One Month

Day 31

I just looked back at my last blog post and had to laugh hardily at the fact that it was titled "I get a little carried away with NUMBERS"; because I've spent some time today crunching NUMBERS!

I've said it before; but for someone who claims to not like math I am really all about the numbers. I want to find the "science" I guess in losing weight. I want it to make sense in a way that it probably never will. I think sometimes too it helps to keep me going for whatever reason.

Anyway, so after one month I have lost 4.8 pounds. I probably should be doing measurements too, but I haven't yet. Maybe I'll wait to start measuring inches for when my weight starts to stall ;)

My goal was to lose 5lbs this month so I fell a little short, but .2lbs is something as simple as maybe not emptying my bladder before getting on the scale. I'm not worried about it. I'm also not worried about the fact that this is probably the least amount of weight I've ever lost in the first month of re-starting or starting a "diet", "lifestyle change", whatever you want to call it. And that is why for the first time I think I may actually be moving towards making a lifestyle change! This really is kind of huge people!

So because I don't know how to just leave well enough alone and because I do want to continue to improve myself I came up with some goals over this past month. I have long term goals and then specific goals for the month of October. Want to hear them? No? Well, too bad! I put things in my blog and it makes it real to me. That doesn't mean I'll automatically reach that goal, but it means I'll think about it before I give up.

Earlier this month I decided to come up with goals that focused on not only weight loss, but fitness. I decided to make these goals totally realistic and slow on purpose. I really want this to be a change for good.

Goal #1 - Lose first 30lbs by March 1, 2016 (6 month mark).
Goal #2 - participate in Towpath 5k or 5 miler (haven't decided which I want to do yet) in April 2016.
Goal #3 - participate in Towpath 10k part of their 10-10 race in June 2016.
Goal #4 - lose 2nd 30lbs by September 1, 2016.
Goal #5 - participate in Towpath half marathon in October 2016.
Goal #6 - lose final 24-34lbs (the range is there because I'm not sure what my body is going to look like and be like when I get closer to goal. I may be more than happy and healthy at a weight slightly higher than I was thinking. Therefore, my "weight goal" is a 10lb range) by March 1st, 2017 (10 days before my 40th birthday).
Goal #7 - finish another marathon in 2017

Talk about goals, right?!?! Whew. When I think about it taking me 1.5 years from my starting point to lose all my weight I feel like that is FOREVER. When I see it broken down into 30lb increments and such I realize it is not that long at all. It amounts to losing an average of 5lbs per month. 1.25lbs per week.

Now on to this month. I decided today that I want to try to make sure I'm staying on track with my monthly goals of weight loss. So, since I didn't meet my 5lbs this month I need to make up those .2lbs next month. In order to even know what goals to strive for this month I looked at what I accomplished last month.

September Accomplishments:

• Tracked 19 out of 30 days (63%)
• On the days that I tracked I averaged 1804 calories per day. 
• On the days I tracked I averaged burning 3183 calories per day. 
• That means that on days I tracked I averaged a 1379 calorie deficit per day. 
• I lost 4.8lbs over the course of the month (weighed on Sept 1st and Oct 1st). 

October Goals:

• Track 21/31 days (68%)
• Average closer to 1700 calories per day on the days I track. 
• Continue to average around 3100 calories burned on days I track. 
• If I do those two things I will automatically average a 1400 calorie deficit per day I track. 
• Lose 5.2lbs

The fact of the matter is if I strive for the above goals I should lose 5.2lbs without a problem. My hope is that as this continues to go on and I continue to challenge myself with baby steps; I will naturally eat less/healthier on the days that I am not tracking. Better yet, I am hopeful that at some point I will prefer to just track 85-90% of the time so that I can be as successful as possible. But I'm not expecting that now and I'm not being hard on myself about it. I am proud of what I accomplished this month and feel like I might actually be making the change I need to make. Only time will tell though right??

One last thought to leave you with (I realize this is a long post). I am once again thinking about trying to stay off the scale this month. Focus on the other numbers I put as goals and then weigh myself on November 1st to see how I succeeded. I think if I hide my scale I might actually be able to do that. Yup. I'm going to do that. Putting the scale away until November 1st!