How to set real-life weight loss goals
February has come and gone, and moms everywhere are wondering what the heck happened with their resolutions to lose weight in the new year. Maybe you have had so much going on, you’re waiting for things to slow down so you can really get serious. Or maybe you’ve been working your butt off the last two months, starving yourself of all your favorite foods and spending hours in the gym, without reaching your goal. And you’re ready to throw in the towel.
If you’re sick of starting each new year with the same 20 lbs to lose, it is time to give yourself some grace and start setting some real-life goals.
Take the picture of the bikini model off your vision board.
Forget about that celebrity’s weight that you googled when you were setting your goal.
Get rid of your high school jeans that you’ve been hoping to fit back into.
You want to be a strong and confident mama, not a bikini model. Set your intentions accordingly.
When you’re juggling family schedules, bedtimes routines, keeping up with laundry and trying to figure out what you’re gonna serve for dinner, making time for health and fitness is HARD. And when you’ve been opting for kale protein shakes instead of date-night pizzas and you still don’t look like Heidi Klum, reaching your goals might seem impossible.
Let’s start measuring success differently. If the scale measured your success in feel-good workouts, delicious nutritious meals, and all your other healthy habits, you’d be so proud of yourself. You’d be motivated to keep going.
Results-oriented goals for the office; action-oriented goals for your life.
Leave results-oriented goal setting for your performance reviews at work.
With results-oriented objectives, you start by identifying the results that you want to achieve. Based on those results, you create a plan with steps broken down on how you will get there. Then, you simply follow the plan until the desired results are achieved. Rinse and repeat.
The process works well, so we apply it to our health and fitness intentions for the same effect. If you want to lose ten pounds in 30 days, you simply need to create a 35,000-calorie deficit, or burn 1,167 more calories than you consume each day. Simple, right?
The problem is that you are a real-life mama, not a calorie-burning machine.
When you’re at work, your focus is on production. But when you’re at home, your focus is living life with your family. Working towards your personal objectives is the side-gig that real life gets in the way of. Personal intentions are not the same as work objectives, so we need a different strategy for them.
If we change our focus from the results that we want to achieve to the actions we are taking to become stronger and healthier each day, our actions give us success along the way and keep us motivated to continue.
Swap guilt for success with action-oriented goals.
Rather than obsessing over how you look, what you want your weight to be, or what size clothes you want to wear (does any of that stuff really matter anyhow??), focus on the actions that you can take to give yourself more strength, energy, and confidence!
Set goals that matter.
Dig deeper than “I want to look like that,” or “I want to lose [insert magic number] pounds,” or “I want to fit back into my old jeans.” Those goals are self-defeating. They don’t really mean anything to you and don’t encourage making changes for the long-haul.
Do you really want Victoria Secret begging you to do a beach photo shoot? Or do you just want to feel good, zipping up your favorite little black dress with ease while your husband sneaks a peak at you from across the room?
Will losing 20 lbs or fitting into the decades-old skinny jeans really change your life? Or do you just want more energy to spend your evenings playing outside with the kids?
Find the real reason behind each of your goals so that you know you are working towards what really matters most. You can do this by asking yourself why you set each goal. Keep asking “Why?” until you get to the heart of goal.
Think about the things that really matter and set actionable goals to get there.
Focus on the actions that you can control and watch the results come as a biproduct of those actions.
We tend to oversimplify and overestimate our abilities to change our bodies. Rather than setting yourself up for failure with results that are out of your control, focus on creating healthy habits that make you feel better.
· Establish a habit of drinking at least 75 oz of water each day.
· Spend 30 minutes each day having fun with exercise.
· Sleep for at least 7 hours each night.
· Swap out your afternoon soda with a sparkling water.
· Include a serving of vegetables at every meal.
· Ditch your habit of late-night mindless snacking or after-work hangry eating habits.
Take a small step, celebrate your success, repeat.
Choose one healthy habit to focus on at a time. Rock it until it becomes easy – that’s the true sign you’ve made it a habit. Celebrate your success and let it fuel the next healthy change.
Reevaluate and set new actionable goals as needed.
You’re not after a pass or fail grade here, and your work on your health and fitness is never “done”. Simply focus on positive habits and continuous improvement.
So, how do you measure progress if we never set a weight or a size target?
There are so many things you can pay attention to that don’t include weight or clothing size. You can keep a journal and pay attention to your moods and energy levels or keep an exercise log and strive to become faster and stronger in your workouts. You can measure your nutrition by grams of protein, grams of fiber, ounces of water, and amounts of vitamins and minerals instead of just calories and grams of fat and carbs.
But you can also use the scale and the fit of your clothes to measure progress without having those things be the focus of your goals. The number on the scale or on the tag of your clothes does not tell you whether you are healthy, but changes in those numbers can give you great feedback on whether your actions are taking you in the right direction.
Look at those measurements as honest information that you can use to adjust your habits and set new action-oriented goals.
Each month (or whatever frequency works in your life), assess how your measurements have changed and how you feel, and set new action-oriented goals to continue your journey to feeling strong, confident, and energetic.
Apply this process to all your real-life goals.
In any area of your life where you find yourself setting goals that you just can’t seem to achieve, take a step back from the results that you are after and focus on one action that you can take to get closer to where you want to be.
Instead of getting frustrated about your less-than-perfectly clean house, recognize the fact that your definition of clean might need to be a bit different in this season of motherhood. Focus on routines that keep you from getting overwhelmed by the work and maintaining some balance in your home.
If you’re trying to grow your side-gig, stop getting down on yourself when your sales aren’t as high as you’d like. Focus on showing up, serving your audience, learning and growing.
Trade in the guilt for actions that make you unstoppable!
What is one results-oriented goal that you can let go of and replace with an action-oriented goal?
For more tips, motivation, and inspiration to as you tackle your real-life goals, join us in the For More Of What Matters Community Facebook group!
