Goals for November in the Starfireverse (dum dum dum...)

Image (as usual) courtesy of the Stock Exchange

It's been a while since I actively sat down and set goals for myself.

That's weird, because I've never disputed the value of goalsetting. After all, if you don't know where you're going, how on earth are you meant to get there, right?

I kinda sorta set a weight goal by default (by which I mean I joined up to the LJ weight_comp group and picked at target that seemed semi-reasonable to aim for by Boxing Day) But somehow, I still didn't do any conscious, mindful, what's-really-really-right-for-me-at-this-time goalsetting.  And I find myself curious as to why.

I used to really enjoy the process of setting goals, once upon a time. Thinking long and hard about what I wanted. Thinking about what I figured I could do. Thinking about how I could realistically get there. And then... that magic moment when I committed it to paper (or screen), and bang... I was on my way to either making it happen... or not.  Either way, I at least had a direction to head in, and I tended to end up achieving more than I did without the process, even if I only occasionally achieved the actual goals.

Quite a few of the blogs I've been reading this week have had posts about the author's November goals in them. And it's... y'know... got me thinking. What are my goals?  I must have them, or I wouldn't have any reason to be keeping this fitness and weightloss blog, after all.

I've been thinking about that this evening, and for what it's worth, these are what I've come up with on the eating and exercising front:

• I want to keep tracking my food every day this month. I'm actually enjoying the tracking process in and of itself, and I'm definitely finding it valuable. My goals aren't so much about what I eat, except in that:
• I want at least 80% of what I eat to be vaguely healthy stuff - y'know - for the most part, things that actually used to be alive and either grow in the earth, or run around/swim in it. I don't have to have cooked them myself (although that's good too), but I do have to be able to class it as "food".
• I want, each day, to eat approximately 100-150 calories under my maintenance level. A couple of hundred calories over or under that is fine. Blowing out once in a while is also fine, as long as I track it... and then get myself back on track afterwards without drama.
• I want to continue to burn at least 2,500 calories of exercise a week. That sounds a lot when I write it out, but y'know - it's only 5x 500 calorie sessions.  I'm actually doing a bit more than that at the moment, but I want to give myself the option of taking a second full rest day each week as the runs (and thus calorie burn) increase in time.
• I want to log a minimum of 40km each week. Much like the calorie total above, it sounds a lot, but some weeks, between the walking and running, I'm already doing it. I just want to make it a formal goal to keep up the good work over the month.
• I want to have FINALLY made it past W2 of the Bridge 2 10k programme: So far, I've spent 5 sessions in W2 of the programme, and I can't yet do 3x 15min runs in a session. In fact, I can only really do one, and then the others quickly collapse. So the past 5 sessions, I've been aiming for 3 sets of running 13 min, walking 1, running another 1, then walking one before I go onto the next set. Next week, I'm going to try running 14, and then walking 2 and see how I go. If I can manage that? Then I'll attempt the full 15. And if I can do that 3 times? Then woohoo! I'll have met my goal, and be ready to move onto W3!
• I want to lose 1 more kilo.  Yep. That's all. Just a single kilo. More's nice, but ONLY if it comes through keeping my calories up just under the maintenance level, by exercising to a level that's safe and enjoyable and fun for me, and by meeting my final, absolutely 100% non-negotiable goal, below...

 

• I want to do all this without letting myself get dramatically out of balance to meet ANY of the above goals.  I mean this. The good gods above and below, please witness - it's OK to have a week where I blow out on my food. It's OK to have a week where I take more rest days than I'd planned - or even where I don't exercise AT ALL if that's what needs to happen that week. It's OK to still not have made it past the 13 minute max runs I'm doing at the moment. It's even OK if I end up gaining weight. It's NOT NOT NOT OK to achieve ANY of the aforementioned goals by pushing myself so hard I end up injured (again) and unable to exercise the following week (again), or obsessing so much about what I'm eating that I end up heading back towards disordered-eating land (again). This journey is about loving myself, being good to myself, and being the best me I can be. It's about breaking past patterns and learning from past mistakes.  And if I meet none of my first five goals but still meet this one, then I SWEAR to you, I'll consider November a successful month worth celebrating

It seems weird to be setting goals in one breath, and in the next, acknowledging that it's perfectly OK not to meet them.  I guess that's the thing with setting short-term goals for a long-term journey. It's never going to work out 100% the way I expect it to, but if I'm flexible enough, I can keep on heading in the same overall direction, even if I end up off course for a bit every now and then.

Do you set monthly goals?  If so, what are yours (if you're comfortable sharing, of course)?  And if not... do you have a general direction you'd like to be heading in for November?