The Plan

As most of my friends can tell you, I'm an obsessive maker and checker-offer of lists. I'm using this minor obsession to help stay motivated and on track with my weight loss.

This is my overall plan, in list form, of course.

• I started at 266 pounds. It's not the 324 I weighed a few years ago, but it's not exactly dainty, either. As a matter of fact, this is the exactly what I weighed when I began losing pounds to qualify for the Air Force. My goal is to weigh 190-200 pounds, which is where my weight hovered in my Air Force days.
• The first phase was to simply ride the stationary bike and keep track of my calories with MyFitnessPal…best app ever for monitoring exercise and food intake. The stationary bike and MyFitnessPal will be the two most important parts of this whole process.
• After hitting 240, add crunches. (This is where I am right now. I just hit 239. I began adding crunches yesterday, and I sure can feel it.)
• After hitting 230, add planks. Not only is the plank a good overall exercise, but it will prepare my upper body for the next phase.
• After hitting 220, add pushups and curls. Also, somewhere around the 220 mark, I should be able to wear almost all the shirts in my closet again. Once I've reached this point, I have two giant white shirts and a giant black shirt that I can't wait to get rid of. There will be no going back!
• After hitting 210, add pull-ups. I'll be happy if I can do just one pull-up for starters!
• After hitting 200, slow down the weight loss. I'm currently losing 2-3 pounds a week. At 200 pounds, I'll want to ease up and lose 1 pound a week as I transition from losing weight to maintaining weight. I don't know what my weight will be, but it should eventually settle to somewhere around 195.
• Maintenance. For me, this will be the most challenging part. I will continue to exercise regularly, and I can't get lax with my eating habits. I'll be able to indulge more often than I do now, but it'll be imperative that I continue to monitor my eating habits. That's where I have always slacked off. Fortunately, the MyFitnessPal app has different settings…weight loss, weight gain, and maintenance. I'll just set it up to maintain my weight and continue to monitor myself.

Why do this in phases? Why not start off doing all of these exercises at once? Because I want to build up gradually. If I try to do everything at once, I know from past experience that I'll overdo it, become frustrated, and then stop. If I gradually add these exercises, it won't be such a shock, and it'll feel more like a routine than self torture.

This might seem way too analytical for some, but it works for me. It's helpful to have goals and milestones to keep me going.