Day One

Alright we are here at day one of the transformation! Yesterday, I talked a bit about why I choice to do this over 90 days. One of the reasons was because I had a couple of areas of my life I wanted to work on, and I knew that I wouldn’t able to give them all the focus all at once. I am not someone who believes in multitasking however I also believe very strongly in mapping out as much as possible ahead of time so that you are able to fit in all the pieces of your life.

Note I said believe, practically I will admit that this hasn’t been something I am very strong at. I let my commitments take over my life and then find very little energy or desire to put the effort into other areas of my life, the biggest area this is true for…Exercise! This is the first thing I push off my plate when times get busy and like anyone who has done their research about stress, those are the times I really need it the most. So I thought this might be one of the best places to start on my journey.

First, because it’s an area I have already started to try and focus on in my life. As I stated before, I have gained a good amount of weight over the last couple months and battling my weight is not all that new to me. It has been something that I started to struggle with in middle school. For me personally, many times the weight starts to come on without me even paying attention to it. I can remember not even realizing it in middle school until I developed (yes this was back before digital cameras!) a roll of film of myself and found a picture of me sitting on my couch at home with what look like a tire wrapped around my stomach. To say I was shocked, embarrassed and upset is an understatement.  

This time around I had a bit of a better idea, mostly because my clothes started to fit rather tightly and I couldn’t fit into some of my smaller sized clothing. The most upsetting part of me was when I attempted to fit into a dress I bought for Seminar (more on that in later post) and wasn’t able to wear it or any other gown in my closet.

Starting this journey I knew how important it would be to create goals for myself. My preferred method for goal setting is called setting a SMART goal. For those that haven’t heard about it, it’s a little way to not only set a goal but make sure you are able to reach and achieve it. It goes as such. For today I will use it to focus on my physical goals.

Specific. Instead of setting a general goal like wanting to lose weight, I wanted to take a real look at what my needs were in this area. Was it really to lose weight? Well no. My goal was to create a lifestyle change that would be healthier for me. Now it would be impossible for me to expect myself to work out 4 hours a day, eat nothing but a paleo diet and devote my every waking moment to creating a lifestyle. So I need to really look at what I wanted to accomplish over the 90 days and what my resources are. For me, it’s to lose the weight I have put on over the past couple months and to integrate a more balanced diet by following the guidelines of the 24 day challenge.

Measurable. My weight is a very easy thing to measure, because I have access to a scale. I also will follow my measurements and I am looking into finding someone to do my body fat percentage. My measurements and weight I have already started to track. As far as the diet goes, every day it’s looking at my fitness pal app and seeing if I am eating and following what I said I would.  I highly recommend this app because it gives you one place to store all your information.

Attainable. Can I really reach this goal? This also means looking at the time and energy I have to devote to it and see if it’s something that I can do. For me it wouldn’t be attainable to run a 5k in a month because I never have ran before really in my life. However it is attainable for me to lose 20lbs in 90 days and to expect myself to work out at least 4 times a week.

Realistic. Again, is this something that I can do in the timeframe I gave myself, that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be hard. It will be it means really honoring this commitment to myself and to my health and to also realize that it means giving up some stuff also. There is no sense in lying to yourself by setting the bar too high or impossible.

Timely. I have built in timing however it’s also important to set smaller goals that will lead to this bigger goal. For me I am lucky I had a check in at day 10 of the challenge and will have another one on day 24. I will then make my own check in points and set smaller goals. So for example my goal for the first ten days was to lose 10 pounds. Guess what, it didn’t happen, I only lost eight but that just means I have to work harder to meet my goal of losing a total of 15 by the end of day 24.  Meaning that you should try aiming for a certain target at different points, it also helps the goal to see less overwhelming.

So there is my first SMART goal for my physical transformation, now it’s about using that for my personal motivation in my daily life. And with this goal that means scheduling and planning ahead of time.

So that is major personal task for today, to map out and plan the next two weeks in a way that I can truly stick to and while being honest but still challenging myself of what I am capable of doing.  This also means fitting in this planning between two major projects at work right now, I am prepping for our Summer Junior High Intensive Program for faith formation which will run August 12^th-16^th and getting all the final paper work into the diocese for NCYC in November. All this while going to a conference this weekend, and cheering on my friends as they run their first official Miss America local pageant Saturday…oh and did I forget to mention that I leave for Dallas on Sunday! Super excited but it means that I am super tight on time also. 

But life and personal growth isn’t always easy but it’s worth it and if we don’t start today we might never!