June 2009 Goal Review

photo credit: FLY2005
It is the last Sunday of the month and time once again for the monthly goal review.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I didn’t make any progress on this goal. I looked at buying a rental property but that didn’t happen. I have a different house I’m looking at buying now. I might buy another dividend stock next month but I’m holding off until I see what happens with the possible house purchase. If I’m able to buy the house I’ll consider this goal met for the year. If not then I’ll need to come up with some other ideas.

My second goal is to lose 30 pounds. I went backwards on this one. My weight went from 218.8 pounds last month to 220.4 pounds this month. I went the first half of the month without eating any extra fast food meals or drinking Dr Pepper. That resulted in no weight loss so I decided “screw it” and resumed indulging in fast food and Dr Pepper. That quickly led to weight gain.

I’ve lost some of that weight being in-house for the study. When I have limited choices in what to eat I don’t eat very much. I’m not hungry either although I’m craving a burger. This is only day 4 of 9; I’ll probably really be craving one by the time I get out of here.

Despite my lack of progress I still think I can get down to 180 pounds by the end of the year. This is because I’m going to spend a month hiking and three months living in Guatemala. In my previous hiking experiences I’ve always lost about 10 pounds a month. Hiking 15 miles a day with 30 pounds on your back and only the food you are carrying to eat does work well for losing weight. I lose the 10 pounds a month even though I pig out when I make a town stop while hiking. This isn’t a good long term weight-loss strategy though because when you quit hiking your appetite will remain although you are no longer burning the calories. This causes the weight to come back rapidly.

I also have averaged losing 10 pounds a month when I’ve lived in Guatemala. This was without even trying. I attribute it to walking everywhere and having less fast food and soda. When I first lived there they didn’t have any American fast food places. They just had Pollo Campero. The last time I visited they had a McDonald’s and that has been nine years ago so there might be more chains now. That might make losing the weight a little more difficult but I still think it will happen.

My last goal was to increase my RSS subscriber count to 500. I made progress on that goal this month. I finally went over the 400 subscriber mark and had a high mark of 409 subscribers. I’m not sure if I can improve on that in July because I will be traveling half the month. I’ll need to do more to promote this site to reach the 500 subscriber mark by the end of the year.

I only made progress on one of my three goals this month. I still think I have a good plan to meet these goals by the end of the year. I’ll keep checking in each month to make sure I don’t stray too far from my plans.