Improving the Shed

It’s no secret to my friends that I’ve tried to lose weight before and every time I’ve failed, apart from one where I lost about 6 stone when I started my graduate job.  That still left me around 19 stone though.  So obviously this time round I wanted to do things a little differently to give myself the best chance.

One thing I’ve always been aware of doing badly is setting goals.  I suppose you could say I haven’t done it badly because I’ve never really done it.

It’s fairly easy to tell if you’re bad at setting goals just by asking yourself a simple question.

• How much weight do you want to lose?

My answer to this question in the past would always be, “Oh about…” or “I just want to lose enough so I can do…” etc etc.  Very vague.  It meant I never had anything solid to aim for.  That in turn meant I didn’t know how much effort I needed to put in etc etc.  It also meant that I always failed because I couldn’t imagine what success was.

This time round it’s different.  I’m very clear on what my goals are and I’m fairly clear on what I need to do to achieve them.

My end goal of 100kg is a fairly arbitrary goal.  It’s a nice round number to aim for.  People have asked me why 100kg but I don’t think there’s a conscious reason to it.  It won’t get me into a “normal” BMI or anything like that.  Chances are I’ll get to 100kg and then re-assess to see if I want to lose anymore.  Actually one thing that did influence the 100kg goal was that’s what I thought I could achieve when I wrote my goals and to be honest it will be nice to get below triple figure for the first time in 12 years.

One thing I wanted to do when setting my goals this time was to make them SMART.  As a project manager it’s something I have to do at work all of the time and I see it working most of the time.

• Specific – Make sure you know what you want to achieve
• Measurable – There’s no point having a goal if you don’t know when you’ve achieved it
• Attainable – Can you actually do it?  There’s no point aiming for 9 stone if that means you will need a 0% bodyfat.
• Realistic – So you’ve figured out it’s physically possible but is it realistic?
• Time-bound – Give yourself a time frame otherwise it’ll drag on forever. Not too long and not too short.  It needs to be a challenge but realistic.

A few other people also chuck another 2 attributes on the end and make them SMARTER goals and I’m the same.  I’d go for,

• Exciting – If a goal doesn’t excite you then chances are you’ll not be driven enough to meet it.
• Rewarding -  When you acheive something you should reward yourself.  Meeting the goal may be reward in itself but chuck something else in and you might be a bit more motivated.

So now I have my SMART goals it feels like I’m well on my way.