Going, going, gone!

Along with the majority of my friends and family I've gone back on diet as of January first. I have gone with WW again for the reasons I listed in a previous post. So far my goals diet wise are to:

1. Increase my water intake to a healthier level
2. Reduce weight to within the healthy weight range for my height.
3. To spend no more than 14 points of my weekly points allowance on processed sugars.
4. Give up caffiene
5. Eat nothing after 8pm

You will probably notice that I have avoided numbers in my goals as far as possible - at least when it comes to my weight. Most goal-setting material recommends that you set defined, time-limited goals eg. I will lose 20kg by 31st December 2006. Now, I think that this method of goal setting is very valid and an excellent way to motivate yourself and prevent procrastination and non-commital behaviour but I have good reasons for not applying this strategy to my weight, I hope you will agree that I made the right call.

I don't know what weight is right for me. Traditionally, I suppose, I would look back at a time when I was healthy and use that weight as a guide. I was last thin in early high-school so I really don't feel that that weight will be at all accurate when applied to me today. I also want to do some exercise so I am not sure how much muscle mass I will gain. The whole purpose of losing weight, for me, is to regain my health and vitality and not so focused on how I look or whether I can wear size 2 jeans. For that reason I want to aim for a healthy weight and work on my body fat percentage rather than aim for a less than optimum result and then either be dissatisfied when I get to that goal or not reach it at all.

As for time limit, I want this to be about changing my lifestyle permanently. If I attach a time limit to weight loss it is as if I am saying that I only have to maintain the healthy patterns until that date. By attaching a deadline I fear I may be tempted to crash-diet in order to meet the goal if weight loss doesn't come as fast as I anticipated. I am happy with taking as long as it takes to do this in a healthy way. So as long as my weight comes down a little each week that's good enough for me.

I have decided to change my weigh-in day to Sundays instead of Tuesdays for reasons that can be the subject of another post. I also want to do a little report back on my progrss towards goal 3. I didn't get to the gym yesterday so I'm not sure how much I lost in my first week so I can only report on how many points of sugar I ate. Total for week one: 36.5. I blame the Mugg and Bean chocolate cake (19.5 points!). Believe it or not this is substantially less sugar than I used to eat so I see this as a huge step in the right direction.