Endless Journey

The importance of goal setting.

Goals are important. Who doesn't know this simple fact. We set long term goals, short term goals, goals stating what we want to achieve in our daily lives. On a daily basis I will make a note (set of goals) that I need to achieve at the office. Hey, I even write out a list of goals for the things I want to achieve in the house (vacuum, mop, re-organise my study, paint the bathroom, etc, etc). These may look like simple to do lists on post it notes, but they are really short and long term goals that I am setting, and little by little, achieving.

All too often we stop short of making a list of goals that center on what we want to achieve in the realm of fitness & weightloss. It is not enough to think 'I want to get fit', or 'I want to lose so many pounds by christmas', or 'I would even love to run a half marathon'. It is all good and well to have dreams, but unless you have a plan that allows you to make the baby steps required to achieve these goals, then they are nothing more than exactly that dreams. There really is something special about making a list of short term goals that seems to make them seem much more achievable than having mental list of goals.

With the help of SparkPeople.com I have been in the habit (for the past three months) of logging my food/beverage intake, my cardio and strength training routines and have even made a list of goals that I wish to achieve; one focuses on weightloss and the other focuses on increasing my jogging miles. I also set a mini goal of jogging 1mile per day, with my short term goal of jogging 5 miles per day, and my long term goal is to be able to jog 10 miles per day. This may not sound like much, but it has been enough to get me out of bed in the morning and to run a minimum of 1 mile. Of course, when you break it down, I can run 1 mile in 15 minutes, so it really doesn't seem all that amazing. But what is amazing is that doing my cardio in the morning is fast becoming a habit and one that is easy to maintain if all I have to do is wake up 15-20 minutes earlier than normal. Of course, now that I am loving my treadmill and the challenge of jogging more miles I am finding it much easier to get up in the morning...well, most mornings.

SparkPeople.com - You rock my world.

I have now been a devoted member of SparkPeople since July 23. Sound like another fad, maybe it is? But does a loss of 12 lbs sound like a fad to you?? Not on your life, baby. Yep, you heard me right. I have lost 12lbs since joining SparkPeople just a short time ago.

I don't really know what happened to get me on the path that I now walk. Maybe it was an accumulation of many things including the depressed emotions regarding my weight gain since living in the USA, combined with the knowledge that only I can do something about it, and the guidance and support that I am receiving from my network of friends at SparkPeople, ok, acquaintances. Whatever. The fact of the matter remains that I am losing weight and doing it properly this time.

At the moment I am consuming between 1200-1500 calories per day, and on some occasions more like 1000, but I try not to let this happen too often. It is important to consume an ample amount of calories throughout the day, and I do so at 3-4hr intervals to ensure that I am allowing my body to function at full capacity, while speeding up my metabolism.

Maybe the motivation to succeed came from something as little as wanting to collect as many spark points as possible, so I could win bigger and better trophies (all of a graphic nature, mind you - as in they are trophy pics, NOT real trophies). This does seem silly, but if it gets me motivated, then it is amazing - and this it has surely achieved!

Things are changing. Hey, I am changing and it is all positive. I guess this is what progress really feels like. Yeh, I am making progress. Now thats a change. This seems like one big happy, changing, cycle...yeh, change IS good.

I have always been an emotional eater. I would eat when I was sad and I would eat when I was stressed. Hey, I would even eat when I was happy. (So that explains my weight gain?) But I have realized that this also has changed. Take this day, for instance.  In the past I would normally be found drowning my sorrows in a huge bowl of ice cream after dealing with the loss of my pet ferret (you can go here to read all about it, if you wish?), but I have found that I am not. Actually, there is no ice cream to be found in my refrigerator after committing to SparkPeople AND more importantly to myself. I guess I have grown as a person (and not in the physical sense, thank goodness!) and maybe even realized - finally - that food won't take the pain away. That life is full of choices and each day I can either choose to make ones that will benefit me, or harm me, and I know what I am going to choose - do you?