Marius Serban is a member of BestSelf Alliance. A few weeks ago, we were amazed to see this picture of his 13-Week Wall Roadmap that he posted:
We’ve never seen one used like this before and our first thought was “What are all those mysterious markings all over his 13-Week Roadmap?!”
So we reached out to him to get an answer to that burning question… and see how his method can help all of you!
Marius’s 13-Week goal was to get his weight down to 185lb by April 1, 2017. His reward? $300!
Instead of using his 13-Week Roadmap to simply cross off days where he exercised or ate according to plan, Marius creatively used it to track his weight as well.
When we designed the Self Journal & 13-Week Roadmap, we wanted it to be something that was 100% yours. So we loved the creativity he used in making the 13-Week Roadmap fit him and his goal, instead of the other way around!
Besides the great use of the Roadmap, Marius also put a lot of thought into how he wanted to break down his goal to make his success inevitable. So, without further ado, we’ll let Marius explain the rest!
I’m a designer and marketer with 17 years experience. I’m happily married with 3 young children. Whenever I get the chance, I like to take my camera and take photos of my kids and my wife.
I am a task-driven person. I love breaking down a goal into small tasks and marking them all off one by one. My goal was to go down from 203.4lb to 185lb by April 2nd. With this goal, I decided to take one day at a time. Once I started it got easier because I couldn’t go to bed without working out, otherwise, my chart wouldn’t look good :)
Obviously watching what I eat was the most important piece in achieving this goal. However, I didn’t want just to lose the weight, I wanted to look good too :) To make sure that I’m on track, I decided to weigh myself every morning. On my 13-Week Roadmap, I draw either a red arrow going up meaning my weight went up, or a green arrow to indicate that my weight went down. The arrows also helped see a weight pattern. For example, on Wednesdays, my weight only went up twice during the 13 weeks. The checkmark indicates that I worked out that day.
I decided to break it down my changes in weight instead of simply crossing it off when I worked out that day because my goal wasn’t to work out, but to lose the weight. Working out was just a channel through which I could achieve my goal. I figured that in order to get down to 185lb within my timeframe I would need to lose around 1.5lb per week. Drawing a line at the end of the week and see where I am, how much weight I lost that week, helped me to stay focused on my goal.
When you have 3 kids you can’t really have a set schedule on when you’re doing your workout :) I often worked out right after I woke up, while other times I found myself needing to do it at 11pm (just because I couldn’t go to bed without doing my workout for that day)
