Setting a Goal - NYC

In early September I’m going to New York City for two days to hang out with a bunch of friends I’ve never met before (long story).

It’s a tiny bit over three months away and I’m setting a goal for myself to have shed thirty pounds by then.

I’m not trying to impress anybody, its sheer survival strategy.  I’m not bringing my car to New York and certainly not paying for cabs everywhere I go, which means there will be walking.  A lot of walking.

These women take on fun like a well planned invasion, and if I don’t do something about myself right now I’m simply not going to be able to keep up.  Although I seriously doubt any of them would leave me behind I have about zero desire to be the fatty anchor around everyone else’s neck.

So thirty pounds is coming off and my endurance for long walks is going up.

Tonight I began.  After dinner Ted asked if I wanted ice cream, suggesting we go to the stand that’s about six blocks from our home so a nice little walk round trip.  I thought to myself, “sure – if I walk twelve blocks I will deserve some ice cream.”

Off we go.  As I’m walking my birth defective hip joint starts to hurt as usual.  After thirty six years I’m used to it, so I ignored it and soldiered on.  But as I go, it occurs to me, “I’m really not hungry.  I guess I’ll just get a small water ice when we get there and skip the fat in the ice cream.”  Another block later and I think instead, “I’m really, seriously not hungry.  So why even get water ice?”

At the ice cream store my two guys got their ice cream and I got a bottle of water.  Before anyone goes thinking Ted and Kyle are cruel I need to be clear – it isn’t their fault that my body weighs two pounds more the morning after I eat ice cream and theirs does not.  They have their own difficulties to bear which are different from mine and I do not “hate” anyone who can eat and be thin in ways that I cannot.

And anyway, I was fine.  I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t eat.  Pretty simple really.

So that’s day one toward my goal of thirty pounds shed by September.  It comes out to ten pounds per month or two and a half pounds per week.  For somebody my size it’s totally doable.  I’m hoping that setting a short term goal like this will help jump start me back on the path toward my long term and substantially bigger goals for the future.

NYC – here I come…