set a few goals, make some progress on them every day. i use joe's goals and have vague-ish entries. read, exercise, whatever skills you are working on (survival for me now), etc. If you keep this up, working a little at several of your goals every day, in a month you will be amazed at what you have learned.

Adjust goals as required until you fall into a routine of doing stuff all the time. Try not to fall into a rut of a routine though. If you do the same thing all the time, you'll get bored and quit. Change it up. For example "exercise" is broad. Some days I do yoga, others I run, or do body weight stuff. "Art"; shoot photography, paint, draw, etc. "Read"; book, news, journal (science, nature). This is great because you can just do what you like and you will eventually get a feel for what you want to focus on. Don't forget to add/do new things outside of your comfort zone from time to time.

Don't expect to be great at everything you try, but know that with practice you can be good at anything. Understand that we learn through failure and repetition. Try to find a way to make yourself better than you were yesterday is how I go about it.

DAY 31!

Hi everyone. Here's to a successful Sprint 2! So far (as of my post-run weigh-in on Saturday) I'm down 10.5 lbs since the start of the round! I have about 8 more lbs to go until I feel like I've hit my final goal. I'm definitely feeling more fit, and can once again fit into a few of my "smedium" shirts that I bought a few years ago when I hit my goal in Round 6. Still some flab around my center, but at the rate I'm going it will be gone in a month.

My Goals

• 90 Days Goal(s):
  • Drop body fat down to <15%
  • Stick to plan at least 80% of the time (including tracking food intake in MFP)
  • Fit into the beautiful Italian-made suit that I had purchased a few years back - and have worn once!
• Sprint 1 Goals
  • ~~Drop weight to 175 lbs~~ SUCCESS!
• Sprint 2 Goals
  • Drop weight down to 170 lbs
• Sprint 3 Goals
  • Keep weight down between 165 and 170 lbs
• Daily Goals:
  • Track diet on MFP every day, no matter how off-track
  • Limit alcohol consumption to non-work days and social occasions, and no more than 2-3 drinks
  • Use standing desk for part of the day
  • Exercise daily
  • Track all spending in YNAB and keep to budget
  • Track all chains in Joe's Goals

YESTERDAY

I had a happy simple Father's Day. I had planned to go for a hike in the AM but the weather was not cooperating. I mostly sat around with the kids and then went to my daughter's dance recital in the afternoon. She did great! The family went out for dinner afterward and I had my first cheeseburger in a while. Back to eating well again today.

TODAY

I'll be focusing on diet today, and if I have time in the afternoon I'll head to the gym to lift.

CHAINS

• 90DG check-ins = 37
• Exercise chain = 0
• Diet tracking chain = 0
• Booze chain = 1

PROGRESS

• SW 183.6, CW 173.1, Sprint 2 goal 170

The chains are how many days in a row I have completed a daily task/goal. It's based upon the "Don't Break the Chain" productivity method that Jerry Seinfeld supposedly used. The idea is that you track your goals daily, and train yourself to not want to "break the chain". It really works, and I've been doing it for years. I use a website called Joe's Goals to track everything.

And I'll take maintaining over gaining any week. :-)

Another free option is a website called Joes Goals It's a VERY simple website but it lets you track a bunch of different goals. You get happy face points when you do things well and Sad face negative points when you don't and you can change how many points everything is worth. The Idea is to keep your points in the happy positive side. It will also track how long chains are so how many days in a row you did something.

So for me I have things like clean the house, do schoolwork, don't shop, take my vitamins, and drink water as all happy face things. Then I have things like eat out, shop (I get a sad face for every 10 dollars I spend) as sad faced items.

It's simple but its nice if you're trying to make a lot of changes/goals.

You might look at Joe's Goals. I don't know if they have an app, but you should be able to use them from any smartphone nonetheless. Set some items you want to do each day, if you want, you can give each a points value, depending on how hard it is to get you to do it, and then mark each one you do, making a game of it.

So far, so good. I'm right on track for calories and protein today, for the third day in a row. For exercise, I did the hundred pushups, two hundred situps, and two hundred crunches routines this morning, forced myself to take some walks, and I'm doing the daily challenge. I reset my Joe's Goals after falling off a while back. I have fewer goals this time, so hopefully it's easier to keep track of them this time. I started tracking again on Sunday and I've got one 3-day streak built up already. Annnd after I post this (one of my goals), I'll have finished all of my (tracked) goals for today :)

One technique that I was for staying on track is "Don't Break the Chain", which I read about on Lifehacker years ago. The trick is to set daily goals for yourself, and track them (via software, a wall calendar, etc). Every day that you do that goal is another link in the chain. You need to train yourself to hate the idea of breaking the chain.

I've been using a website called Joe's Goals to track my daily goals. The site does a great job telling you how long your chain is, as well as how long it has been since you did a specific goal. Great stuff.

So, reflecting on the past three months... I did really well in the beginning, passing up my 90days goal by about mid round. But then I started steadily increasing for the past few weeks, and my body fat percentage has been increasing too. I'm now right back to my starting weight. I know I've let my diet habits slip up lately, too many sweets and starches, too many late night snacks, too much grazing in general. Yesterday I added some new negative Joe's Goals for specific sweets and I'm going to aim to have at least a two month gap in between treating myself to them. I'm hoping this helps some since my problem is usually that I forget or lie to myself about how long it's been since my last splurge. This way I'll know exactly how long ago I had ice cream, cake, whatever. We'll see how that goes.

For today, I've been pretty good. I had a veggie egg white scramble and soy milk for breakfast, coffee with cream for a morning snack, pb&j and mixed fruit for lunch, coffee, cottage cheese, and raisins/almonds/cashews/soynuts for an afternoon snack, black bean pasta with alfredo and a sweet potato with greek yogurt will be for dinner.

I chose extra sleep over running this morning. I've done some body weight exercises at work and I'm going to go for a long run in the beautiful cool weather before dinner. If it's raining by the time I get home, I'm going to head down to the treadmill instead.

Here's to getting back on track. :)

I'm in the same boat. I've been really struggling to talk myself into running for the last few weeks. I just started getting back into the swing of things in the middle of last week after Mr_Nox told me about Joe's Goals. I set a running goal for tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays, and a goal to do some form of exercise every day. Since I set it up, I haven't missed a run because I don't want to break my chain. I don't know if that'd help you, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

> only once this week, and I'll make up a second saturday or sunday, still a chance at three, but i doubt it

I'll do it if you do it. I was planning on running either Saturday or Sunday too, but I'll do both days if you do too :)

As far as restarting c25k goes, it seems like it would be a good plan. If you turn it into jog/run intervals instead of walk/jog, then it seems like it would help with your time. Not speaking from experience or anything, just seems like a reasonable plan.

I have a similar list I have been working at for a few years now. The biggest helps for me were using a goal tracker joe's goals and recently Anki, a flashcard program. Just make sure you make some progress every day (joe's goal tracker works like xp in an rpg to motivate me) and in a week, month, year, etc you will be amazed at how far you have come.

If you spent 30 minutes a day practicing lockpicking or electronics (second arduino, is a great starter tool for programming also) you WILL be impressed with your new skills inside of a month.

I swap combat training with the exercises I was already doing.

Anki seems like a godsend as far as language learning as well as anything else you need to shoehorn into your brain!

Psychology was mostly reading. Acting was practiced with cashiers or other random meetings with people. Hostels were a great tool for learning how easy it is to act/manipulate people. Invent a persona and spend a few nights in a hostel living as that person. (this should also help you with creativity).

Engineering is something that would probably fit on your list. Also Socratic method/logic/learning techniques will pay immense dividends over time if you plan to continue learning the remainder of your life. (ie learn to learn better first)

Healthmonth gives delicious points if you follow whatever rules you have set for the month (exercise, diet, etc) and uses the whole 'social network' thing to help you achieve them. It's free up to 3 rules/month.

Joe's Goals is another way to track your habits. Very useful if you're using the 'Don't break the chain' method. Free.

Interesting. In the email for habitforge, it says that at least one item is due from yesterday. It made me think that maybe it had a scheduler vs. everyday functionality. I double-checked just now, and it doesn't. : P Double-checked rootein too, since I don't know how recently you looked at it.

I tried using joesgoals, but I wouldn't login all the time, and there was no accountability (i.e., harassment). I need someone to bug me. : P

If we're talking years and years ago, and it's something you can actually check on, I can only think of: http://www.joesgoals.com/

There's also my Impossible List, which I "check off" by editing the WordPress page: https://collegeinfogeek.com/about/meet-the-author/my-impossible-list/

Welcome!

Joe's Goals is one way of keeping track of habits that a lot of people seem to like.

I'm with you in the fixing relationship with food battle. It's tough and it takes a long time, but as long as we take baby steps we should see results.

I think joe's goals or another checklist/stastical approach would work.

It's very hard to completely wipe a bad habit in one go. In most cases, it's about slowly reducing the frequency of bad habits or increasing the occurence of good habits. Filling in some kind of checklist every day/week can help you see the big picture and recognize your progress.

I've used a system like this in 2 serious projects:

• For my car driving lessons: After each lesson I go over a checklist on how well I did and what I should improve (e.g. when I did a left turn I forgot to do a pedestrian check). For every situation that went wrong I write down what I should've done instead. Before I started doing this, my instructor thought I was a slow student. Now he reconsidered and believes I'm a fast one. :)
• For weightloss: I kept a checklist for what I ate everyday (especially if I drank fruitdrinks or other bad food) together with my weight, and documented discoveries such as which low-sugar foods I liked. It was a huge success.

For discipline regarding breaking/keeping up a habit, I like to use this website: http://www.joesgoals.com

It keeps track of your goals and because you build up a chain of not breaking the cycle you want to break/keep, it keeps me disciplined to continue staying disciplined.

Another thing I like to do is to shut my eyes for a few seconds and to visualise myself at my end goal; if my goal is to go to the gym every day of the week for example, then I imagine the feeling of accomplishment on the last day and how relieved and good I'll feel.

Motivation and discipline definitely need to go hand-in-hand in order to see results IMO.

Day 81!

Maintenance is easy if you remain consistent with your diet and exercise. It has to be integrated into your daily life. The best way to remain consistent, IMHO, is the &quot;Don't Break the Chain&quot; technique which can be tracked via various apps and websites like Joe's Goals.

YESTERDAY

Yesterday was a LeanGains "on" day, so lots of carbs and protein. My calories for the day were low, but macronutrients were good.

I went to the gym yesterday afternoon and had an excellent 5/3/1 lifting session. It was bench press day, with inclined dumbbell bench and Pendlay rows.

TODAY

Today I woke up early and did a 5K run before work. I made sure to throw in some intervals and sprints, and ended up with my best pace in a while.

Later today I'll head to the gym and do more 5/3/1. Today is squats day. Next week is deload week.

Since I'm lifting today, it's a LeanGains "on" day, so lots of protein and extra carbs.

I use Joe's goals and made a list of things I wanted to get done. Examples are exercise and learning spanish. Every day (or as planned) I would work on these things put a checkmark. Eventually you see results from all these little baby steps. My motivation first came from adding more checkmarks and then continued as I was happy with my results.

I started with only a handful of items on my list, but over time I have grown it to include about 15 things. Most of these tasks can be done just about every day or so. Whenever I have free time or am bored i look at my list and just do something on it.

Mkay, here are my goals for today:

• ~~wake up on time~~ (success!)
• ~~go to the gym, lift heavy~~ (success!)
• ~~ship package~~ (success!)
• ~~check in for 90days~~ (success!)
• ~~send out check-in reminder email~~ (success!)
• ~~put together group stats for last week~~ (success!)
• get shit done at work (goddammit)
• ~~walk to get groceries tonight~~ (success!)
• ~~short extra workout at home tonight~~ (success!)

I'm very pleased with my weigh-in this morning. This is the first time this round that I made progress on a Monday. I've bounced below this weight in the middle of the week before, but I always manage to put on a pound or two for Mondays. So today, I'm finally officially below my Round 3 goal for weight and body fat percentage. Feels good to finally get there, even if I'm four weeks late :)

My victories last week: I set up a Joe's Goals account, set up all my goals, and have a few streaks going strong already. I've got a 6-day streak going for doing at least some form of exercise. I lifted weights 3 days, jogged 2, and did body weight exercises 1. I also woke up on time, without snoozing, 3 days in a row. I broke the chain on Sunday, so now I'm working on building it back up and keeping it going as long as possible.

My setbacks last week: I got off to a late start. I was feeling discouraged in the beginning of the week. I overate on Monday, skipped my run on Tuesday, skipped two days of body weight exercises, slept in on Tuesday and Wednesday.

My plans for this week: Keep charging forward. I signed up for two Fitocracy challenges this week, and I'm going to push myself hard for them. I plan to keep growing my chains for not-snoozing and exercising.