Friday 14 August 2009

Should I push up my deadline?

Weight: 256.7
BMI: 44.06

As I've talked about a few times in the past, my first mini-goal is to get to 250lbs by September 15th. The weight is meaningful (it'll mean I've lost 10% of my bodyweight, plus it's a big round number), but the date is not. I picked it, essentially, by playing around in calculators. September 1st seemed too tough and October 1st would be too easy: so the 15th it was. When I started, the goal required a sustained loss of 2.8 pounds a week: ambitious, but not impossible. As of now, it would require a sustained loss of 1.46 pounds a week: cake, at the rate I've been going.

So, I've been playing with the idea of moving the date up a bit to September first. Including today and the 1st, that would give me 19 days to hit goal, meaning I'd need to lose 2.5 pounds a week to hit it. I think that's a high enough number that it'll be challenging, but low enough that I should be able to make it if I work hard enough.

Do you guys think moving up a goal date is a good idea (to keep things challenging) or a bad idea ( since I think you lose something if you're trying to hit a moving target)? What would you do?

Just to give a visual, the below chart represents the weekly weight loss I'd need to sustain* on any given day to hit my current mini goal (250 by 9/15), my long term goal (175 by 8/14/2010 aka my brother's wedding) and my stretch goal (145 by the wedding). My short term goal has gone from being more challenging than my stretch goal to easier than my regular long term goal.

Personally, I'm leaning for it being time for an update.


*I appreciate that the chart might be a little weird to people who don't like mathy things. Essentially, it's a judge of pace: how much do I need to be losing each week to hit my goals. Consistently beating pace means I can go slower later and still make it. Going behind pace means I'll need to lose more quickly later. A fuller explanation of the philosophy behind the graph (and why I like it so very much) is available here.

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