Monday, March 7, 2016

Non-scale goals

140, that's always been my goal. I reached it briefly in 2009 when my husband and I were engaged and he decided to study abroad in South Korea for four months. I was working ALL the time at a stressful job in order to cover his bills as well as mine and the weight just kind of fell off. I was the smallest I'd ever been but I still wasn't happy with my body. Even so, the goal stayed 140. Even this time around, when I'm asked what my goal is my go-to answer is 140. The truth is, I don't have an ultimate end goal. At least not a weight-related one. I want to be healthier, and I want to get fit, not just lose weight. I've never seen my body fit before so I have no idea what that will translate to on the scale. That's why I've decided to set some non-scale goals.

1. Stop hating summer

I'll admit, this is a weird goal, but hear me out. I live in the southern United States and it gets extremely hot in the summer months. So hot that I can't possibly justify wearing sleeves, even though I completely hate my arms. I also actively avoid fun outings like going to the lake because then I'd have to wear a swimsuit, in public, meaning around my friends, who love me for me and don't care what I look like. The horror! So, I want to tone my arms and legs so that I can stop hating summer, stop avoiding my friends, and so that I can rock a cute high-waisted bikini at the lake. #goals.

2. Practice yoga at least once per week

I love yoga, or better yet, I love the memory of yoga. I've practiced yoga in the past and loved the benefits of it. Increased stamina, strength, flexibility, balance, reduced stress and anxiety, mindfulness... The problem is actually convincing myself to get up and do it. I'm starting slow by setting my goal to at least once per week, and then working my way up from there.

3. Find the joy of cooking - Help me out Irma Rombauer!

I'm a darn good cook, the problem is that most of the time, I just don't want to do it. It's become a necessary chore, like doing laundry or cleaning the toilet. It has to get done, but that doesn't mean I have to like doing it. Except that I WANT to like it. I want to enjoy cooking delicious, healthy meals at home. I want to be excited about it so that we can stop spending money (and calories) on take-out. My ultimate goal is to limit restaurant excursions to just once per week. In order to make my time in the kitchen more enjoyable I'm making a playlist that I can listen to while I cook, and I'm trying to find ingredients to work with that are new and exciting to me.

4. Move more

This is really vague and could mean just about anything, but I'm translating it to: work towards 2,000 extra steps every day. I have a love/hate relationship with my fitness tracker. I love that it earns me fit points, but I hate when it points out that the amount of steps I take in a day is consistently below-average for a woman my age. Why don't you just call me a lazy bum and get it over with? Rather than be bitter, I'm going to do something about it. First, I'm going to resist the urge to flush my tracker down the toilet, and then I'm going to get up and move. On a typical day I normally only take about 4,500 - 5,000 steps. Pretty pitiful, I know. I want to work towards taking at least 6,500 steps every. single. day. Baby steps.

5. Eat my points

For some reason, I really struggle with eating all of my daily points, and I typically don't even touch my weekly points. It's difficult for me to get out of the mindset that having points left over at the end of day/week is a victory. The fact is, those points are there to be eaten and eating too little can hinder weight loss and muscle gain just as easily as eating too much. I want to make more of an effort to eat all of my daily points, and not feel bad about myself if I dip into my weekly points.

6. Throw 140 out the window

Savannah

No comments:

Post a Comment