Saturday, May 10, 2008

Eyes on the Prize

Now that I've established how much I weigh it's time to set some goals. It's important to keep those goals realistic so that I don't become discouraged. I need to lose close to 200 lbs. I'm not going to do that in 60 days and if I tell myself I am, I'm just setting myself up to fail. A realistic and healthy rate at which to lose weight is 1-2 lbs. per week. At that rate I can expect it to take me 100-200 weeks to lose the weight I need to lose. That's means I can expect it to take 2-4 years to accomplish my goal. On the plus side, if I can maintain healthy habits for that length of time they should be pretty well established by the time I reach my target weight.

Unfortunately I'm going to find it hard to remain motivated for 2-4 years so I'm going to set myself an intermediate goal. Something I should be able to accomplish in a short period of time. When I reach that goal I will celebrate, though not by eating fattening foods, and then I will set myself a new intermediate goal. My first intermediate goal is to reach 285 lbs. That means dropping 7 pounds. I'm hoping I can do that in a month but I'll allow myself 2 months just to be safe.

Long Term Goal: 200 lbs. in 2-4 years

Intermediate Goal: 385 lbs. in 1-2 months

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