I’ve made posts like this twice before [v1, v2], and for reasons I don’t really understand, they are my most popular posts. Maybe it’s because folks like to see what I, a layperson when it comes to fitness, think is a reasonable course and compare it with their goals or use it as a starting point for their goals? If someone is reading this, lemme know in the comments …
So, this being January 01, 2021, but decisively NOT a New Year’s Resolution, and not having done a goals update since July, which was before I returned to The Old Ways, after my bout of minor depression that started mid-August, I think it’s a good time to revisit what my goals are and modify them if need-be. Starting Sunday, January 03. 😉
2021-Themed: Okay, despite not doing the whole Resolutions thing, a friend of mine set some 2020-themed goals that helped him last year, so I’m going to see about doing the same. For me, for 2021, they should be 100% absolutely totally achievable because they are embedded within my “real” goals.
- In 2021, do at least 2021 minutes of core (bodyweight) exercises.
- In 2021, I should not exceed 2021 calories per day, with 21 exceptions allowed. This allows for exceptions like parties or just having a bad day of discipline, but only about once every-other week. (looking at my records, I exceeded 2020 calories 21 times from mid-April 2020 thru the end of December)
- In 2021, I should have at least 2021·21 = 42,441 steps per week. That’s an average of 6063 per day, which should be more than doable if I get my desired cardio in.
- In 2021, I should have at least 2021 minutes of strength training per 4-month period. That’s a bit convoluted, but it works out to 38.6 minutes, 3 times a week, and my goal below is strength training 3x/week and it usually takes me 40–50 minutes. So again, doable.
- In 2021, I should walk at least 2021 km – all walking goes into this, not just specifically cardio/exercise. Now, this will be a stretch. That’s an average of 5.5 km per day. In 2020, I averaged 4.4 km/day by totaling 1592 km. But, the only months I exceeded 5.5 km/day on average were three: May, July, August. And that’s including stuff like just walking from the bedroom to the toilet. So, while this shouldn’t be a stretch, I think it will be.
Alright … “fun” / “themed” stuff aside, let’s get into the 🥩&🥔 [meat & potatoes] of it, as the saying sort of goes.
Lose Weight: The goal of most (but not all!), so let’s get down to brass tacks. Building off the success of last year, I want to lose weight. Based on what was sustainable for me, a –0.7% bodyweight loss per week is doable without going crazy. It takes work, yes, but it’s doable and I did it. It’s also close to the maximum sustainable amount based on some research that I’ve seen that tested –0.7% vs –1.1%. So, what this means is that, say I weigh 212 lbs on Sunday. My goal is to lose 212·0.007 ≈ 1.5 lbs by my weigh-in on Saturday. That means I start the next Sunday at about 210.5 lbs, so by the next Saturday I should be down to 210.5–(210.5·0.007) ≈ 209.0 lbs. And so on. That’s my goal when in a “cut” phase.
Lose Fat: I think when most people lose weight, they hope/want to have the majority of that be fat. It is very hard to lose weight quickly and not lose lean muscle, and on average last year, from my max to my min (averaged over the week), I had lost 21.6 lbs and 17.5 lbs of that was fat while 4.1 lbs of that was everything else. That means 81% of what I lost was fat. So, my goal rate is that 80% of what I lose should be fat.
Breaks: Assuming I don’t cheat on food … I need a mental and stomach and BMR break every few weeks. A good cadence before was 8 weeks on, 1 week off. So, each cycle was basically 2 months long. During that break, things reset, meaning if I’m not quite at – or even if I’m ahead – on a goal like weight, the goal of where to be that week resets. So, say I’m losing my weight at –0.7% bodyweight per week, and at week 9 into a cycle, I should be at 190 lbs. But, I’m at 193. Or, even 188. That week, the “Goal” becomes where I am. So, the next week I should be at 193–(193·0.007) (or 188–(188·0.007)). Not the 190–190·0.007.
Goal Weight for First Cut: My goal weight is (and was) 170 lbs for this first cut cycle (before bulking). That should be achievable by approximately September 2021.
Calories: My calorie goal at this point in time, coming in at about 212 lbs, is 1570 per day during a “cut” week. How do I get to that? First, I calculate my BMR, the Basal Metabolic Rate. That’s how many calories your body burns through just by being alive. The formulas are all over the web, and I do this in 10-lb increments, so for 210±10 lbs, my BRM is about 2220 calories. However, based on the last several months of experience, and really the last several years, my metabolism is low. So, I’m using the BMR calculation for two notches lower, 190±10 lbs, at 2110 calories. Then, the idea is I want to lose about 1.0 lb of fat per week based only on not eating. You’ll find a rule of thumb online that says that’s about 3500 calories. I went through the math in v1 of this of what it really is, so suffice to say for here, it’s actually about 3750 calories. Divided into 7 days in a week, that’s –535 calories per day from the 2110, which comes out to 1575, rounded down → 1570 calories per day.
Macros: I’m not bulking. But, I will be *cough* exercising, including strength training, because I want to maintain lean mass. So, what I’ll be doing is a graduated increase as I go down in weight of grams of protein per bodyweight. At the 190±10 lbs (which is 20 lbs below where I am, but see the above paragraph), the goal is 0.75 grams of protein per pound of what I weigh. When I am lower in weight, it will increase up to 0.8 grams per pound. But at the 190, that equates to 142.5 grams of protein per day, which is 36.3% of my calories. Fat is a steady 30%, which has worked for me in general, so it comes out at 52.3 grams per day. The remainder, at 33.7% of calories, is 132.3 grams of carbohydrates.
Exercise, Calories from: My actual goal at this point is to lose about 1.5 lbs of mass per week. So, take the 3750÷2 = 1875 calories from exercise per week. Divide by 7 and that’s a meager 270 calories per day, or about a half hour of moderately intense exercise per day … yeah, that’s one of the reasons people recommend that “half hour of moderately intense exercise per day,” among other reasons. So, for me, this is a minimum goal, averaged over the week.
Exercise, Cardio-Vascular Fitness: I’ve written an extensive post about explaining what and why my goal is what it is here, but now both FitBit and Apple are reporting “cardiovascular fitness” scores which are entirely based on your VO2max. That’s, basically, the amount of oxygen your body can use, per unit of weight. That actually means that you could be able to use the exact same amount of oxygen, lose 10 lbs, and improve your VO2max since it’s normalized to your weight. That aside, my VO2max is “low” at a tad over 30 and my goal is to get at least to average, and preferably above. My brother’s is over 50, which if he were my age (he’s 5 years younger), would put him at about the 90th percentile. I, however, am around the 10th percentile. So, this is why I do cardio. Or, need to do cardio.
Exercise, Strength Training: As I’ve noted at least twice so far, the purpose of strength training for me at the moment is to maintain what I have. When you’re cutting calories and need to spend them to exist and to do exercise, your body looks for what it can metabolize. Muscle it will try to preserve, but it will cut into that. Using your muscle, and forcing your body to try to grow just a tiny bit more as you go, helps to prevent that from happening. So, it’s not that I do this to push myself and bulk up (yet), it’s that I do it to keep what I have, as much as possible.
Exercise, Core / Bodyweight: So, I should be able to do situps. And pullups. And various other things. My core (muscles in and around the torso) is not only flabby, but under-developed. So, my goal is to do core exercises, using just my weight, to improve this.
No Exercise-Diet Trade-Offs: I went into a much longer explanation of this in v1, so in brief for this post, the idea that if you do exercise (expend calories) you can eat more is just wrong, if you’re trying to lose weight. You’re just going to undo that work you did! It’s also clearly much easier to not eat that doughnut than to do 30 minutes of hard exercise, which is what you’d have to do to work off the calories from it. So, this idea is just bogus, and I don’t trade exercise for food.
Sleep: Sleep at least 8 hours per night, and minimize naps.
During Travel: I started this back up last April because I was home-bound for the foreseeable future, for the first time in well over 15 years. I travel a lot – or, I used to – and in 2020 I was supposed to be out of town for 210 days, just to give you an idea of the numbers. That makes it really hard to stick with anything. So, while travel is still down, various conferences I go to or meetings I’m supposed to attend have started to tentatively schedule for in-person events starting as soon as the first week of June. So, basically, I need to figure out what I can do. And what I should do is stick with everything. But, I will need to make allowances for not tracking food as well, and other things. Sigh … I’m going to have to think more about this, but I’ll do it later, when we get closer to it.
Alrighty! There you have it, a loooooooong explanation of my goals, and why. Hopefully if you’re here trying to make your own, this makes sense and you can use it as a basis to figure out your own.
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