Setting Goals

First, the good stuff.  It's Monday so I owe you a weigh in.  I weighed in this morning at 210.6.  That's a 1.2 lb loss for the week.  While not the 4 lbs I've been used to I knew there was no way my body could keep that up and I really do think the 211.8 last week was artificially low due to illness.  So I'll take 10.6 lbs.  Only 10.7 to be out of the 200's FOREVER!

On to the title of the post.  Setting goals while losing a lot of weight is really important.  Of course everyone has that magic number they want to get to (mine is 130) but I really think there are more important goals than the number on the scale.  For some people it's getting rid of diabetes, for others the ability to walk without pain and still others want to rock a bikini!  I am lucky in the fact that I had the VSG done before I had any major long term health issues and I'm still relatively young.  Most WLS candidates are over the age of 50 and have multiple comorbidities (health issues caused by being obese).

One of my goals is to run in races.  I had already signed up for the Warrior Dash in September.  It's not a super serious race but it's 3.5 miles of grueling mud, and obstacles.  On the plus side you get a cool hat and beer at the end.  I won't partake in the beer but I'm sure my husband will pick up the slack for me.  I also plan to do the much more serious (but equally exciting) Army Ten Miler.  Now some of you know I was active duty in my last life and I struggled with my weight even then.  This is sort of my "see how far I've come" race.  It's a point of pride for me and I'd really like to finish it in under 2 hours.

Because I didn't want my first "real" race to be the Army Ten Miler I've decided to sign up for some smaller 5k races this spring.  So far I'm going to do the Preakness 5k on May 14th.  This is a more low key event with some fun twists like your runner's bib looks like a jockey's jersey and you are given a horse name too.  I don't expect to set any sort of records as you run about 1.5 miles on the actual track.  That's sand if you didn't know, and not exactly easy to run on.  I'm running with a friend and if I manage to run the whole thing with no walking I'll be happy with myself.

So back to goals,  I really think those of use with a ton of weight to lose get really caught up in the number.  It went down a lot, it didn't go down enough, blah blah blah.  But really what this is about is getting proper nutrition and starting new healthy habits.  The weight loss will come, it has to.  There's no way I won't lose weight on 600 calories a day.  It's impossible.  The problem with being so focused on that scale is what happens when you reach that magic number.  What do you do then?  Now your scrambling for a new focus.  Well, I'm going to take a new approach,  I'm going to live my life how I want to live it, with fun exercise, and pushing myself physically and mentally and the scale will get there, I know it will.