Can you believe we are more than halfway through with 2022? Where are you relative to your goals for the year? Are you more than halfway there? Honestly, I have fallen behind in the physical category, and I’ve been refocusing the past few days to finish 2022 in a blaze of glory.

Your goals are your goals, but I tend to break mine down into the following categories:

1. Health & Fitness

2. Family & Friends

3. Business

4. Personal Financials

Most people are pretty good at setting outcome goals (such as, I want to lose 15lbs), but we have trouble with consistently executing the plan required to deliver these outcomes. In order to achieve this outcome, we also need to set behavior goals (such as I will eat veggies with every meal) that will move us toward that outcome. We will go over behavior goals in part 2, but let’s start with an outcome goal first. I’ll get personal here. I recently tested my bodyfat % on an InBody machine and the result was 20.3% at 245lbs. A far cry from the lean and mean 9% days in college (now I’m just mean, ha!). That means I’m carrying roughly 50lbs of fat tissue around with 195lbs of lean tissue (muscle, bones, organs, connective tissue, etc. and water). It’s like I’m walking around with an extra 20lbs weight vest on just for fun! Since goals need to be reasonable in the short term, I would like to be 15% bodyfat before Christmas break. And anytime you lose weight, you will lose a combination of both fat mass and lean tissue. Of course, the goal is to bias the weight loss to a much fat as possible. We can bias this to fat loss via a few main strategies: strength training a minimum of twice week, a relatively higher protein diet while in a caloric deficit, consistent daily movement such as Yoga, Pilates, etc. and slow and steady weight loss. While it is indeed easier to lose weight at a faster rate at the beginning of a cut (yes, we’re bodybuilders now using cool lingo), we know that slow and steady wins the race. Good studies have shown that weight that is lost the slowest, is maintained much better than weight lost quickly while crash dieting. Or in other words, we are less likely to gain the weight back if we lose it slow and steady. With my nutrition clients, after the initial few weeks, I like males (or larger people in general) to shoot for a 1lb body weight loss per week and females or smaller humans shooting for .5lbs per week. So, let’s see how this could hypothetically work for me. We know that it’s very easy for me to get distracted by donuts (apple fritters are technically a fruit) so I’m going to retest my bodyfat every month. This monthly accountability can help me stay on the path was well as right the ship if I have veered off course. Here are my intermediate and progressive goals from now until Christmas:

1. 8/31/22 – 240lbs, 19% bodyfat (bf)

2. 9/30/22 – 236lbs. 18% bf

3. 10/31/22 – 232lbs, 17%bf

4. 11/30/22 – 228lbs, 16% bf

5. 12/20/22 – 224lbs, 15% bf

So, if I can lose roughly 4lbs and 1% bodyfat a month, by Christmas time I would have lost 21 total lbs., of which 16lbs was fat, and 5lbs was lean tissue (not necessarily muscle btw). I should also clarify that I do not expect the fat loss to be this linear, rather this is an average over the next five months. In the real world, some weeks it will move faster and some weeks it will move slower. In the next newsletter, I will document how I’m going about achieving this goal.

Is this overwhelming? Too much math? Great news. We are doing a 10-week nutrition challenge starting on September 12. We will be testing body composition before and after. The challenge is going to be based on healthy behaviors that will move you towards a healthier outcome (fat lost, muscle gained, better bloodwork, etc.). More details to come!