Management of Your Goals is Your Single Most Important Fitness Step

The game of getting the body you want by committing to more exercise and eating better, is won before you move one muscle. It is actually won before you choose a plan or program.

Whether you get from here to wherever there is, is dependent on your ability to focus solely on your very specific outcome. Here is the tricky part: too many people fall into the trap of mixing outcomes in their own minds without a realistic understanding of what goes into each outcome goal. This leads to frustration and often ceasing their quest.

I recently have rebuilt my focus as a health and fitness consultant around my observations of what ties all of us together. No, not that we collectively love pizza or 50's music or warm sunny summer days. Fitness is my deal so that is what I stick to. What we have in common when it pertains to fitness is we generally are all wanting to achieve one of three body appearance goals.

Goal number one is simply to lose weight. This is by far the most common in terms of numbers of people who want it. It is noteworthy because there are probably more theories and plans about how to lose weight than there are actual people who want to reach the goal. This is generally the starter goal for people who haven't been staying in shape over the preceding years.

Goal number two is actually the next level (we'll explain this shortly). Goal two is about getting really ripped and fit. To visualize what I am talking about, think about the after photos you'd see on a fitness infomercial. P90X would be an excellent example. Remember when you were younger and athletic and in the best shape of your life? Many of us would love to look like this again.

Goal number three is more male-centric, but not male exclusive. It is about adding size, muscle, and strength. Many men want to be bigger because they don't like the perceived disadvantages of being smaller and skinnier. They feel adding size and muscle will give them more confidence and maybe make them more attractive to the opposite sex. This group also includes people who are wanting added strength for sports performance purposes.

Without going too deeply into parceling out the debate of my proposition, I believe that these body appearance goals effectively cover most all of us. The trick to reaching them is simple: Forget trying to do more than one at a time. Even if you don't buy from a scientific standpoint that you can't accomplish two or all three of them at once, we have to be realistic about what where we are and who we are.

In short, we want to approach our fitter healthier future with sustainability in mind. We have to create lifetime habits to get the full appearance and health benefits of fitness. Trying to do too much too fast won't last.

I know what you are probably thinking if you have visited my site or seen me out and about: "look who is talking, Ms. extreme workout program herself"? Yes I am in the business of selling programs which are labeled extreme for extreme results. I use them, but they aren't realistic for everyone and even I never enter into one of them mixing the outcome goals. I am instead thinking in terms of either losing weight, OR getting really ripped fit, OR gaining size and muscle bulk.

There are two reasons this approach is vital. First, getting really ripped and fit is much easier if you first establish weight loss and a baseline of being more active which is part of that weight loss. Second, we need to always be looking and feeling great as a long-term journey. When we slow down our expectations, we find the process to be easier and the results better. With better results achieved without extreme effort, we achieve sustainability.