I love college basketball. I love March Madness. And I love the Final Four (I’ve been 3 times in a row). I’m disappointed that UCLA didn’t make the tournament this year (or even NIT, sad) but I’m still going to be filling out my brackets. Because of March Madness and Bracketology Sunday, I got inspired to create my own bracket but instead of basketball, it centers around weight loss and life.

click to view in full

Aside from it being fun and in tandem with March Madness, I realized that I don’t reward myself enough for my hard work. Instead of recognizing my accomplishments, I tend to focus on my failures. Instead of being totally stoked that I’ve lost 20.8 pounds in 6 weeks, I’m still kind of disappointed that I’m not in the 100′s. And I think a lot of us are like that. We forget about our achievements and instead, focus on what we still need to do. However, I think it’s important to celebrate our successes. In order to keep myself motivated and maintain my momentum, I need to reward myself for everything that I’ve done.

HOW?

This is where the bracket comes in. Instead of splitting it up into divisions like the NCAA does, I split it into two halfs: LIFE and BODY, because I believe that you can only win the National Championships (weight loss, muscle building, whatever your goal is) if you improve both your life and your body. You can’t improve your body, at least not permanently, until you improve your life/mind.

The BLUE boxes are my goals, what I need to achieve. The YELLOW boxes are what I’m rewarding myself with once I achieve the corresponding goal. The goals are set up from easiest to hardest, so that the first tier goals help me achieve my second tier goals and so on.

DURATION

I’m hoping most of these goals will be accomplished by tournament time next year (March 2011).

 

PARTICIPATION

I encourage you to join me! I’m printing mine out and taping it to the wall so that whenever I finish something, I can cross it off and put stars around it.

To download a PDF file that you can fill out on the computer, click here.

To download a JPEG file that you can edit in Photoshop or MS Paint, click here. You’ll need to right click and save to your hard drive.

Let me know if you’ve made your brackets. And if you aren’t, don’t forget to reward yourself for all the things you’ve been accomplishing. It’s the little stuff that counts!

Most importantly, have fun! Weight loss and life should be fun and entertaining, so go enjoy!

 

NOTES
163 goal marks 100 pounds lost from my highest weight ever.

One Love means to tell one person 5 reasons why I love them.

Mom iTunes and Mom Bike means that I need to teach my mom how to use iTunes and how to ride a bike. That’ll be quite the task.