Goals

It has been a while since I’ve done a post reviewing my monthly and yearly goals. I made some goals for June and never got around to reviewing how I did on those goals. The fact that I pretty much forgot what those goals were gives you a pretty idea how I did.  I didn’t even bother making any goals for July since I knew I wouldn’t meet them. When I’m working full-time I don’t accomplish anything outside of the job. There has been a lack of progress on my yearly goals as well.

My yearly goals are are to keep my expenses under $1k a month, run a 5k in under 23:59, and be able to do one pull-up. If you don’t count medical expenses I’ve been doing pretty well at keeping my expenses under $1k a month. I’m doing okay on that goal.

I’m doing terrible on my other two goals. If I had to run a 5k today I would probably be slower than I would have been at the beginning of the year. I need to get into a routine or running regularly. It has been too hot to run outside. That isn’t much of an excuse though since we do have a treadmill in the basement. I do find running on the treadmill boring, but I need to do it anyway if I’m going to make any progress on my 5k goal. Although I doubt it is possible for me to make this goal by the end of the year I’d still consider this goal a partial success if I could considerably improve my 5k time. A new goal of running a 5k under 30 minutes is probably more realistic.

My arms might be slightly stronger, but I’m a long way from being able to do a pull-up.  I did buy some dumbbells back in June and have been using them semi-regularly. I need to buy some new weights since I’ve maxed out on the weights that came with the dumbbell set. I seriously doubt I’ll be able to do a pull-up by the end of the year. I’m not sure what I could set as a new goal in place of this goal.

I’m only setting one goal for this month since it is a big goal for me. This month I intend to give up drinking soda. I already tried to do this a couple of times last month, but gave up when the caffeine withdrawal headaches and other symptoms hit. I just started a new attempt at quitting soda this weekend and woke up with a terrible headache and body aches this morning. I drank some tea to get some caffeine which has lessened my aches although it hasn’t cured them. My plan for quitting this time is rather than quitting cold turkey I’ll cut down to one 12 oz soda a day for a week or two in order to hopefully reduce the withdrawal symptoms when I quit the soda completely. I’ve been having sleep, fatigue, and digestive problems which I’m thinking are probably caused at least in part from my large intake of soda.

I have a tentative plan to start a roughly one-month hike on the Appalachian Trail on August 25th. If my health and finances permit me to hike than I will hike. The hike should allow me to lose weight which will be helpful in making progress towards my 5k and pull-up goals. Being in the woods without regular access to convenience stores and fast-food should also make it easier to give up soda.

If you have any tips on how I could make better progress on my goals I’d love to hear them.

Before I get to the weight loss update I want to give an update about the blog’s appearance. When the latest edition of WordPress came out I updated and noticed that all of the comments on the blog were no longer visible. I couldn’t figure out how to make them visible again. I figured it had something to do with my Thesis theme so I attempted to update to the latest version of Thesis. I was able to upload it, but kept getting an error message when trying to access the manage skins tab. This meant that my site was a blank page so that wouldn’t work. After several hours of trying to get my comments restored and make the them work I gave up and decided to just switch themes. I’m now using the free 2014 theme that comes standard on WordPress. Although it doesn’t look great it looks good enough and I don’t want to spend any more time on the blog’s appearance. The site should at least function correctly now. Let me know if you have any problems with the site and I’d also like to get feedback on the new appearance.

I now have less than one month left on my weight loss bet. The bet will pay me $3600 if I manage to lose the weight ($3000 of the amount is my own money being returned to me) and if I don’t manage to lose the weight I’ll be out $3000. The idea behind the bet is that the prospect of losing $3000 will motivate me to lose the weight.

After backsliding a little earlier in the month I now have less than ten pounds to lose. I’d prefer to have already lost the weight rather than taking to the last-minute to lose the weight, but I’m still confident that I will lose the weight. I’ve been experimenting with a low carb diet the last three days and I’ve lost over a pound a day on the diet. If I’m able to maintain that rate of weight loss I’ll easily lose the weight in time to win the bet. There is a two-week weigh-in period that starts on September 23. That day also happens to be my birthday. It would be pretty sweet if I could meet my weight-loss goal on that day. I’m making that my goal now. I’ll update you when I have met the goal.

Four months have passed in my six month bet to lose thirty pounds. The bet will pay me $3600 if I manage to lose the weight ($3000 of the amount is my own money being returned to me) and if I don’t manage to lose the weight I’ll be out $3000. The idea behind the bet is that the prospect of losing $3000 will motivate me to lose the weight.

My starting weight was 226 pounds so I need to get down to 196 pounds to win the bet. Last month I weighed 211.4 pounds so I had lost basically half of the weight I need to lose. This month I weighed 210 pounds. It is good that I lost weight, but I need to lose weight much more rapidly if I am going to win this bet. I still have fourteen pounds to lose in two months. Losing seven pounds a month will not be easy. I’d like to have a little safety margin so it would be better if I could lose eight pounds each month.

Despite the slow weight loss after the first month I still feel that I can lose all the weight. This past week I did great at exercising and eating better and lost four pounds. I just need to continue doing that and I will win the bet. Taking the necessary steps to lose the remaining weight isn’t that hard, but it isn’t easy either. When I’m tempted to skip my exercise or eat junk food I just have to remind myself that I have $3000 on the line. Momentary pleasure is not worth losing $3000. I’ll have another update at the end of this month. I hope to report that I have lost the entire thirty pounds or close to it.

As of July 10 I was halfway through my weight loss bet to lose thirty pounds in six months. I have bet $3000 that I will lose the weight. If I manage to lose the weight then I win $600 plus get my $3000 back, if I don’t win the bet then I lose $3000. I have since found out that the max you can win in addition to the amount you bet is $600. If I had bet $600 I could have won $600 for a total payout of $1200. That is obviously a lot better return on investment than my bet. The extra $2400 I bet wasn’t totally without benefit though. I was able to place that bet with a 2% back credit card so I did get a nice amount of credit card rewards from placing the bet. Additionally, the thought of losing $3000 scares me a lot more than the thought of losing $600.

My starting weight was 226 pounds so I need to get down to 196 pounds to win the bet. At my July 10 weigh-in I weighed 211.4 pounds. If I round that down then I have lost a total of 15 pounds in the first three months. That means I have lost half the weight I need to lose and am exactly on track to lose thirty pounds in six months.

However, I would like to lose the weight before the six months is up. Not losing all the weight until the last-minute doesn’t give me any margin of error in case something goes wrong. Ideally I would like to have all of the weight loss by the end of August or early September. After a strong start of losing twelve pounds in the first month my weight loss has been very slow the last couple of months. I am going to continue to try to lose weight while I’m working, but I don’t think I’ll be able to lose weight quickly enough while working. Therefore, once my current work project is finished I will take some time off. I plan to give biking the Katy Trail another try. I know from past experience that I can lose weight quickly from hiking and I think I should experience similar weight loss from biking. It will be hot for biking, but it would be worse if I was hiking. I’ll update my bike plans once I know when the bike ride will be.