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I wrote a post the other day on Setting Goals.
I tried to keep my goals realistic, and I talked about that in the post.
But what is realistic?
Last Thursday, I hit the 40lb lost milestone. In January, would I have been sure that was realistic, especially in only 5 months? No, and in fact, many people told me that was not realistic. I only started trying to do this weight loss thing in mid January. I’ve lost 8-10lbs/month. But a few people said that I should rein in my goals, not expect things that are so hard, if not impossible.
So, in my typical fashion, I ignored them and continued on my path.
Is it realistic to continue expecting to lose 8-10lbs/month? The more I lose, the slower weight loss is going to happen - and I’m OK with that. I am hoping to maintain 8-10lbs/month through the end of this year - I still have 90lbs to lose.
Oh, I’m finally under 100lbs overweight. To those of you that are fit, maybe that sounds ridiculous. To me that sounds awesome.
But if my weight loss slows down, I won’t be put off. I’ll continue to push. Even if (when?) I plateau hardcore, I know that I can push through that, and that I have the support system in place to help me do so.
Along that same vein, I have a goal to do an unassisted pull-up. Right now I can’t even do a kipping or butterfly pull-up.
Doing body-weight exercises is a great thing. No gear really required. But at 5’3”, 215lbs - body weight is quite a lot. Squats are tricky because my knees can’t really handle the weight that I’ve asked them to bear. In most body weight exercises, I find some way to displace some of my weight. At home, I invested in TRX, and I do TRX pull-up - 10 of them - every time I pass the guest bathroom; which is many times a day.
I also practiced doing negatives today. No bar, so I’d pull up on the TRX then slowly lower myself down. Harder than I expected.
At CFH, I also do TRX. At this point, I can barely manage a pull-up even with the displacement bands that they have there, and I’m terrified my foot will slip out and that gigantic rubber-band will snap into my face.
So by the end of this year, I hope to be able to do a real, unassisted pull-up.
Right now that doesn’t seem realistic. I have this niggling feeling that maybe I should set a lower goal, like a slightly assisted kipping pull-up. At the same time, I want to push myself, I want to succeed, and I want hard goals so that I push myself that much harder on the way to reaching them.
2 weeks ago we did 1rm deads, and I hit 215lbs. I looked at the boards later and realized that hey, that’s actually pretty freaking decent for a gal, and I’m only a few months into this journey. At the beginning of that session, I joked that I’d like to hit 200lbs - and didn’t think I’d be able to even move the bar. To easily bypass that and get to 215lbs was… invigorating.
So what’s realistic? I clearly don’t know, as evidenced by the above story. I wouldn’t have said a 215lb deadlift was realistic, but I did it.
So I am going to forge ahead with my 1 pull-up goal. I know that I’m getting stronger; I think I can get that strong by December 31st, 2011.
Even more awesome would be if I could manage a pull-up at EECI in October. Never mind the weight loss, the strength and endurance is what I really find motivating.
I guess I’ll check back in, in December, and see if I’ve hit my goal. I hear the first one is the hardest, doing multiples is easier after you get that one pull-up done.
I guess I’ll find out if that’s true in due course.
-Lisa, on May 8, 2011 at 7:18 pm