Oh, you know me.

For awhile now, I’ve actually been in a pretty great place, weight-wise. It’s slowly coming off and in a way that’s kept me sane (the occasional cheat meal is a-okay!). Back in October, I reached an all-time high weight of 164 lbs. Earlier this week, I broke the 150 mark and came in at a whopping 149.8 lbs. (it’s the little things that count, right?).

So now Daniel is hosting this Summer Body Fitness Challenge where all the participants are trying to reduce their Body Fat % and, while I’ve been doing really well on the slow-and-steady track, I think I’m in a good place now where I can kick it into high gear. After years of yo-yo dieting, the idea of restricting myself terrifies me (binge eating downward spiral, anyone?) but I’m thinking that our lifestyle is pretty solid now and with the addition of teaching my own yoga classes, I might be able to actually keep this up.

So here are my goals for the next 8 weeks:

1) Keep it clean.

Did you know that there were once Japanese monks who actually mummified themselves? They literally spent 3 years on a diet of nuts and seeds then an additional 3 years on just bark and poison. Obviously, this slowly killed them. Obviously, slow death is not my ultimate goal here. What is my goal, however, is the mastery of self-discipline. I’ve spent many-a-year wishing I had enough will power to lose the weight, but I have yet to get there. For once, I think I might actually be in a good place to reach this goal. I’m expecting this to be a sort of “soul cleansing” process. Keeping my diet 100% 98% clean will help.

2) Focus inwardly.

With the reintroduction of a dedicated yoga practice, this will be a great time to re-establish the communication between my body, my mind, and my spirit. Too often, I think, people forget that these are all 1, rather than 3 separate instances. You can will yourself into pain and sickness and destroying your spirit can have physical repercussions. As someone who spends 8 hours a in front of a computer (soon to be 9… hooray 9/80s!), I spend a lot of time taking in useless information that literally has nothing to do with my life. Did you know Justin Beiber is potentially involved with a married woman? Did you know James Woods’ new girlfriend is 46 years younger than him?? Did you know Miley Cyrus is high all the time??? Okay, maybe you knew that one. But still.

My life would be a lot better if I could just keep my focus on it. That’s another part of this “cleansing” that I really want to dedicate this next 8 weeks to.

3) Drop 5% BF

Finally, I have a measurable goal. It might be an ambitious one, but I would like to drop almost 5% body fat in the next eight weeks. This is where the dedication will really kick in, as 5% = approximately 10 lbs. In 8 weeks. Not an unhealthy or impossible amount of weight loss, but one that will require a very certain amount of laser focus for me. I mean, it’s taken me 8 months to lose 15. Now I’m thinking 8 weeks to drop another 10. But again, I think all of this process has been getting me to a point where I can actually succeed at this. At least I hope so.

So expect lots of updates as we go. I’ll keep you posted.