My goals are very aggressive. I find big goals to be very motivating. Would you rather achieve something amazing, or something easy? It is, of course, easier to achieve the easy things. Shooting for big goals can mean failure.

The key is how you respond to the pressure, and whether the fear of failure shuts you down. I know failure itself isn’t the end of the world. Really the only important point is whether the magnitude of the goal itself is scaring me into not trying, or if it’s pushing me to work hard.

Consistency is also extreme. Compromise is reasonable, or prudent, or “smart.” Fuck that! Sticking to your principles, your standards is consistent and extreme. I don’t have a problem with “extreme.” But I’m not shooting for extreme just to be extreme. What I’m embracing is a desire to be consistent, and a big goal that I know will motivate me to put a ton of effort in.

I’ve got four major areas by which I’ll be measuring my progress. These areas are weight, cardiovascular fitness, strength training, and financial health.

Weight

I weighed in at 243.6 pounds this morning. Earlier in the year my weight was around 270 pounds, and I dropped most of that during the spring. To the Paleo disciple, body fat responds to hormones. The idea that “calories are calories” ignores the complexity of digestion and metabolism. To burn body fat (which, at 5′10″, is a lot of that 244 pounds), I need to keep my insulin levels low and encourage insulin sensitivity.

Weight will primarily be a metric that I measure; a goal to shoot for. I won’t really “work” on weight, except to the extent that my diet and exercise contributes to weight loss.

Cardiovascular Fitness

I started walking and jogging at the beginning of the last year, but stopped in January when ankle pain sidetracked me. I’ve been walking and jogging for the past few months. Fitness is a critical component of being on the slopes all day, and being able to go back out day after day.

I can jog faster and longer now than I could at the beginning of the year. And mostly it hasn’t been what I would call “running” because it’s been too slow. I’ve picked up the pace recently (Tuesday, really) but yet I’m not running far.

My fitness goals are to increase continuous distance and speed. I’m not too worried about time spent running or total distance travelled; my workout goals are to get to 5k (i.e. three miles) at a continuous run. Right now, I’m walk/running about two miles, and only running in 400 yard stretches.

Diet

I started following the Weston A Price Foundation’s guidelines, mostly, four years ago. Not too horribly consistent, though. I discovered Paleo about a year ago, which for me was an evolutionary step forward (pun intended). The “WAPF diet” emphasizes nutrient-dense food, and a number of their authors make the point that saturated fats and dietary cholesterol aren’t the dangers that the mainstream media (MSM) make them out to be. Paleo adds in science that warns against neolithic foods, like grains, high-fructose corn syrup, and sugar. An Atkins diet is low-carb, usually without much concern about the specific foods that are eaten, as long as they’re low-carb. Paleo says, instead, to avoid foods that the human body is not adapted to digesting.

My diet now is pseudo-paleo. Paleo adherents advocate grass-fed, organic meat, eggs, and dairy; I’m not there yet. And I still have a number of leaks, including snacking on that occasional pastry offered by coworkers, or sugar-water (Coke) now and then.

My goal is to cut out the leaks, to eat more nutrient-dense foods, and to cook more.

Finances

Spending the winter on a mountain slope isn’t that expensive. It would be if you’re in debt, have a wife and three kids to support, a big car payment, a low-wage job, no savings, etc. This trip — a winter in the mountains — won’t be possible without the finances to back it up.

I’m still in debt now. I have a good-paying job, but bad spending habits. I’ve been fairly aggressive about paying down that debt over the last couple months, but I’ve got a couple months to go. Why am I in debt? Why else? Fiscal imprudence. I don’t have a wife or kids, so all I have to support is me. I own my car, but it’s old and maintenance is starting to be worse than a new car payment would be, so I’m probably buying a new car before I head out — and so my financial plan has to account for a way to keep making that payment through the winter months. If I’m up in the mountains, I won’t have the same cushy day job that I have now; I need new work. And my savings are measly and not something that I want to dig in to just for this trip.

So my main financial goal is to develop several computer applications, mostly games and game-related tools. What sort of revenue can I expect? Who knows? It’s pretty wide open. This trip won’t be possible without income, so the main thing I’m doing with my free time is working.

This Blog

I’ll be making posts about my goals, progress, and also pulling together the research I’ve seen that support my diet, exercise, and financial plans. I hope that some of you will be inspired to make similar life changes, and others already on this journey can point out some landmarks along the way.