An honest journey

Dear reader,

For a while now I have doing a lot of thinking around how-to set realistic goals. It is fairly obvious that if one do not have 100% controllable environment it is almost impossible to achieve goals at a specific time. I will use myself as an example and perhaps it will apply to more people in the same situation.

My first step when I am playing with my diets and what timeframe I should be done within is to pretend like I am in complete control. This is of course a misnomer but bear with me for a second. This will create a gold standard for how fast you could achieve your goal. It is very unlikely that this will work but nevertheless it is a good exercise for the brain.

My second thing that I start looking at is how often I need to cheat to stay sane. One could obviously not cheat all the time or this becomes fairly pointless but if you are prepared to have slower progress but still moving forward one day per week is possible depending on your overall goal. I tend to do it every 2-3 weeks and considering I have a problem with food in general (I eat way to much) it tends to be a free-for-all.

The third thing is to consider things you can not escape (or perhaps want to) and here I am thinking about holidays, vacations, visits by friends and so on. I would rather chop my right arm off than not enjoy my wife's Turkey and all that goes with it on Thanksgiving. This is simply enjoying life IMHO.

You have to live life or all this work will be for nothing which is why you will see “slow and steady wins the race” repeated many many times on these forums.

In my case I have a minimum of 3 birthdays, 6 weeks vacation, holidays, random celebrations and other things to consider. There is almost something every 4th week at least where it will be very difficult to stay on course. All this is slowing down my progress but it also allows me to live life and honestly, if I am not doing that why the heck am I doing this to being with?

Thanks
~T