How I plan to lose 40kg in 12 months (part 2)

January 31, 2008

In my previous post How I plan to lose 40kg in 12 months (part 1) I talked about the strategy I’m using to change my diet. Now I want to discuss adding a regular exercise program.

Stage 2 – Becoming more active

There are two basic things you can do to lose weight – eat less (which I covered in part 1), or burn more calories (additional exercise), which is the topic of this post.

When you’ve got as much weight to lose as I do, just changing your diet will be enough to ensure some decent results in the beginning… when I say ‘just’, I mean I should be able to lose weight even without doing any extra exercise, I don’t mean to imply that waking up one day and changing the way you eat is an easy process, it’s not – you’ve got to teach your body to form new habits, and that’s the main reason why I choose to tackle these areas one at a time.

As the weight loss starts to slow down though, I’ll need to form some regular exercising habits, here’s how I plan to address it.

1. Structured Exercise Time

This is important in forming habits that will continue over time, try to exercise at the same time every day and gradually push yourself further each time.

It’s important to not only find something that you can easily do on a regular basis (go for a walk, work out at the gym – whatever you’re comfortable with), but also find a time where you don’t feel under too much pressure to finish quickly and get home. Last time I tried to increase my exercise I went for a walk/jog (ok, mostly walk) each morning nice and early. As I am usually the one to get up early with the kids though, I think the pressure of finishing up and getting home was a little too much – this time I plan to exercise in the late afternoon where I will have less time pressure on me.

I live in a semi-rural suburb, all the houses around here are acreage, so there are plenty of wide open spaces for me to explore. My eldest son is just getting to the stage where he wants to ride his bike a lot, so part of my exercise regime will likely be a slow casual ride with him, followed by something more strenuous afterwards. We also have a swimming pool, so a lunch time swim will definitely be on the cards during the warmer months.

Bike

2. Non-Structured Exercise

By non-structured I simply mean taking advantage of any opportunities I come across throughout the day – things like kicking a ball with my kids, mowing the lawn, parking further from the shops than I normally do etc.

While the structured exercise program forms the basis of meeting the goals I want to achieve, it’s all the extra non-structured bits that will really help to make a difference, so the more I can take advantage of the better.

A quick word about goals

Setting clearly defined goals is going to help you achieve success in virtually anything you try to do, so it is definitely something that I need to address here. My general strategy for goal setting is to define something that is easily measured and has very specific time frames attached to them – that way when it comes time to review my progress, the analysis is pretty straight forward and I can be quite tough in my assessment about how I’ve gone.

My overall goal (to lose 40kg in 12 months), while specific, still needs to be broken down further so that I can analyse my progress effectively. Setting monthly goals would be the most useful here, weight loss can be pretty erratic over a week or so, but the results from month to month should show a definitely progression to the goal and offer plenty of time to analyse and adjust based on actual performance.

I could break the weight loss goals down into equal amounts per month (40/12 = 3.33kg/m), but this doesn’t take into account the easier times I should have initially where the weight will drop off a lot easier, and the tougher times towards the end, so I’m going to structure my weight loss goals something like this:

  • February – July: 4 kg/m
  • August – November: 3 kg/m
  • December – January: 2 kg/m

All those weight loss targets should be pretty easy to meet if I stick to the plan, and that’s where the analysis comes in each month as I will revisit these goals and adjust my focus appropriately.

I do have other goals I want to meet, specifically addressing each point I outlined in stage 1 of my weight loss plan yesterday – they are something that I will analyse on a weekly basis to make sure I’m sticking to the basic principles of my plan.

Well, that’s it – that’s the ‘plan’. If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment and I will try to answer as best as I can.

Before I end this post, I would like to quickly point out that I’m not a nutritionist, not a doctor – so please take anything you read on here as my opinions only, and not gospel. I do spend quite a bit of time reading and researching most areas I have an interest in, and weight loss in particular is something that I have spent a great deal of time examining, but these are just my opinions – please seek professional advice for your unique situation before acting on anything I might say or imply in this blog… I have been known to be wrong on occasions :)

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January 31, 2008 | Filed Under Weight Loss Strategy 

Comments

One Response to “How I plan to lose 40kg in 12 months (part 2)”

  1. How I plan to lose 40kg in 12 months (part 1) | Lose 40kg - Weight Loss Blog on February 18th, 2008 4:07 pm

    […] that’s when I’ll look at changing my exercise habits… I’ll talk more about that in part two of this article […]

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  • Current Status

    • Weight: 128.2kg
      Next Weigh-in: Mar 14th 2008
      Current Goal: Lose 4kg/month
      Weight Loss this Month: 0.3kg
      Total Weight Loss: 2.8kg
      (since Feb 1st 2008)

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