Start now. That is the best advice I can give for anything you want to change about your life. No matter what it is you want to do, take at least a few minutes today to do something that will get you started on your new plan.

I have lost 18 pounds since I started this blog in September. I still have plenty of pounds to lose, but I woke up feeling good this morning- I feel lighter and the same clothes that were a tight fit a few months ago are loose and will soon be too big. I would not feel this way today if I hadn’t made the effort back in September to start something. I started small, only trying to walk for 5-10 minutes  per day and limit my calorie intake, but that was what I needed to get the ball rolling and start building momentum.

Setting a goal to walk for only 5 minutes may seem somewhat small and meaningless, but if you are coming from walking 0 minutes per day, 5 minutes is a huge improvement. The point is, no matter what the situation or what your goal is, changing your life can start today and it can start with something small.

Choose something you know you can do. Don’t wake up one day after months of inactivity and decide that you will jog for 30 minutes and lift weights. That is not realistic! Diets can fail for many reasons, but I believe the problem with a diet is the difficulty of making massive changes overnight. You aren’t building new habits if you take that approach. You are trying to force yourself to behave in a new, uncomfortable way- the odds of success are very slim.

No matter what you want to change in your life, I encourage you to start it now. Take the time to write down your long-term goal (perhaps losing 60 pounds or paying off $25K of debt). Think about where you are now and think about what you can do now (or at least today). Choose something that you can take care of in 5-10 minutes. It could be something simple like walking down your street and back, making an extra payment on a credit card, starting a budget, or getting a how-to book at the library- whatever you can do today, in a short amount of time, that will start you down the path to reaching your long term goal.

Decide what you will do today, then do it today and repeat it tomorrow.

There will be setbacks, there will be days you fail to keep up the pace, but the point is to build new habits. After a few weeks have gone by you will find yourself with a new point of view and that long term goal will seem a little bit closer.
Start now!

By Eden, Wed 9 Jan 2008, 10 Comments, Categories: Goals, Life

I didn’t mention it before, but I got a raise at my day job about 2 months ago. It wasn’t huge, about 7%, but I’ll certainly take it. By the way, I started by asking for 15% so either money is really tight at work or I’m being phased out. 

Anyway, the point is that I made no plans of what to do with the extra money except to ‘pay it toward debt’. I’m pretty good about sending all excess money each month toward debt payments, but I also want to protect myself against spending inflation thanks to my now higher earnings so today I set up an auto-withdrawal to my long term emergency fund account. I left a little extra on my new ‘take-home’ pay (what gets deposited in my primary checking account) and sent $120 to my emergency fund. That will put us very close to the new emergency fund goal by the end of the year and as I also hope to have the credit cards killed off later this year so I will be able to finish funding the account then.

You’ve heard it before,  but I’ll say it again, paying yourself first is always a good thing. If you find yourself fortunate enough to see an increase in earnings this year take the time to actually DO something with the extra money rather than just giving it a general purpose or category in your head. Directing it to another account immediately will allow you to easily continue your lifestyle and start saving for something important.

By Eden, Sat 5 Jan 2008, Categories: Emergency fund, Goals

I have some big goals and I have some small goals. I write about my big goals on this site all of the time, but I think it would be good to list them here along with some smaller goals for the calendar year so I can look back next year and see how I did in 2008.

Big Goals for 2008:

• Pay off all Credit card debt — $18,504.78 as of January 1
• Get body fat percentage under 25% — 39% as of January 1

Small Goals for 2008:

• Increase our emergency fund to $5,000 — currently about $1,200
• Earn $20,000 (gross) from side businesses
• Start a Roth IRA with at least $1,000
• Buy life insurance
• Write a will

How to accomplish these goals

Pay off all credit card debt – If we look at 12 months, we need to average $1,542.06 of principal paid on our credit cards each month. That is just about $100 more than we have averaged since starting our debt reduction plan, however in our first two months of the plan we only paid about $1,000 total. Given our current rate, this should be easily achieved. My dream is to have it done by September.

Body fat percentage under 25% – My current number varies a bit with the scale I am using now. I think the real number is closer to 37%, but whatever the case it is way too high. 25% is on the upper end of the ‘normal’ range for a man, so that is my first goal.

You may wonder why I focus on pounds so much on this blog. I guess I’m not exactly sure myself except that I started out that way and it makes for an easy to track number. I chose body fat percentage for this goal rather than pounds because body fat is a more realistic indication of health and fitness. I can only achieve this by committing to regular exercise and making a complete overhaul of my diet. I need to do this if I want to live a long and healthy life, so there is no excuse for me to fail this year.

Increase our emergency fund to $5,000 – My first thought was to fund an IRA to $5,000, but given the weakness of a $1,000 emergency fund and the fact that I actually want to live without credit cards, this needs to be my top priority. If possible, I will fully fund an IRA as well. If we can pay off the credit cards by September, it will be easy to shift that money to the emergency fund. If not, we are going to need alternative income sources to make this happen.

Earn $20,000 gross from side businesses – I have half of that number expected already through a web maintenance contract in ’08, although that is not a guaranteed contract so I need to be working on adding other projects anyway. My wife will make a little money doing standardized test grading a couple of times during the year and some occasional tutoring. Since she is a teacher she will have the summer off, but I’m not sure what sort of income opportunities she will be able to pursue then. I hope to make a little money from this blog some day, but until then I will be focused on growing my freelance web development business.

Start a Roth IRA with at least $1,000 – I really want to get started on this ASAP. I know I have neglected it for too long, but I am also in the difficult position of being buried by debt so I have to balance the timing of this. If we have a great year, I will fully fund at least one IRA in 2008.

Buy life insurance – long over due, should have been done ‘yesterday’. I need to set aside a few hundred bucks and get some quotes. Need to get on this ASAP.

Write a will – I don’t think we have to rush out and do this today, but it should definitely get done this year. We have no assets and no children so if both of us die things wouldn’t be too complicated (though I do admit that a will would make life easier on our loved ones who have to deal with the mess). It will get done this year! 

That’s it for the plan in 2008. I will be thrilled if I can look back 12 months from now and see all of these things accomplished.

By Eden, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 7 Comments, Categories: Fat, Finance, Goals

No offense to New Year’s Resolutions, but those just seem too easy to quit or give up on. I plan to kick off the New Year with a much more intense commitment to exercising, eating better, and, as a result, losing pounds and losing body fat.

While on my long vacation, I developed a new plan that covers exercise and diet. On top of that, I am entering a friendly weight loss competition with my wife and some close relatives. There is a wedding happening in April so my wife along with the rest of the wedding party wants to lose some weight. We all picked a day to weigh-in each week, chose specific weight goals, and we will update each other on our progress every week. With about 6 people involved I think this will provide some great motivation and accountability.

I had previously set a goal of 225 pounds by March 1st, but given my slower than expected start, I figured I would need to tweak that anyway so I have made my new goal 225 pounds by April 2nd. This won’t be easy to achieve, but it is definitely possible. As of right now, that means I need to lose a little over 2 pounds per week. Yeah, I do realize that I still have to meet my first goal of 250 pounds, but I think I will get that done this week (I hope). 

You need to burn 3,500 calories to lose one pound of weight. In order to lose 2 pounds in a week I need to average a 1,000 calorie per day ‘burn rate’ (burning 1,000 more calories than I consume). According to this Mayo Clinic calorie calculator my base calorie burn rate per day should be roughly 2,300). I could burn 1,000 calories per day strictly through diet restriction, though that would leave me only able to eat about 1,300 calories per day.  That’s way too low and probably not healthy anyway. However, limiting my calorie intake to about 1,800 calories per day is much more realistic and that would leave me with a 500 calorie deficit to make up through exercise. That can be accomplished with about 30 minutes of jogging according to this calculator. One problem is that I can’t jog for 30 minutes straight right now, only about 5 minutes at a time. That number will come up soon and I’m just doing my best to keep the intensity up when I’m on the treadmill. So for now, until my shoulder pain goes away and I can start weightlifting again, my plan is 6 days of 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each week.

The combination of exercise and improvements to my diet will make this goal possible, but it is still a bit of a stretch. Also, I’m not really counting calories anymore, but instead I am working on a complete nutrition overhaul (not a diet), which includes eating 6 small meals per day. More on that later. All I can do now is go forward with my plans and see how the numbers play out on the scale over the coming weeks. Wish me luck!

By Eden, Wed 2 Jan 2008, 6 Comments, Categories: Fat, Goals

This week also happens to be the last weigh-in of 2007. The New Year makes for a great time of reflection so I’ll take a moment to review where I’ve been with my weight. I actually started 2007 with the intention of losing weight before a close friend’s wedding in September. The first weigh-in I have recorded for the year was 262 pounds on January 8. Instead of losing weight for the wedding, I gained weight and that brought me to the start of this website, when I weighed in at 266 pounds in September. Yikes!

I am happy to report today that I weigh 251.6 pounds, 14.4 pounds less than when I started this website and 10.4 pounds less than when I started the year. I’m happy that I have a weight loss to report (rather than a gain), but I also have to look back at a lot of wasted time in 2007 that I could have used to work on my weight. Who knows how much better off I could be today. No sense in crying over the past though. I recognize that I wasted time and missed opportunities this year, but I will use that as motivation to do better in 2008.

Back in September I set a goal of weighing 250 pounds by December 1. As you can see, I missed that goal by at least one month now. I wish I could have done better, but I can’t complain about losing 14 pounds either. Again, I can look back at wasted time and opportunities and I must commit to working harder next year to reach my goals. 205 pounds by September 1 is not going to be easy. In fact, it hardly seems possible today given my recent history, but I am going to stick with it and see what I can do. I believe it is possible, but I know it won’t be easy.

Best of luck to everyone in the New Year with whatever goals you are trying to achieve. I am very busy battling both my debt and my weight, so look for a lot more content to come as I work my way through these problems. I will be documenting everything I do to find success (and talking about my failures) so be sure to follow along if you are fighting one or both of these same battles in 2008.

By Eden, Mon 31 Dec 2007, 3 Comments, Categories: Goals, Weekly Weigh-in