Goal Setting: An art unto itself

It really does seem so.. inconsequential really, to actually sit down and write your goals.  I mean, what difference does it make?  I know I don’t want to be fat anymore, I don’t want to be unhappy or feel lazy and slovenly.  Why do I need to write that down?  It is just so, well, corny!

But it is the secret to success.  Your goals are those things that make you crawl out of bed at 5am on a cold winter’s morning to train for a race that is 3mths away!  It is what drives us to sacrifice in the short term for long term gain – but that long term gain needs to be firmly in our sights!  We need to know that we will get there and if we don’t even know where there is… well.. it is easy enough to get side-tracked by that yummy chocolate donut!  But with your eyes on that prize you probably wont even notice the donut!

So what do I want?  I want to be lean – I have defined myself as small for ever. I was always tiny and it is so much a part of my identity that I don’t feel like myself, I feel like I am wearing a fat suit!  Even right now, I feel the bloating and stretching as something that is covering me rather then within me. 

Pictures speak a thousand words: Visualisation is a powerful technique for training the mind and I plan on taking advantage of that.  When I imagine this goal in my mind, I see a midsection as pictured above – I see a defined waist, I see not so much a 6pk but a flat stomach with some definition to the musculature underneath.  I love the elongated belly button rather then the deep cavernous bottomless pit that currently exists!

Specifics:  It is great to say I want to be lean, but what exactly is lean?  How will I know when I reach my goal?  I’ve been looking at this for a while and I pretty much reckon I have it pinned down to a number.. 48kg.  That’s a BMI of 20 for my height.  I would like my body fat to be around 20% and my true waist around 65cm (not sure on that last one as I don’t know what is possible!).

I want to be strong and fit as well.  I don’t want to lose muscle mass while I lose fat so I need to maintain that strength that I have while returning to my cardio.  I want to do weight training at least twice a week for muscle maintenance.  I want to be able to do five chin-ups and get a full minute in of proper push-ups (and get that 50kg bench press at some point!).  I want to do abdominal workouts 4 days a week to ensure my core is stable and to be able to do a sit-up.  I want to run in a 10k race in close to an hour, and bring my 5k race time down to 25mins.

And mostly I want to be able to balance my family life, my PhD work, and my health!

Nest blog I will look at getting those goals down onto a time line!