Thursday, February 14, 2008

What is it with Goal Setting?

It's just about dark and I'm turning my thoughts to tomorrow -- how I want my day to be, what I should do about my eating. I'm somewhat obsessed with eating, if you haven't noticed. I think about it far too much. I've never been bulimic or anorexic, but I definitely have some eating problem because I evaluate it constantly. The best way I've found to relieve my mind of food thoughts is to eat raw food, but I'm never able to keep up with it for good. The nice thing about eating raw is that as long as you're eating raw, you feel good, you're so in tune with what your body needs, that the if and what and when's just don't matter. I compare it to the way a toddler eats. They know when they're hungry. They know when to stop. And they'll eat healthy if that's what's given to them all the time.

Back to goal setting, I was just wondering why it's so much easier to set strong goals on a Sunday for what I'll start that Monday or on New Year's Eve for what I'll do that year or late one night for what will be the next day. Why don't I set a goal at 2:43 p.m. on whatever day and start it one minute later on 2:44? It just doesn't work that way.

And why am I never waking up some morning thinking, "I need to plan my workout" -- I can't do it that morning. I have to think it through at LEAST the night before. I like to know what I'm doing before I go to bed. And I like to plan, plan, PLAN what to do the next day, the next week, the next holiday far in advance.

That doesn't mean that I don't wake up the next morning with a new plan. It's more of a plan un-doing or plan rebellion. Sometimes the gumption is still there. Sometimes it's long gone.

I've had many a morning (and it's usually if I've eaten something sugary the day before -- see, it call comes back to food in my mind :)) where I lie in bed thinking "No, I'm not getting up for that workout." "No, I don't want to do that workout either." It doesn't help that I have over a hundred workouts to roll through my mind. But I can usually knock out a genre in a second. I can think, "No cardio today; No way" when I have my step all set up in the next room, dvd on the shelf, exercise clothes lying on the floor with cardio in mind. It's easy to undo what I've done the night before. Truthfully, though, I do it much more with eating goals than with exercise. I tell myself how I'll eat the next day and don't always follow through.

If, however, I can force myself to comply for 2 or 3 days, I'm on a roll and can do really well. It's just getting those habits (don't know if it's a rebelling habit I'm breaking or a food I'm trying to detox) out of my system, I do pretty well. My actions are more congruent with my goals.

I'm writing all this only because yes, I'm setting some food goals for the latter part of this month. I'm mindful of March and what that means to my allergies. I can't let my health decline like it typically does that time of year, so I have to get some raw eating in my regime for about 2 weeks to cleanse and be ready for what will be blooming and blowing in the air. The only real hurdle I see is when we travel. Maybe I'll high raw/whole food it for those days and return to raw when I get back home. See how complicated it can get? I know there are raw foodists who do fine when they travel and I have in the past, but it takes a LOT of work. So we shall see.

I have another blog that I started about a year ago that's sort of an Eating Log for my raw eating. It was called Raw Food Rambling, (I later switched the name to Renee on Raw Food http://www.reneeonrawfood.com/ ) I really didn't want to tell anyone about that blog. I was going to "shut 'er dowwwwwn!" But I think I still need it and maybe it will help me stick with it if I think someone might be reading it. I'm excited to see how I do with it. It's helped me so much in the past. See how positively I think about my goals at night time? :) Let's see what song I'm singing tomorrow morning. TTFN!

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