The Master Plan: My Goals

I’m taking a bit of a wholistic approach to goals, by setting more than weight based check-points. Weight loss is my biggest focus, but on its own, it isn’t enough to a) motivate me, and b) help me make the changes I want to make. For this reason, I’ve included my meta-goal of “living a happier life”. After all, it’s the reason I want to lose weight. Acknowledging this goal will help me to stay mindful of why I am doing this. When things get difficult, I’m going to need the bigger picture to keep me ploughing through.

I’ve also included “focus on happiness” to my goals. I know that being happier does not begin and end with losing weight. For this reason, I think it’s important for me to do focus on it as a standalone goal.

Each goal, I’ve broken down into little, tangible steps, to make following them more easily. If each day, I can do all, some or even one of these things, then I’m going in the right direction.  The steps are:

• Count kilojoules – this has been so incredibly helpful with keeping me on track so far. A big part of how I’m fighting this battle in the early stages is by working on reducing my kilojoules. It’s also been helpful in teaching me about foods and portion sizes. Having an inner awareness of kilojoule density and appropriate portion sizes is just not something that I’ve got right now, so count I must!
• Focus on eating for fuel – this one’s a bit multifaceted. For me, it means eating structured healthy meals and snacks, but also stacking my meals with fruit, veg and unprocessed foods. Striving to eat foods that are good for my body will not only help me lose weight, but also give me something else to work towards. In the past, when trying to lose weight, I’d never focused on this, and would continue to eat highly processed foods, like those I ate when I wasn’t trying, only the “healthier” options. Each time, I’d end up sliding back into eating the crap I had before, because it wasn’t a bit leap to make.
• Exercise to increase fitness – I don’t like exercising. Shoot me, I’m human. Right now, I don’t even find potential weight loss is enough to motivate me to workout. But, that’s ok. Food is my major obstacle in losing weight right now, because my relationship with it is so out of whack (I’ll be explaining this in a future post). What I do find motivating enough to get of my generous behind and get moving is the idea of improving my fitness. The idea of finding everyday tasks physically easier because my body is stronger interests me much more at this stage, so this is what I will focus on.
• Learn to say no to food and cravings – this is a big one for me. I crave food like nobody’s business, to the point where it is a compulsion. Just eating better and less doesn’t work for me, for this reason. I need to LEARN how to say no when the needless cravings for food hit. The more I say no, the easier it will get.
• BLOG! – blogging adds an extra level of accountability. Knowing that my achievements and failures will be out there for even a few to read gives me extra motivation, and I need all the motivation I can get.

My general happiness goals are:

• Do something that I enjoy each week – this can be something big or small. It’s selfish, but will help me to stay out of the “woe is me, life is too hard” mindset.
• Say yes to things – I avoid anything I’m not 100% comfortable with. I especially avoid doing a lot of things because of my weight. From now on, I’m going to forget about all of the reasons I want to hide at home, and just do them.
• Take time to be thankful – I have a lot to be thankful for, and I don’t appreciate that enough.

Let me know in the comments if you've set yourself general goals too, or if you have any suggestions for me to add to mine.