You just set your fitness goal. Congratulations. You’ve made a fantastic step to make this health and fitness stick. Now comes the hard part, the process of achieving your goals.
This is where a lot of people get stuck because it’s all fine and good to set a goal, but the hard part is following through. Especially when life and circumstance don’t give a stuff about your goals. Only you do so it helps to have a plan in place.
It doesn’t have to be a hair brained scheme like the A-Team used to come up with. But getting a few things down on paper or in your head will have you saying, “I love it when a plan comes together.” when you reach your goal.
6 Ways To Reach Your Fitness Goals
Here’s the order I use with clients to help achieve their fitness goals. It often doesn’t go smoothly but what it does do is help make your goals stick, so you can crush it when life gets in your way.
1. Find The Why Behind Your Goals
Whatever your reason for wanting to change yourself and health, get to the bottom of it by asking yourself the 5 whys. If you can’t do this, get a spouse or close friend to quiz you and be ready to go inside your own head.
Here’s an example.
Why are you here today? – To lose 20 pounds.
Why 20 pounds? – Because I’ll get down to my old high school weight.
Why is this important to you? – Because I want my energy and bounce back, like when I was in high school
Why is getting your energy back important? – My wife is about to have a baby.
A baby, fantastic news. Why will losing 20 pounds help? – Because I need to be the best help to my wife and a better role model for my child.
Now you have some real skin in the game.
2. Set A Process Goal
The goal you probably set is an outcome goal. It is your destination, for all the blood sweat and tears you’re about to pour into it. For example, losing 25 pound or bench pressing your bodyweight.
But you need a roadmap to get there and that’s where process goals come in. Process goals are goals you have complete control over, and your outcome is the result of actions and tasks you complete to make your outcome goal a reality.
Setting a process goal gives you a roadmap to help your plan come together. For example, you want to lose 25 pounds and you’re ready to throw yourself head long into your goal.
Instead set a couple of process goals like lifting weights 3 times a week, drinking a glass of water before every meal, and getting 8000-12000 steps per day. You have a complete control of these goals but little control of the number on the scale.
But these process goals will set you on the road to fat loss success.
3. Set Short-Term Goals
Much like process goals, setting short-term goals provides direction to the larger goal. Although these are not essential in the goal setting process, having them helps you stay on track and with point 6 below.
For example, you want to bench press your bodyweight but you’re 50 pounds from making it happen and it’s going to take a while to reach. Instead set a short-term goal like when you can do 80% of your bodyweight for 8 reps you can go up by 5-10 pounds. And when you can do that weight for 8 reps, go up again.
This will set you on the path to reaching your ultimate goal.
4. Make Your Goals Measurable
This is an easy one. If you can measure it, you can track it and then you can get better. Being able to lift more weight, the scale number going down or you’re losing inches of your hips or waist. Write it down and put somewhere where you can see it, to remind of the progress you’re making.
Being able to track and measure your goals makes sure you are on the right track.
5. Make Your Goals Attainable
There’s a saying if you reach for the moon and you get to the stars, you’ve done well. But the other side of the coin if when you set a lofty goal that’s extremely difficult given your current set of circumstances, you might get discouraged and quit.
Setting doable goals that are not impossible but not too easy (the Goldilocks and the three bears principle) and being able to reach this goal in a realistic timeframe is key.
For an extreme example, you’re not going to lose 50 pound to two weeks but if you give yourself six months to a year to reach it, this is more attainable.
6. Celebrate The Small Wins
Sometimes you get focused on the big picture that you forget the small wins along the way. Like being able to bench press 5 more pound than you did last week, or you lost two pound of body fat after losing zero last week.
When I mean celebrate, I don’t mean throwing a huge party and eating your bodyweight in chips. Instead give yourself a mental high five, tell your friends and family about it or buy the pair of jeans you’ve been eyeing off at Old Navy.
Celebrating the small wins will help you stay on track for the bigger ones.
Wrapping Up
Setting health and fitness goals is great. Coming up a plan of action to reach them is even better. Having a plan of action, finding your why, making it attainable, measurable, and enjoying the journey will help make it stick when life throws up its barriers.
Don’t worry, you’ve got this.
If you need help with reaching your fitness goals, contact me here.
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