Keeping it simple

I've never been very goal-motivated; for most of my life I've instead focused on taking advantage of opportunities, and making habits.

2020 will start year 5 of maintenance. I'd like to verrrry slowly lose a little bit more.

Routinely, I "calorie bank": Eat a bit under maintenance most days, to have an indulge-y day once a week or so. I've been pursuing the slow loss for the last few months mostly by reducing the frequency and magnitude of indulgence; and a little bit by leaving a few extra calories uneaten, when it's especially easy, on some routine days. Other than a closer-to-level weight period around my November birthday though holidays, it's working fine.

On the exercise front, I usually try to do something fun/active or extra-active/productive most days of the week (strive for 6, though I'm a bit less active in Winter).

I've never been one for NY resolutions: To me, it makes more sense to make life changes when a particular change seems ripe for picking, instead of on an arbitrary date.

That's pretty simple, I think.

My longer term health goals are mostly vague. If it were a road trip I would not have a goal to get to a specific destination like San Diego it would be more like go to west. Along the way if I see a sign on the road for world's largest hourglass 10 miles ahead I might may decide to make that a short range goal. Since my goal is to go west I accomplish it each day I head in that direction.

My apple watch informs me that based on my December habits my January achievement goal is to average about 50 minutes of exercise each day for the month. That seems reasonable so it is a short range goal in my longer term goal of improving fitness.

Over the years I've come to a point where I feel setting a goal almost makes a person think they've achieved the goal. Goal setting and getting pumped up creates a false sense of victory.

I'm harsh on this..because after truly losing weight and doing the work.. you just have to do the hard work to get the great stuff you want. That applies to all aspects of life; work, relationships, material goals, and fitness weight goals. It isn't easy.. and just friggin do the time and work to get what you want ..or don't.

My primary goal is to consistently be within my maintenance range every morning when I weigh myself. If I'm not in my range, I ask myself why that is, and take action if needed to fix it. Being at or over the top of my maintenance range does not necessarily mean I should change anything. Almost always, it's because I ate restaurant food recently and I'm seeing normal water/waste fluctuations, so I don't need to do anything other than my normal routine. However, I also log all my food as accurately as possible; folks who aren't doing that may approach the scale differently.

If I see a weight on the scale each morning that's in range, then I've already accomplished a big goal for the day. It feels good to accomplish something important seconds after I wake up.

My other relevant goals are fitness related, like beating my half marathon PR and not re-injuring myself in the process. Those translate into concrete, routine actions (i.e., sticking to my training schedule as much as possible).

I think the key to both of these things is creating routines/habits/patterns/however you want to think of them. The human brain, generally speaking, loves patterns. If you have a habit of going to the gym every other morning at 6 am, for example, most people are more likely to do that than they would if they just planned to work out three times that week. So I would actually recommend that you have some training plan, even if your plan is as simple as "30 minutes on the elliptical every M/W/F at 6 am."

Why were the last two posts by @NovusDies and @apullum flagged? Seemed like good advice to me and nothing inappropriate was said that I could see.

I keep it very simple. I drew a line in the sand at 195 lbs. If I weigh more that, I eat below maintenance until I'm below 195 again. Can't get much simpler than that.