Every Journey Begins with a Single Step

Today Was Step One

Every journey starts with a single step, and the journey to health is not different.  Today is step one, and today went pretty well for step one. Now, if I can only take 364 more steps like that I'll hit the bulls-eye I wrote about yesterday.  However, first I want to take note of where I am starting from, so that I'll be able to compare at various points in my journey, and see how far I've come.

Beginning 2018 Body Measurements 

Weight 286.1

Body Fat Percentage 48.5

Body Mass Index 45

Waist: 46.25 inches

Neck circumference: 17 inches

Hips: 54.2

So that is my starting point. 

Now I'll share some mini-goals to help me on my journey. 

Mini goals for January 2018

1. Weigh myself at least every Monday, and record that weight publicly here. I may report my weight more often, but I'll do it at least that often. I know a lot of people don't think weighing yourself often is good, but for me it seems like when I weigh myself regularly, I stay on track better. 

2. Walk or do some other form of mild cardio for 30 minutes or more every day this month.

3. Record my calories on My Fitness Pal, and share the totals for each day on here, along with how I did in general that day.

4. Do my very best to keep my NET* calories at 1420 or less each day, which is what My Fitness Pal says I need to do in order to reach my goal for the year.  (Actually, according to My Fitness Pal, if I stick to that as my net calories, I should surpass my goal for 2018, because my goal is to lose 96.1 pounds this year, which breaks down to 1.85 pounds per week, that net calorie goal will supposedly result a 2 pound per week loss.  However, I know that sometimes there can be miscalculations, or the occasional day where I don't stay in my range for whatever reason, so I figured that the difference might be kind of a "cushion" to help during those time.)

*Net calories are the calories consumed, minus the calories burned off through exercise.  For me I am letting my vivofit tracker determine how many calories I've burned, it subtracts all active calories, not just those burned through an actual workout, so lets say my workout is a 30 minute walk, but I was also very active working that day, the vivofit figures out what I've burned beyond my resting calorie burn, and subtracts that from my total calories to arrive at my net calories.

5. Pray and read my Bible every day. Perhaps this should have been goal #1, but I'm not really listing them in order of importance.

6. Post here at least twice a week to report how I'm doing.

7. Reassess on that last Monday of this  month, and adjust goals, or set new mini-goals for February. 

So those are my goals for January. Now here are my stats for day one.

Day 1 Stats

Weight: 284.6

Morning Blood Pressure: 159/96

Morning Heart Rate: 72 bmp 

Calories Consumed: 1582

Calories Burned through activities and exercise: 486

Net Calories: 1096
Today's exercise: 38 minute walk.
Water consumed: 64 oz

Evening Weight: 286

Evening Blood Pressure: 161/108

Evening Heart Rate: 77

Bible passages read: Genesis 1-3, Matthew 1

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Tomorrow Begins a New Year

New Year, New Start

Tomorrow begins a New Year, and I'm going to begin my journey to health anew.

A Goal to Aim For

In the past I've said I don't make New Year's resolutions, because of how often they are broken, but today at church my pastor said something that stuck with me, now he said it about daily Bible reading and prayer in the new year, and no doubt it applies to that, but really it applies to anything one needs to accomplish.

What he said was this, he compared setting a goal to playing darts.  There is the dart board, the target, and of course the bulls-eye is what you are aiming for, worth 10 points, or 100%.  Maybe as you aim for the bulls-eye, you don't hit it, maybe you hit the ring around the bulls-eye instead, and that ring isn't a perfect 10, but its worth 9 points, or 90%, and that's okay. Or maybe you don't even make that ring, maybe you only hit the ring worth 8 points,  or 5 points, still 80% or 50% of the goal is better than nothing.

One thing is for sure he said, if, rather than aiming at the bulls-eye, you don't even aim at the board, you aren't going to to hit the board.  Another way to put it, he said, is that if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

Perfection isn't necessary.

With that in mind, I am setting goals.  I am aiming for the bulls-eye of getting down to 190 by the end of the year.  I may hit that goal, or I may not, but I am sure that I will come closer to it by aiming for it than I will if I aim at nothing.

Tomorrow, I will go into more details about the steps I plan to take to aim for that bulls-eye. I think I should list mini-goals at the start of every week, and at the end of the week report how I did.

For now though, here are my starting stats:

Highest Weight ever was 291 on May 5, 2017
Weight right now: 286.1
Tomorrow I will also list my blood pressure and body fat percentage, but for now I think this is enough.

Oh, and by the way, I also plan to apply the pastors advice to Bible reading and prayer, with a goal to read the Bible and pray every day in 2018. Will I hit the bulls-eye and read every single day perfectly?  Maybe. Maybe I'll only read 90% of the days, or 80%, but surely I'll read more of the word and spend more time in prayer if I am trying for every day, than I would if I didn't have a goal at all.

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