Friday, October 15, 2010

Goal Setting for Weight Loss

Goal setting for weight loss is one of the most underrated aspects of a weight loss program, because people only think about diet and exercise. They forget about the importance of motivation for weight loss. After all, if you are not motivated to continue your exercise program, you are going to quit and have a hard time losing weight.
But let's say you spent some time on goal setting. If you do that, you will always have benchmarks to look at and goals to keep you on track on your weight loss journey. Goal setting is underused and undervalued but people should be spending more time doing it because it really just gives you a road map to success.

You can also set process-oriented goals or outcome-oriented goals. A process goal refers to the acts that you'll do along the way, such as eating smaller meals each day, or exercising three times per week, or even planning your meals each week. On the other hand, an outcome oriented goal refers to losing a certain number of pounds each month, or increasing your strength by 10 percent in 2 months.

It is important to set both types of goals. You must have process goals because you can control them more than outcome goals. Sometimes we set outcome goals that are too lofty for our physical abilities, but if we are at least meeting our process goals, we can still know that we are on track to succeed.

If you set goals, you at least have something that will guide you along your weight loss journey, and I think you should keep those goals in front of you all the time so you check them on a daily basis, or at least a couple times per week go back and look and see if you're on track for your goals, your long-term and your short-term ones, and really use those to help guide you in the decisions that you make every day. And the more you can do that and actually use those goals as a guideline, you are really going to stay motivated.

I see goal setting as one of the most important motivational tools in a weight loss program, and I know that all of the Turbulence Training Weight Loss Transformation Contest winners all used goal setting to lose weight. You can't succeed without goal setting. All you need to do is take 30 minutes and set 3 short term and 3 long term goals today, so do it right now to help your weight loss results.

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