Stupid Reason for a goal weight but I did it

Asavitzk

Copied from my facebook:

So I set a weird goal a while back - to hit 150 lbs before I turned 36. Why is this weird? Because of the motivation for it. I already had a regular goal of 160lbs just to be healthy and look good. But the thing is, I go to a gym. And at that gym are the elliptical machines. And on those machines you have an option to enter your age and weight so it can presumably give you a more accurate calorie burn number when you're done exercising.

The default age on these machines is 36 so for the age field I can just hit <enter>. The default weight is 150. So I decided that my goal would be to hit the defaults at least once. Now obviously this had a hard deadline because once I turned 36, well, it was over.

So a little over a month ago I kicked my dieting up a notch and got more strict with myself. I got it down to 158, then 155, and finally yesterday (Saturday) I hit 153.3. Now, the machines use whole numbers so I round off which means my strict goal was actually 150.4.

Today I did everything wrong to hit my goal. I accelerated the weight loss by going after the easiest target: water. I went to my gym 3 times today and each time spent at least an hour on the elliptical machine. I wore 2 long-sleeve shirts plus a sweatshirt with the hoodie over my head. I wore long sweat pants. I didn't drink water throughout my workout - I sipped a little in between 15-minute rounds to moisten my mouth and then spit it back out.

My first trip to the gym was at around 4PM today. I had just gotten back from taking the kids to the circus where I didn't eat any candy, popcorn, etc... nor did I even drink any diet soda. For lunch on the way we hit the McD's drive through where I got a 360 calorie chicken wrap and that's it. After the gym I went to my mom's for a Passover sedar where I had a half-ounce of wine, a matza ball, a slice of angelfood cake, and a halfscoop of ice cream. Then I went back to the gym for round 2.

At this point I was down to 151.6 - only 1.2 lbs from my goal. 4 elliptical sessions and 1 treadmill session later I was down to 150.6 lbs but had to go drive Devin home from work.

After that I went back to the gym for round 3 - but my key fob wouldn't work. so I drove to the one near my office in Needham - I was f'ing determined! This time in addition to all the shirts and sweatshirt I also put on my winter long underwear underneath the sweatpants. I committed to 15 minutes on the elliptical and 15 on the treadmill and then I'd weigh in (yes, I brought my scale to the gym). If I didn't reach my goal by then I'd, well, I don't really know what I would have done.

Fortunately I hit 150.2 so I won. I got back on the elliptical, hit the button to enter my age and weight and hit <enter> twice to accept the defaults. I finished out that final 15 minutes on the elliptical and with 5 minutes to go my sister Caroline called to wish me a happy birthday. It doesn't get much more awesome than that.

Then I bought crappy taquitos from 7-11, drove home eating cookies, and had some ice cream while typing this up. I earned it.

GiGiBeans

Happy birthday.

izzylew

hahaha that is awesome, sounds kind of dangerous but hey you did it! congratulations!

Alatariel75

pyrowill

Best use of Anchorman gif. Ever.

Congratulations on your success!

GI_John_RN

That may seem to be an arbitrary goal, but if it works and you are happy, so be it. Two years ago, I set my goal at 205 lbs, simply because that was the limit for a UFC light heavyweight. It worked. I surpassed it actually and got down to 200. I'm not a fighter and there was no other reason for me to weigh that specific amount, but I felt great when I got to it and I was in pretty good shape.

Malaika946

Well done!

McButtski

Ha.. crazy.. but credit where credit's due - if you can do that, you can do anything, well done!

Xiaolongbao

Hahaha...stupidest reason ever. So stupid it's brilliant!

astronomicals

cray cray... hopefully u never do something like that again... you're not a boxer

theycallyoumister

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

Asavitzk

Thanks guys - and trust me, I don't plan on doing something like that again - it was a miserable experience.

That said, it really does help me prove to myself that I can do anything I set my mind to even if it means dragging my body into a challenge kicking and screaming.