So I had that post a few days ago about simple steps to setting goals… and one of the key parts didn’t get in to was tracking your goals. Like my goal of hitting the gym at least 3 days a week for the next 12 weeks doesn’t do me much good if I’m not keeping track of my compliance to that, right?

Of course there’s the good old pen and paper. And I have a smart phone, so I’m sure there’s lots of ways I could use that… but let’s take a quick look at a couple of web based tools out there that you could turn to if you want.

Joe’s Goals

First up, Joe’s Goals (joesgoals.com). The idea behind Joe’s Goals is a simple grid where you add specific goals, decide how many points a goal is worth, then every time you meet that goal for a day you click on it to add a mark, earning points. You can also add goals for things you want to avoid and thus earn negative points for doing them.

This system I think would work well for items you want to track on a daily, or almost daily basis. When you set up a goal, you assign it a point level, what days of the week to shoot for and what you want to track when it comes to points, how many days in a row you meet the goal, etc. The negative points option would let you track bad habits you’re trying to break.

The service is free, though they do ask for donations of just $12 a year to support the site. For that you get first crack at new features as they might be added.

Speaking of other features; you can click Print to view the current screen in a printer-friendly format. Choose a range of dates to generate a summary report of all your goals, and re-order the list of goals. Under the My Account section you can ask it to email you when you haven’t updated your goals after a certain period of time (default is 7 days) as well as get personalized “badge” code you can add to your blog or other web site that will let others know how you’re doing on your goals. It seem this basically shows a graph of your points total for a day.

There’s no flash or anything used here, and I was able to access and use the site from my Palm Pre phone. So should work just fine with your iPhone or Android phone as well. A bonus in my book.

habitforge – Forge new habits. Change your life!

If your goals include establishing a new habit, or breaking an old one, habitforge.com may be of use. The premise here is that it takes 21 days to establish a habit. Keep doing something for those 21 days and it becomes your new norm.

For a WLS type, this could be a handy way of reaching those goals like “I will drink at least 8 cups of water a day for the next X weeks”. Or if you’re pre-op and trying to wean yourself off soda or coffee… “I will not drink any pop for the next X days”.

Set up a free account at habitforge, and they’ll send you a customized email every day asking if you accomplished your task, ie: “Were you successful yesterday in taking a half-hour walk?” – followed by two links, a yes link or a no link.

If you click yes, it adds that to your tally of consecutive days… if you don’t… the counter resets back to 0 on you.

This doesn’t follow the stricter sense of goal setting, but if your goals include getting in to some good habits (or breaking some bad), this could be a nice tool to help.

There’s a third tool I recently found that I was going to include here… but after starting to really look at it, I found it to be much more… in depth… than I first thought, and honestly I want to spend some time with it before I review it. It’s got some great looking features that I think is going to worthy of a posting all it’s own. So look for that to come hopefully soon.

In the mean time, check out the couple mentioned here and see if they can’t help you get started towards some of your current goals! And if you can recommend other goal tracking tools that you know of or use, drop a note in the comments.

So…. you may notice it gets a bit quiet around here from time to time. See, I’m just one dude with an idea. There are a ton of great WLS related sites out there, with more popping up all the time. I think some of the best are the more personal sites, done by patients, talking about their experiences, sharing ideas, etc.

The vast majority of WLS patients are women, so it’s a given that most of the sites out there are by women. No big deal, I’ve gotten to know a ton of great women through their sites and twitter and various forums. But sometimes, a dude just needs to hear it from another dude. Thus, my idea for formerfatdudes.com came about.

But even tho I’m a dude, I’m not sure I’m your typical WLS type… and likely there isn’t even one. I can give you MY perspective on things, but I’m not the end-all and be-all of WLS dudes. That’s where YOU come in.

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