“Your goals are impossible”
You can’t lose over 100 pounds in under a year!
You can’t get back to your junior high weight at age 41!
You can’t just decide to do it your way, you need a professional to help!
You certainly can’t continue to drink alcohol or eat pizza, BBQ and junk food!
You can’t run a 5k just 12 months after weighing in at 325 pounds!
You can’t just decide to create your own 5k race with no experience!
You’re a workaholic and there is no way you are going to change that!
You can’t lose your job and be happy about it!
You’re out of a job, you can’t be picky, just take a job and get back to work!
You can’t become an athlete and inspiration to others in your 40s!
You can’t just decide to write a book about fitness!
There is no way you are going to be successful with this journey!
You can’t change your life just by deciding to do so!
You are just a normal guy, you don’t have any superpowers!
To be clear, nobody ever said these things to me directly. But I know they thought them. There were even times when I thought them myself. In many ways this journey seemed impossible on the surface. But I refused to let that stop me.
I believed that this “impossible” journey was possible. By believing the impossible I achieved it. I have transformed my life and this has become the most meaningful goal I have achieved in my life.
I have conquered obesity just like I previously conquered the poverty of my childhood. I have achieved so much that I think I have also conquered a life of mediocrity and I can never go back.
Think this guy will ever be held back my “impossible” again? Watch me!
Goal: Achieved
As you may know if you follow me on social media or read my Thursday blog post, I achieved a big goal this week.
On Thursday morning, I crossed the 125 pounds lost milestone and got myself under 200 pounds for the first time since maybe 8th grade. This was my stretch goal, this is the “what coms after 100 pounds” goal and I was super excited to get there.
Who would have thought just over 13 months ago that I would make this decision, make this commitment and make this work?
My life has transformed so much in such a short time. I have new habits that have given me a new body. I have new interests and passions and a newly discovered purpose in life. I also have a new job that doesn’t make me feel like a failure every day. I have confidence, I know that I can accomplish anything and I know I have something to contribute. Plus, I know that I have helped many others along the way and will continue to do so.
I even have a vision for what I am trying to do through Operation Melt: to build a world where goals don’t die of loneliness.
I think I am even going to start keeping track of all of the goals that I help myself and others accomplish. I bet I can help influence one million goals to come true in the next 10 years. What do you think?
Time for New Goals
That brings me to an important question… now what?
I have now accomplished all of the goals I had previously defined and wrote down for this journey. I have other things that I am working on, but I am now without a next set of goals. So I need to set some new goals or I am just going to coast. I am NEVER just going to coast again in my life!
I am in luck! This is the first weekend of my annual Indian Lake vacation. During this week we spent 10 straight days at Indian Lake (except for any times we have to drive back for meetings in Columbus) at our house. Plus the rest of Liz’s family is up here in 3 other houses to, so it is a big family vacation.
The reason that this is notable is that lake week gives me lots of “me” time. This is time when I can exercise, when I can write or when I can focus on any other hobby or interest.
This week is going to be a kind of life planning retreat for me mixed in with all of the food, drinking and merriment. I am going to work on figuring out a framework for my goals so I know that I am thinking holistically. Then I am going to figure out what is important to me as my next set of goals. I am not looking years into the future, but I am going to focus on what I want to achieve by the end of this year.
My hope is to share some of my new goals, or at least some of my directional thinking about them, in my post next Sunday.
Looking Back
I spent some time looking back at my performance from a year ago and I learned a lot about how crazy I was at the start of this journey. Now that I am including year-over-year comparison information in my weekly stats it is becoming clear that I overdid it a bit at the start of my journey.
For example, there are multiple days at the beginning of my journey when I barely got over 1300 total calories for the day and I was burning around 5000 calories a day. I don’t remember feeling like I was under-nourishing myself or starving myself, but I was clearly under-eating a bit. It wasn’t every day by any means, but it was more frequent than it is now.
As I have progressed through this journey I have learned a lot about the science and art of fitness as well as about my body. I try very hard now not to under-consume calories for a day because it isn’t healthy and it isn’t productive. When I have done that for any prolonged period of time (either because of under-eating or over-exercising without an associated increase in calories) I have stopped losing weight and don’t perform as well.
I tell this story because it is a good example of one of my biggest beliefs in fitness… the best time to start a fitness journey is today. You are going to make mistakes and you are going to learn as you go. But none of those mistakes (so long as your doctor has signed off on you getting started) is unrecoverable.
Just get started!
In fact, you don’t even have to have decided your goals yet before you get started. Just get moving and get to tracking your data so you have the information you need to make better decisions.
Check back next week for more!
Last week’s stats (7/9-7/15):
Distance walked/run: 37.17 miles (-0.37 vs. LY)
Total calories burnt: 23,008 (-8,479 vs. LY)
Total calories consumed: 13,824 (-151 vs. LY)
Weight change: 3.8 pounds lost (+0.6 vs LY)
