Healthy lifestyle motivation

[Permanent Temp]

This community has helped me tremendously in defining on focusing on my financial goals. But I wonder how do you all handle other aspects of life in which you have goals.

It has been my goal for quite sometime to develop a steady healthy lifestyle. I have lost weight twice and gained it back twice. I have also coincidentally or maybe not racked up all my credit cards to their max and paid them off twice. While my credit cards are now paid off for the second time and I have been making efforts to keep it that way, my weight is up but steady.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is different obviously from being financially fit, but many of the things we do here could be applied maintain such a lifestyle.

My question to you is how do you set and maintain and achieve goals in other areas? I have started a goal notebook and a blog which mimics the one I have here but its focused on small steps and goals toward a healthy lifestyle. I'm also thinking of reviving my food journal (like tracking spending) to get a good idea of whether I am actually eating the foods I want to eat instead of just thinking that's what I am doing. I'm also thinking of posting that info on my blog to keep myself accountable. Just like tracking my receipts and putting cash transactions on Mint to insure I really have as much money as the app thinks I do.

I do understand its a less calories in more calories out sort of thing for the weight loss portion as I have done it successfully before. But I'm just trying to set something up that I know I can stick to for a lifetime as I have with my financial goals. I don't buy clothes because I'm afraid of not fitting into them in a few months (whether they are large or small sizes.) I really want to build some stability into this area.

Also I'm not getting any younger and if we had children in a few years I would want them to have a healthy model for fitness and moderation in food. I'd also want to have developed the habits so I can have a fit pregnancy. Working out calms me down as it helps me expend energy.

[Caoineag]

Whether a goal is financial or not, I tend to treat them the same. First I figure out what is truly my top priority and then take the necessary steps to accomplish. Just like with my financial goals, I seek simplification because anything too complex results in my giving up.

I too want to lose weight but I decided that eating healthier choices was my first priority and that eventually (months down the road) eating healthy will result in weight loss. Since I changed a lot of eating patterns at once, I understand that my body isn't going to give up the weight immediately but since I am turning the new eating choices into habits, weight loss will be easier in the future. Even if I never lose the weight, I am still much healthier eating this way than the way I was eating before. I tend to prefer goals where I win just by pursuing them

[doingitallwrong]

I could have written your post. Yo-yo dieting, yo-yo debt, and finally trying to get it all to a sustainably healthy level. I'm really the last person who should offer advice on these things, but I'm pretty much the textbook 'do as I say and not as I do' person. This response to you will be a kind of pep talk to myself, too.

I think you're going at it the right way; if the financial things you're doing are working for you financially, then adapt them to your healthy lifestyle change. As you said, you track all of your financial income and expenses in Mint, so track all of your health income (food) and expenses (exercise), too. There's a free web community called SparkPeople that has an online tracker (and app) -- the nice thing is that it figures out the calories, fat, etc. for you on most things. (There are others, too, of course; Spark is just the one I've used and like.)

If you're doing the 52-week savings challenge, maybe set yourself a 52-week health challenge. It could be weight loss, or healthy habits, or both. Adapt the spreadsheets as needed (for weight loss, it's usually easier to lose at first, so it would be like the 'backward' 52WC, or do the 'bingo' method and have some of the boxes a certain amount of weight lost, and some of them things like drank 6 glasses of water every day that week, or exercised 3x a week, or at 5 servings of fruit/veggies every day, and so on).

For me, it's important to constantly remind myself of my reality. I tend to forget that I have all this debt, I tend to forget that I'm overweight, so I need to keep it front and center so that I don't act as if I'm debt-free and 120 lbs. I'm hoping that blogging here will address this for the financial side; Spark has individual blogs, I also ran across a site (shrinkingjeans.net) that seems similar to this one and offers individual blogs, and I may start blogging at one of those for the health side.

Think about what motivates you. I still struggle with that! If there's a special something you want, then make a deal with yourself to meet a certain goal (and save the money, if applicable!) and then you can buy it. If you're more visual, of course a goal poster or motivation board is a great idea. I've tried all that, and it hasn't really worked for me, but with my new focus on my finances and getting out of debt and building up my savings, I'm thinking money might be a motivator for me. I've done some things in the past like put $1 in a jar for every pound lost, but that's just relying on me to pay myself with my own money, so I generally stall out pretty quickly. I've found a couple of places recently, though, where you 'bet' that you will lose a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of time, and if you lose it, you get your money back and then some. (Healthy Wage and Diet Bet are the sites I found, but I believe there are others, too.) I stand to double my wager (it's not really gambling, but that's the easiest way to describe it) if I succeed, so that's a big green number taped to my monitor right now.

Also, don't think about what you can't have, or what you have to eliminate. Diets based on deprivation don't work. I'm quite contrary at times, and so if someone tells me I can't have something (even if I'm telling myself), all I want is that thing, and generally I'll go overboard with it. ("See? I can too have this thing, and you can't stop me!") Instead, allow yourself everything in moderation (but some things more moderated than others!). I can have chocolate every day, if it's in the form of two Hershey's kisses. I can have a piece of deep dish pizza for dinner every so often, if I get an extra 30 minutes of exercise that day. And, just like with spending, before you eat that brownie or chicken Alfredo, think about how much it costs (calories) and how long it will take you to save that amount or pay off the credit card bill (exercise), and then decide if it's worth it.

Finally, the old standby, break it down into smaller steps. The one weight loss bet is 10% of your body weight in six months -- but that can be a pretty big loss, so they've broken it down into smaller, monthly goals. Spark has you choose one goal to work on, I think, when you first join, like drinking water, or eating fruits/veggies, or exercising, and then you can increase or add new goals as you progress. Nothing groundbreaking there, of course, but just like Dave Ramsey's debt snowball, as you meet one goal you're more likely to stay motivated to meeting the next one.

[Permanent Temp]

Thank you all of your information has helped a lot. I did start a blog on wordpress after I realized how much the one I have on here has helped me a lot. It's like being able to write in an diary almost but you have people there who understand and are willing to help. I track my weight on fatsecret.com and visit 3fatchicks from time to time which is how I got the idea for the blog.

The idea of 10% of body weight is good and in 6 months is great too as I have an event around that time that I'd like to look good for. It is a challenge but I'm going to do my best. I have these old paper food diaries that worked wonders that first time I used them but I was being supervised by a nutritionist. I could see about doing that again and I may or I might try that Spark one. Fatsecret is not an effective diary for me as most things you can plugin are packaged foods and I use veggies, beans etc and create at home dishes. Does Spark People work better for that?

I will try the challenge too. I am currently on a 26 week savings challenge as I am paid bi weekly but I'm sure I could easily devise a sheet for a 52 week one for the remainder of this year. I am inspired to make this stick this year. If I can conquer my financial demons I'm sure I can make the fitness/health habits stick as well.

[doingitallwrong]

Fatsecret is not an effective diary for me as most things you can plugin are packaged foods and I use veggies, beans etc and create at home dishes. Does Spark People work better for that?

Yes, Spark People has a lot of foods already in their system ("real" foods like veggies ) and you can add you own, as well. You can also save your favorite foods, so you don't have to go searching every time. I even enter the information for my typical serving size of dishes I eat regularly (chicken pasta salad, turkey chili, etc.) and save it, so I just have to add that serving rather than 2 oz. of chicken, 2 oz. pasta, etc.