Fat Chick Fed Up

Despite my anti-New Year’s Resolutions post the other day, as I’ve written before, I do find tremendous value in establishing written goals to give some direction to my days. This exercise in discipline has become especially important to me as I have sought to lose weight over the past few months.

If I were to only say, “I want to lose 200 pounds,” that would get really overwhelming, really quickly. Being able to break that down in bite-size chunks helps to give me focus and keep me on track.

I think it’s valuable to look at the big picture and where you want to be-that can be inspiring and give you a passion and vision for what you hope to accomplish. But unless, you get down and dirty, to the nitty-gritty of how you plan on accomplishing those big dreams, they tend to fall by the wayside as life settles in and our passion and drive wanes. That’s why goal-setting is so vitally important.

I have broken my goals for the year down into four categories: Faith, Family, Finances and Fitness. I will also be setting smaller weekly goals and revisiting these goals with my monthly update posts. Now, I will have some built-in accountability and encouragement-because I know you guys are SO good at giving it!

Faith

• Daily Bible reading – I plan to read from the Scriptures daily, and not just with the kids either. I am really good at being sure we do it together, but my personal devotion time is sorely lacking. This means I will have to get up before my kids or stay up later than them to be intentional about having this time.
• Learn to listen-once a week unplug. One thing I have noticed about myself lately, is that when I pray, which I do often, I rush through it. I come to God with my list of praises and requests, but I rarely take the time to slow down long enough to listen to what He wants to say. No, I don’t hear God audibly, but it’s hard to hear Him at all when I am surrounded by distractions all. day. long. So, once a week, on Sunday, I am intentionally unplugging. No facebook, no checking my iPhone, no television, no e-mail and yes, no blogging either. The one exception to this will be talking to my husband via Skype. I am hoping that doing this will help me with that whole surrender thing I seem to struggle with so much.

Family

• Find opportunities to serve together-once a month, we plan on doing some sort of service project, outreach or other planned act of kindness in our community.
• Homeschooling-I will be taking time to do weekly lesson planning, on Sunday afternoons. I also want to add a weekly library trip to our schedule, on Saturday.
• Start music lessons for kids-our oldest son will be taking guitar lessons and our daughter is learning the violin.
• Get pregnant-yep, it’s out there. I said it. The Chick Magnet and I want to have another baby. Kind of hard to do in our current circumstances, so we probably won’t start trying until the summer. If we do end up conceiving, I will still be blogging through it all, though I will not be TRYING to lose weight, I have been given the clear from my doctor, that at my weight, it is still safe for me to lose while pregnant, as long as I am getting the nutrition that I and the baby would need.

Finance

• Save for movers – I have shared before about how we live debt-free (with the exception of our home), so this year’s focus is going to be all about saving. And our first priority is getting us down to Florida so we can all be together. Our goal is to have enough saved by March-April, and move in April-May. We will not be waiting on the sale of our house. If it happens to sell in that time frame, that would be awesome. But we are SO over this living apart thing!
• Save for down payment-We would like to take advantage of low home prices and interest rates and be able to buy once our home is sold, so we will work on saving for a down payment. Unfortunately, due to the job loss and having to live off of savings for a few months, our savings has really dwindled. So we hope to build that back up and hopefully be able to purchase a home not too long after we are all in Florida.
• Budget for extra giving-this is one thing I feel extremely convicted about. We are finally in a place financially that we can give above our normal tithe to our church, but I know if we don’t plan for it, it just won’t happen. At the end of the month, whatever we have as surplus for that month, we plan to give 10% to an individual or family in need. This may take the form of buying groceries, gas for a vehicle, gift cards, cash gift, paying utilities-just anything that will be a tangible help to someone else. We have been on the receiving in of so much genorosity and we want to be able to do that for other people as well. Hopefully, this will help us to be intentional about finding people who have felt needs and working to help meet them.
• Invest money in transferring my blog to wordpress.org and in a site design. There is so much more I want to do with the blog, but I am really limited in it’s current form.
• Monthly budget committee meeting-The Chick Magnet and I will review these goals together monthly, review our budget and make adjustments as necessary

As a side note, even though this is a weight-loss blog, I am more than happy to review these goals every month here on the blog. Saving money and being good stewards of what God has so graciously provided is a huge passion area for The Chick Magnet and me. We are more than happy to share what works for us, if you are interested.

Fitness

• Lose 70 pounds-I would love to end this year by at least getting to the 100-pounds-lost mark, which means I need to lose 70 this year. Yes, it’s a big goal, but at an average of 1.3 pounds per week, it is not out of the realm of possibility.
• Once a month chiropractic care-this is one of those things that is important to me that makes me feel human. At this weight, I am sure you can imagine, I struggle with some aches and pains. One of my legs is longer than the other which causes hip pain and lower back pain as well. Getting regular adjustments really helps me feel normal. Unfortunately, I tend to neglect most things when it comes to taking care of myself, but I am determined to put an end to that this year.
• Quarterly hair appointments-this may not relate directly to “fitness” but it definitely helps with my mental fitness. I have not had my hair done since August. Of 2010. And the only reason I had it done then was because I was being interviewed by our local television station. Yeah. Needless, to say, my hair needs some work. Again, doing things for myself tends to fall by the wayside as I get caught up in the busyness that is my life. This year I commit to taking better care of myself, so I can take better care of others. I will hire a babysitter and spend some quality time with my hairstylist on a regular basis. I miss her!
• Track calories daily on My Fitness Pal-this has been the single most helpful thing I have done to lose weight, and I need to keep up with it.
• Drink at least 64 ounces of water daily (I prefer 100) and track water intake daily
• Get at least 6 hours of sleep each night, preferably 9-10
• Exercise 4-5 times, EVERY WEEK
• Blog 4-5 times, EVERY WEEK
• Participate in at least 4 challenges this year. Weight-loss bloggers love to host challenges and I love to participate. It helps me to have something to work toward, and sometimes some healthy competition doesn’t hurt either. Who knows, maybe I will host one of my own as well. I will be posting tomorrow about the challenge I am participating in for the next 8 weeks.
• Read 12 books in 2012, FOR ME. I LOVE to read. But again, that’s another thing that I have let go of as I allow life to get in the way. I will be publishing my book list later this week
• Continue working on emotional/mental obstacles to my weight-loss journey. I know that seems really vague, but I just tend to work through these issues as I encounter them. And of course, I will share what I am learning here.

So there you have it, my LOOONG list of goals for 2012. It seems daunting to look at it all together, but it really helps me to have these, and continually review them, to stay on track.

I am linking up today over at Money Saving Mom. Head on over to read her list of goals, and if you have some of your own, link up your own post!

What do you think of my list? Do you see anything I missed?

What made your list in 2012?