost enough weight to get down into the low 220’s or even the 210’s.
I took some time off to get myself in order. I needed a break and I needed to refocus myself. It’s not that I wanted to binge eat or drink or anything like that on my break… overall I still ate and drank pretty well, but I needed something new, different, and exciting.
I don’t believe these cycles to be monotonous or difficult, even. In the beginning I did, but now it’s almost second nature. I enjoy the challenge. I also enjoy seeing how my goals affect my body, my mind, and my lifestyle.
In the past, I have written goals that force me to do healthy things, like drink more water, or exercise more. I don’t feel like I need goals to keep me motivated to work out or drink water anymore. I also don’t think I need goals that would encourage me to eat healthy foods. I prefer them over junk food these days anyway.
What I do need is to make sure I’m focusing on keeping within my calorie limit. I also need to figure out how to train for more than one athletic feat at a time. My wife and I will be doing our annual City to Shore Century (100 mile) bike ride with my brother and friend from home that is scheduled for the end of September. We are also planning on running my first full marathon at the end of October. Because the training would overlap, I need to build and maintain a strong base for both sports so I can finish both events. I don’t plan on even starting my cycling training until after our half marathon in April, though. That might be a goal for the next cycle.
I also need some new health-related goals to focus on. The ones I’m going to attempt this time are more of an experiment than anything else. I’m curious how my body will feel if I focus on eating even better than I do now. I will tell you that my diet consists mostly of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. I do, however, consume a fair amount of refined foods and chemicals. Those things come in the form of diet soda and cereal, mostly. I also eat “low fat” popcorn, which undoubtedly contains a ton of chemicals to make it taste good. I find that I rely heavily on certain “diet” foods to keep my calories down during the day, but I do that at the expense of getting better nutrition. Rather than say that I’m not going to eat refined food anymore, what I’m going to do is say I’m going to focus on eating clean.
OK, now let’s talk goals.
Since this blog started as a weight loss blog, and I’ve been working on losing weight this whole time, I can’t give up on that as a goal. I weighed 237 this morning. I’m a little heavier than I expected right now. I expected to maintain around 235. I was SUPER dehydrated when I completed the last cycle, which was why I weighed 232. Five pounds gained isn’t a good thing, but I know I’m not dehydrated at least.
The weight loss goal will be to lose 18 pounds. Why 18? Because I think it’s attainable. It also means I’m in the 210’s at 219. Anything more than that is just a little extra awesome.
In order to lose the weight, I will be training for a half-marathon through April, and then I’m going to create a new exercise plan. I’ll use this as an opportunity to set a goal of exercising a minimum of 4 days per week. I’d like to exercise 6 days per week, but there’s no telling what the body will do with too much strain, and I certainly don’t want to injure myself. I will accomplish this goal 11 of the 13 weeks. I think I’m going to take a week off after the half marathon… I’ve been training without a rest week for a few months now.
My third goal, also along with the weight loss, is to track my calories and stay within my calorie limit. Since I dropped weight from the last time I started a cycle, my calorie range has changed. My new range is 1896 to 2322. I’m going to stay within this range for an average of 5.5 times per week, or 71 out of 90 days.
For the clean eating goal, I want to accomplish this goal 64 times out of 90, that’s 5 days per week on average. This will be an adjustment for me, because it means eating some different kinds of snack foods. To define the goal, I will need to avoid all refined foods that contain chemicals. In other words, if I look at product packaging and I don’t know what something is on the label, I’m not eating it… 5 days a week. Haha.
Lastly, I feel like I’m eating too late at night. I get to the point in the day where I’m done with my meals for the day and I decide to go eat some more because I have extra calories until my “upper limit” number. It’s not that I’m hungry; I just want to take full advantage of what I can eat. What that does, though, is inhibits my weight loss. I want to stop that habit. So I’ll be calling this my “time” goal. I’ll stop consuming calories by 8:00pm 71 out of 90 days, or an average of 5.5 times per week.
Here is how you will see my goal tracking on the side bar.
Weight Loss – 0/18
Exercise – 0/11
Calories – 0/71
Clean Eating – 0/64
Time - 0/71
I do not have starting pictures today because my wife went to work already and I just this morning decided to start this cycle today. I definitely don’t want to wait another week. I’ll see if we can get some pictures tonight or tomorrow morning, so check back soon!
I will continue to post on Monday’s throughout the cycle, so come check back every week!
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