How important are goals?

Running is something I toyed with for about a year, maybe more, before I committed to actually running last summer.  I would be reading Facebook and see all sorts of friends running in races or organizing races and think, "I should try that."  The I would remember that I hate running and it makes me feel like I am dying and think about doing it "someday".  Well last school year I started back to work and I gained weight so I tried out running for a few weeks, talked enough about it to have a friend at work suggest I enter an upcoming race, then stopped running for over a month.  Obviously I took it back up, entered the race and completed it and have gone from there.  But here is the thing, the real reason i took up running was to lose weight.  In the seven months that I have been running I have lost 15 pounds.  In my head when I started I was going to lose five pounds a month and by now I would have reached my goal.  Why hasn't that happened?  I added calorie counting in, most of the time at least, in October.  I use My Fitness Pal most days to track both calories in and those used by exercise.  Do I need to run more?  Eat less?  Relax more?  Get rid of some stress?  I am at a loss as to what goal to set next.  I can keep going as I have been and enjoy slow weight loss, but I would love to see it go faster.  Starting on Wednesday I am giving up potato chips and french fries for Lent and, as those are two of my high calorie fun foods, that usually helps a bit.  Plus my training should be upping my miles soon so that may help too.  I want to do this smart, and keep running as a healthy pursuit, but I am ready to feel like  me again and that still hasn't totally happened.

My Fitness Pal

On Monday two weeks ago I started using My Fitness Pal on my Ipod.  The Ipod is pretty new to me and I am having fun trying out the different functions.  This one allow you to put in your height and weight and maybe age, I don't recall for sure, and then you say how much you want to lose a week.  It give you a calorie goal and you can record what you eat and what you do for exercise.  It just needs to balance out at the end of the day.  I am loving it and have done really well with it so far.  For the past two weeks I have ended up over my calories, but only by 30 calories the first week and 13 the second, which I am counting as success.  This week I put in my lowered weight, which is four pound, two more than what my goal was, which is great!  But is also lowered my daily calorie allotment by 20 calories.  While I do have off days where I eat too much, I usually even out the next day so I am hoping it is the overall picture of what is eaten over the course of the week and not just on a given day.  Being focused at this time of year is always hard for me with Halloween candy around and Thanksgiving and Christmas right around the corner, so I need this accountability to keep me honest with myself.