#NOEXCUSES Goals

16 weeks; 4 months; 113 days.....a LONG time

16 weeks is a long time. But 16 weeks will also come and go before we know it. Last year I talked about everything I accomplished in the 8 week challenge when I wrote this blog post. A couple of things that stand out the most to me were the fact that for 8 weeks I did not have one drop of alcohol, I was 100% "on program" for all but one weekend through that entire time, and I lost weight 7 out of the 8 weeks of the challenge.

In all of these years of my weight loss journey I don't think I have ever been focused for 16 weeks in a row. Inevitably I give myself a day/weekend/week to not track what I'm eating (which always means eating and drinking too much). That leads me to my first goal for this 16 week challenge:

Goal/Plan #1 = Track everything I eat no matter what!
Easy enough, right? I am going to continue to do WW while I do this 16 week challenge. The other part of this goal is the real challenge and that is to stay within my allotted points for the entire 16 weeks. I will go back to wearing my Garmin so that I can earn FitPoints, but I am going to try very hard to not eat my FitPoints most weeks. It's all a mental game for me. I thought about continuing to not wear my Garmin and if I go into negative points in a week know that it doesn't really matter because even if I didn't track them I still did earn the FitPoints. BUT, I think seeing me go into negative points would have a horrible effect on my psyche and I can't risk that. I also think it would cause me to try to be "perfect" and that's not realistic either. No one is perfect.

Goal/Plan #2 = Workout at LL 3 days/week and Run 2-3 days/week. 
Pretty self explanatory here. I was going to up my workouts at LL to 4 days per week, but I know I'm not going to maintain that. I've been working out at LL pretty consistently 3 days per week for a year now. I'd like to get back to more consistent running and I don't want to go crazy and push my body to 2 a days or anything.

Goal/Plan #3 = NO alcohol for the ENTIRE 16 weeks!
This is a BIG one. It is no secret that I enjoy my wine. Last year I gave up wine for the 8 week challenge and it actually wasn't even that difficult. I told myself at the start of the 8 weeks that it just wasn't an option for 8 weeks so it made it easier to avoid. Same thing this time; just for twice as long. 😆 Here's the thing; I have learned over the years that I can lose weight while still drinking, but that it's so much easier when I am not drinking. I lost all my weight last year between January and May. I also avoided alcohol from Jan 15th-Mar 9th during that time and then gave it up again starting April 2nd. It's no wonder that in those 4 months I dropped 29 pounds. I let alcohol back into the mix in May and from then until now I didn't lose anything else (and gained back several). If I'm serious about getting closer to a healthy weight, I need to give up alcohol at least for the time being.

Outcome Goal "A" = 175 on the scale
Outcome Goal "B" = 180 on the scale
You know I don't usually like to put a number goal on these things, but I'm going to do it. I put a number on my goal last year between April and our Disney trip at the end of May and I absolutely crushed that goal. The above goals are lofty goals, but they are not unrealistic. Neither of those goals require even averaging a 2lb/wk loss. I think trying to average under a 2lb/wk loss is pretty realistic. I am also confident that if I stick to the 3 goals above I will be able to average that kind of loss without a problem.

I would love to put a body fat % goal on myself as well, but to me that's just so hard to pinpoint. I have no idea what is realistic when it comes to losing body fat. Last year in 8 weeks I dropped 3.2 percentage points so perhaps it'd be realistic to hope to drop at least 6 points. But I'm not declaring that an official goal. I can tell you I would love to be 30% body fat by the end of this challenge, but I don't really think that's realistic so I'm fine if I don't hit that goal. Perhaps just less than 36% would be good since I believe that's as low as it got in 2018.

Another thing I did was take a few pics of some jeans that don't currently fit. If those jeans zip up at the end of 16 weeks and I didn't reach either of the above numbers on the scale I think I'll still be pretty damn happy with my results. I can't control what the scale will read at the end of 16 weeks; but I can control what I do to get there. Consistency is going to help me reach my goals. 2019 needs to be the year that I figure out how to be a little more consistent with my weight loss efforts. Let's do this, friends!