Hello rebels, thanks for reading and for any advice you may have! This is my first post and I'm excited to join the community. I am a 5'8" 30-year-old woman who started out a year ago at about 182 pounds and not exercising at all. A year into my fitness journey I've lost nearly 30 pounds. I now work out regularly (whereas before I wasn't exercising at all), track calorie / food intake (whereas before I was eating tons of junk and not tracking), and for the past couple of months I'm 70-80% off grains. The challenge I'm having now is figuring out how to set ambitious, motivating (as well as specific and measurable) goals for my new, improved, healthier self - specifically, I'm looking for a BIG AUDACIOUS GOAL that I can achieve over a period of 3-6 months. I am still losing about a half pound to a pound a week of weight, and I've changed up my exercise routine so that I'm strength training (Steve's basic bodyweight workout) and interval training rather than simply running / jogging, which is what I started out with. I'm fairly happy with my day-to-day lifestyle and with seeing the incremental progress I'm making along the way... I weigh myself daily, take pictures weekly, and track my workouts so I can see improvements in strength. But I need a BIG AUDACIOUS GOAL - something to aim for over the next month, three months, six months... I like to be a rebel with a cause! When I began this past year, I had the somewhat ambiguous goal of getting down to 150 pounds (which I've nearly reached) and the very specific, ambitious goal of running a half marathon in November. For August-November I was very motivated by training for the half marathon (with my primary goal being weight loss), which I successfully completed. Now, though, to be honest, my goals are basically to look great -- and that is not at all measurable and is therefore not very motivating -- and to be able to go to almost any gym class and feel 'in shape'-- again, not measurable. I'm not sure what weight goal makes sense (I'm almost at 150 and I could definitely still stand to lose more weight - I'm just not sure how much). I'm also not sure what fitness goal makes sense -- I'm moving away from long distance running to HIIT and bodyweight exercises, and I'm happy with that change, but for me it's just not that motivating to try to go from being able to do one circuit of the basic bodyweight workout to three circuits... The half marathon goal worked well because my primary goal was weight loss, which it supported, and it was ambitious and measurable and it was clear what I had to do to get there -- over a period of 3-4 months. At this stage I'm still primarily looking to lose weight but also to become stronger (mostly for the sake of appearance - again, being honest here , and I'm not sure where I should be aiming to be in 3-4 months. I've thought about a triathlon or a marathon, but I don't think that training for a triathlon - or for any race - is very well-aligned with what I actually want to achieve. So all you nerd rebels -- what kinds of goals do you set for yourselves? How do you set goals when you've reached a new stage of fitness? What do you suggest at this point? Even though I haven't technically hit a plateau, it feels like one mentally and I really want something to push towards. Thanks so much! Looking forward to your input!
