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Successful Goal Setting

A client recently asked me to help with setting some goals.

By Mike Harland

This also prompted me to speak about successful goal setting strategies with our upcoming trial members and then I thought it would be a good idea to speak about it here.
Too often we get fixated on our long-term goals, which is fine, but sometimes frustrating when we don’t see drastic changes in short periods of time. That frustration can sometimes lead to self-sabotage or us giving up, which is something we want to avoid at all costs.

So, this is how I’d strategize how to reach my weight loss goals:
1. Think of your long-term goal and write it down.
2. Now, this is very important. Remind yourself what healthy weight loss targets are for yourself. We will need to remember this information for the next step. We know that 1 pound per week is a safe and healthy weight loss target and 2 pounds a week is considered an aggressive weekly weight loss target. I’ll use 1.5 pounds per week for this post.
2. Divide your target weight loss by your healthy average weekly weight loss targets. The answer will be how many weeks it will take you to accomplish your goal.
Example ~ I want to lose 30 pounds. A fairly aggressive weekly weight loss target would be 1.5 pounds per week. 30 divided by 1.5 would come to a total of 20 weeks.
3. Allow for a variance – Every week may not be your best week, so I’ll add 4 extra weeks to reach my target, allowing me 24 weeks to reach my goal.
With this in mind, some weeks may be better than others. There may be weeks where you exceed your 1.5 pounds, but you don’t want to start depending on this. Just make sure you stick to what you’re supposed to be doing and consider the extra weight loss a bonus.

Set smaller goals
We thrive off of reward. It excites us, makes us happy, and drives us to continue. This is a very important part of the process and needs to be addressed. It was also a major talking point during one of my talks.
4. Set smaller daily goals that are not weight loss related – If your meal plan calls for 4 meals a day, celebrate when you eat your 4 meals and don’t cheat.
5. Set smaller weekly goals that are not weight loss related – Set a goal of exercising 3 times a week. Celebrate each week that you accomplish this.

These small tasks and accomplishments will eventually add up. Think about it this way, if today you had $1 you wouldn’t think it was worth much. I mean, there isn’t much you could actually buy with it, right? But if you decided to put $1 aside every day for 100 days, you would then feel you had saved up a fairly significant amount of money.Weight loss is the same way and when we start to add up our small daily and weekly goals, we will then come out with a substantial result. Don’t rush the process. You’ll have good weeks and you’ll have bad weeks, but in the end, if you do it right, you will have long-lasting results from doing it the right way.

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