How to Categorize Your Weight Loss Objectives

Facing the reality that you have some weight to lose, and deciding that you are finally going to do something about it, is both terrifying and exhilarating. Newton’s Law of Motion states that an object tends to resists changes to its state. If its still, it wants to remain so, and if it’s moving, that’s just the way it wants to stay. In both cases, energy needs to be applied to effectuate the change.

With a little creative thinking, this can be applied to your weight. If you’re fat, your body wants to stay that way, and you’re going to need to apply energy to make changes. This applies both to your mental focus as well as to your physical body.

Take a long, hard look at yourself, naked in front of the mirror if you can. Do you like what you see? If you’re reading this, chances are you don’t. The first thing to do is decide how much weight you would want to lose in order to have the body you want. Depending on where you’re coming from, the number may frighten you; don’t let it. Tell yourself this: the more body fat you have to lose, the faster the pounds will drop off, at least in the beginning.

For the same of argument, let’s say you have 100 pounds to lose. If you just look at this number, you’ll lose heart: it’s just too big. Just keep in mind that this is where you need to get, eventually, and move on to other things.

What you want to do is break down your goals in weekly, monthly and yearly periods, or short, medium and long term. This is easy enough. In some cases, you could even do away with the short term goals, but they are good catch-alls for things you can do to keep you spirits up!

Don’t make your goals difficult to achieve. They should be relatively challenging, but you should ensure that you can meet them, with a minimum of pain, every time. You may decide that you want to lose 5 pounds a month, for example. This is nothing drastic, and even looks a little bland, but what’s 5 pounds a month over a year? 60 pounds, that’s what!

Think about it. 100 pounds is a lot of fat to lose; managing to lose 60% of it in a year is fantastic! And you’ll have done this by losing nothing more than 5 measly pounds a month! In one fell swoop, you would have accomplished your monthly and yearly goals, and you’d feel a lot better, too!

What about short term, or weekly objectives? If you’ve struggled with your weight, you know that the scale lies. Not purposefully, I’m sure, but measuring your weight every day or even every week is a great way to quickly become discouraged and unmotivated. That’s not to say you should do away with weekly objectives altogether! Consider these:

“This week, I will neither buy nor eat cookies of any kind”.

“This week, I will only drink one beer on Friday night, saving myself thousands of calories”.

You get the idea. Setting small goals is the best way to make sure you meet your monthly objectives, and will keep you strongly motivated, particularly when you see that the results of you efforts are really paying off!

Whatever you do, remember that changing your habits is the only path to lasting weight loss. Crash diets have their virtues, certainly, but only by managing your habits and lifestyle will you be able to reliably keep the weight off. Small, incremental changes are the very lifeblood of true weight loss.