Goals

It can be difficult to determine the perfect time to start a new goal. Many people use the New Year as a time to start new goals. If that is too far away then people often use the start of a new month as a time to start a new goal. A common criticism of using these as a time to start working towards a new goal is that if a goal is worth working towards it is better to start it now then to wait. If you are trying to lose weight or stop smoking it would be much better for you to start that goal now rather than wait until the New Year. There is never going to be a perfect time to start a new goal. Some times can be better than others to start but often waiting for the perfect time to start a new goal is just an excuse to not work on the goal at all.

I’ve definitely done that in my own life. When I was working 65 hours a week earlier this year I told myself that as soon as my tax job was over I’d start working on losing weight. I’d have plenty of time to exercise and would eat better once the tax job was done. It’s been a couple of months since the tax job ended and I haven’t exercised much and am not eating any better. I was thinking it would be much easier to lose weight once the tax job was over. It was a mistake to think that losing weight would be easier at a future date. There really wasn’t any reason that I couldn’t have taken action to lose weight while working the tax job. My hike should help me lose weight but I need to start changing my eating and exercise habits now if I want to keep off any weight I lose while hiking. It is best to start the change now.

The only two goals I set for this year were to live on a minimum wage income and to save 50% of my income. The minimum wage goal is going fine and should be easily met. Saving 50% of my income is looking unlikely but it is still possible. Those goals are okay but I think I need to set goals that lead to forming new habits. That way once the habit is established I will not need to keep setting new goals for the habit in order to make myself continue the action. Once the action is a habit it should be continued automatically. I’m changing a couple of things today which should lead to the formation of new habits. I’ll let you know how it goes. How do you set goals?

My eating habits for the month of March have been bad. I’ve had fast food and/or sweet tea/soda almost every single day. I was wanting to keep my food budget under $100 for the month and I’ve already spent over $150 for the month with a day to go. I wouldn’t feel bad about the money spent if I had spent it buying healthy food. Most of my food expense has been for junk food though. There has only been a couple days this month that I didn’t buy food. I need to get much better at eating the food I have rather than going out and buying whatever I crave at the moment.

My goal for April is to buy as little food as possible. Since I already have a lot of food in my apartment, my purchases should mainly be limited to fresh fruit and vegetables. I am going to allow myself some junk food. My work does cause me some anxiety and sometimes I really need a caffeinated beverage to make it through the work day. I will get a drink if I really need one,but I’m going to try to keep that at a minimum. I’m only working the first half of the month so I won’t have the work excuse for the last half of the month. Also, when I go out with friends or family I can buy food although I will try to keep it relatively healthy. Mystery shops won’t count since I’m not technically buying the food because I’m reimbursed. That may sound like a lot of excuses to buy food, but I think that will be just enough to allow me to stick to my no buying food in April experiment.

I have had quite a few food challenges or experiments before and haven’t been too successful with them. To help motivate myself I’ll be updating how I’m doing every weekend. And to provide more motivation and too keep me honest I will be sharing exactly what I eat for the month. You can visit myfitnesspal.com/tightfistedmiser and click on diary to see what I’m eating. I was tracking my food earlier this month but got tired of documenting how bad I was eating. Maybe if I know that everyone can see what I’m eating I’ll be motivated to eat a little better.

Last month I set a couple of goals for October and stated that I would update my progress weekly. I forgot to include my goal progress in yesterday’s post so I’m sharing my goal progress now.

My two goals for October were to lose 5 pounds and write and publish a non-fiction book. I haven’t made much progress towards either one of those goals. Starting the new job and traveling back and forth to Kansas City contributed to my lack of progress but the goals are still achievable.

On the weight loss front the news isn’t all bad. I lost 2 pounds in September without really trying. I lost half a pound the first week of October despite eating too much junk food. I’m thinking the weight loss might be because I have successfully given up soda for the past three weeks and I no longer crave it. However, I’ve replaced the soda with sweet tea. Sweet tea does seem to be gentler on my stomach and doesn’t have the additives that soda does so I think it is at least a minimal improvement.

I haven’t been tracking my food intake like I planned. If I resume tracking my food and cut back on my sweet tea and junk food intake I should get back on track to lose 5 pounds this month. Getting back on track will be my goal for this week.

I haven’t written anything for my book. I did get a cover for the book made. That was just another way to put off actually writing the book. My new plan is to start my writing as soon as I get home in the evening. If I wait until later I never feel like actually writing.

I’ll let you know Sunday how I do on my goals this week.

Monday I posted about a couple of things I wanted to accomplish and stated that I would post them as SMART goals today. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

One of my goals is to write a book. I will have one non-fiction book written and published to Amazon by October 31, 2012. To do this I will simply write one hour a day, five days a week. I have already done a lot of research on the topic I’m writing and have an outline. The book will only be 20-30 pages because that is all it needs to be. I’ve also researched publishing a book on Kindle and have published a book to Amazon for someone else. This goal should be easily attainable if I just put in the time.

My other goal is to lose weight and get in shape. I will lose five pounds by October 31, 2012. To do this I will quit drinking soda, track my calories daily with MyFitnessPal.com, and work out/run at least three times a week. I will also refrain from eating chips, cookies, and candy for the month of October. I’ve tried quitting soda a few times, but this time I think it will actually work because the last few times I’ve had soda it has severely upset my stomach. The pleasure I get from drinking soda is no longer worth the after effects. Since I go to the gym everyday to shower, it won’t be a problem to exercise three times a week. I’m already doing that. I might increase my running outdoors since I actually enjoy that and this is a good time of year to run outdoors.

I also plan to change my eating to mostly low carb/slow carb. Living in the van makes that difficult since I can’t really cook, but I still think it is doable. This part of my plan isn’t too specific yet. Just giving up the junk food and soda should be enough to reach this goal, though.

Next week I promise my post will be less self-absorbed and more helpful to the readers. What do you think of my plan to achieve these goals? Are they SMART? Do I need to change anything?