Quarterly review and re-focus on your weight loss goals. (info on DEXA scans)

It’s coming up to the final quarter of the year!! OMG. That means Summer’s coming for us in the Southern Hemisphere. Did I hear you say bikini? Whereever you are, it’s a great time to review and refocus on your health and fitness goals.

12 weeks is a really great timeframe to make some massive shape changes with focus, incremental changes, an inspiring goal and a bit of discipline.

What would you like to achieve before the end of the year? Don’t wait till New Years Eve to make those health and fitness goals for next year. Get onto it now, and get a jumpstart into the next year, and enjoy your Christmas and New Year looking and feeling better than you ever have before!

Learn from the past…

First we need to reflect and review to learn from the past. Here’s some ideas of what to think about.

• What worked well?
• What did I do really well?
• What can I celebrate and keep doing?
• What were the challenges?
• How can I overcome those challenges next time?
• Where can I improve next quarter?
• How can I step it up?

Create your inspiring future…

When you’re setting fitness goals, It’s great to set a performance goal as well as an aesthetic goal. Here’s a worksheet of how to set a goal. Once you have set your goal, you need to tie it into your values and your big why with lots of reasons why achieving this goal is important to you. Writing 50 reasons why you would like to achieve the goal is a great place to start and will help give you motivation on the tough, cold mornings.

Here’s my goal statement for this quarter that incorporates a specific aesthetic and performance goal that is inspiring to me.

I have regained and surpassed my fitness level from before my baby and can now run 15 kms within 1.5 hours straight through, (without stopping!) Hooray!!! My body is taut and lean at under 20% body fat, I fit easily into my “lean jeans”, and feel amazing in my bikini. I have maintained my lean muscle mass of 45kgs and burnt off over 3 kgs of body fat through clean eating and training 5 days per week. I get my 5 sessions of training in each weekday morning, regardless of night feeds, and take a nap in the afternoon if I need to. I really look forward to my daily training sessions as I know I always feel awesome afterwards. 

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Where are you at now?

When setting a goal, you need to know where you are starting out, so you can accurately measure and celebrate your progress. You can do a fitness test, take your body measurements, body fat percentage, and weight, or for even more accuracy get a DEXA scan. I had one today, and it was very enlightening and I’m really looking forward to doing my next one at the end of the year to see how I went this coming quarter.

Break your goal down.

Once you have set an inspiring quarterly goal, you need to break it down into monthly milestones, weekly milestones and ultimately daily habits. Your daily habits are your process goals. Then all you need to focus on is one day at a time and you know that you will get to your   ultimate outcome.

Milestones.

• Monthly burn 1 kg of body fat per month, maintaining muscle mass.
• Weekly, burn 250 grams body fat.
• Measure and improve running speed and distance each week, with 2 pace runs and 1 long slow distance run.

Weekly.

• Eat clean 6 days per week.
• Train 5-6 days per week.
• Take body measurements and review progress for the week.

Daily.

• Follow clean eating nutrition program. Minimum 5 serves green veggies per day.
• Complete training session for the day.
• Complete 30 mins yoga.
• Listen to hypnosis session. Visualise goal.
• Take vitamins and  fish oil.

Make your rewards chart.

Yes, you too can use a rewards chart! Like the one you might make for kids. Celebrate your daily progress on a monthly planner. Every time you achieve your daily tasks, mark it on a monthly calendar you’ve printed out to record your progress. Write your goal, daily tasks and special reward (like some sexy new shoes!!) at the end of the month if you achieve over 80% compliance with your daily tasks. You could add some inspiring pictures or motivational quotes too. Stick it up on your fridge. It’s easy to complete and you’ll see how motivating it gets when you start to put a few runs on your board.

That’s it. Review and refocus your goals, write them below for some public accountability if you’d like.

More on DEXA.

If you’d like to get a DEXA scan, I highly recommend it. Measure Up in Sydney has offered  10% discount for you when you mention that you came from me. Here’s my DEXA scan from yesterday. They give you an accurate reading of your bone density, lean muscle mass, basal metabolic rate, and body fat percentage.  The good thing is they can test for potential to osteoporosis or heart disease problems, and you can fix it quick smart!  Even though the consultant exercise physiologist assured me that I’m totally at the low end of the normal scale, I know I’ve been a bit relaxed with my lifestyle over the two months, and I’d like to step it up, and set an inspiring goal. There’s nothing quite like seeing those yellow edges to get you motivated to get to your training session and eat clean!