Goal Setting for Weight Loss

When considering what sort of approach to take when starting to exercise, it’s worth talking the time to ask yourself “What exactly, do do want to achieve from exercise?” Most people take the simplistic path of stating that they want to loss weight, but your body is made from many different substances. Stating a goal of losing weight is far too general.

According to almost every book and article I’ve ever read on goals, you need to make them SMART. That means:

Specific You need to state your goals in a fair bit of detail. eg. Get down to 12% bodyfat by Christmas or be able to run a mile in 6 minutes.

Measurable You need some way to measure the goals you set. If you set a goal of a %age of bodyfat, you need to be able to measure you bodyfat. This could be as simple or as complicated as you can dream up.

Attainable You don’t want to set a target of 1.5% bodyfat unless your’e a bodybuilder who is just about to go into a competition. It’s a goal that’s extremely difficult to achieve and even if you do, it is impossible to maintain and stay healthy.

Realistic You don’t want to set a goal of 1.5% bodyfat if you’re currently 22%. Or to run a 4 minute mile if the only training you’re had in the last rear in playing xbox. If you aim too high, you will get discouraged easily and will give up.

Timely Set a deadline for yourself. And stick to it!

I’ve read you should write your goals down and put them in a place where you will see (and be reminded of) them every day, but I find that this is only useful if you’re struggling with motivation. You can then use it for that little bit of help to push you a bit harder.

Your starting weight, body type, height and even gender will shape the direction of your goals. A 220lb 6′5″ man is going to have different goals to a 220lb 5′3″ woman. The man in that example may set a goal of increasing his weight or at the very least keep holding it steady while the woman is probably going to want to lose some weight.

The sort of goals that you may want to set for yourself could be: They want their body to be toned. Maybe even a little muscular. If they are male then maybe they want abs. Or perhaps you just want to get rid of the double chin

What most people really mean when they say they want to lose weight is that they actually want to lose fat. You can’t spot reduce fat (and any person or company trying to sell you a product that claims they can is scamming you). Muscle weighs more than fat. Muscle also needs to be fed energy in the form of calories - so they more muscle you have the more enegry you burn. This applies to all activities - from resting to exercise. So you want to preserve muscle at all costs. So when you step on the scale and have lost weight, you need to ensure you haven’t lost any muscle - If you have, you may have achieved your scale goals, but overall you’re effectively going backwards.

The average person can lose at the most 2lbs per week of fat. If you drop more weight than this, you’re either losing excess water or muscle. So you want to design your workouts to target fat loss and preserve (or even increase) muscle mass.

I’ll go into the details of actually achieving that goal in another post, but until then - happy goal setting!