Day 14: Goals

As i've said before, I believe that having goals is very important. Most people will sit down January 1st and devise their goals for the coming year. A lot of people will try and shoot for the stars with their goals or establish a goal that is too vague to be accomplished. Often times this is more detrimental that helpful because the goals are too hard to reach and fall quickly out of sight. An easy way to counter-act this is by setting your goals and then creating sub-goals and a plan that will launch you into the heavens.


Let’s look at a new year’s goal that just about all of us has set. We have all told ourselves on January 1st that “this is the year I am getting into shape!” What does that actually mean? We are all in some “shape.” I, for instance, am currently rounded! Such vague goals are the reasons why there is a 45 minute wait for an elliptical machine at the gym until a about January 20th. Twenty days is all it takes for people to get bored, give up, or convince themselves that they don’t look that fat in their size 40 jeans.


Now, if we go back and look at that goal in a different light and start of by saying “this is the year that I get into my target weight range coupled with a healthy body fat percentage!” Automatically we can see a drastic difference in what has been laid forth. By setting this type of goal we have a start, a direction to go in, and a finish. If you do a little research it is easy to find out where you fall on the healthy weight zone scale. This is the start! Let’s say for instance you are 265lbs with 28% body fat. If you are 7’ tall this may be okay. Likely you are more in my range of pretty close to 6’1”. A healthy range for someone my size with a larger bone structure is to be between 190-215lbs with a body fat percentage from 14-18%. That puts me about 50lbs outside my range. This is my direction! Healthy weight loss accomplished by diet and exercise should yield around 10lbs of loss per month for men and around 6-8lbs for women. Knowing that I can deduce it should take me 5 months to get into my healthy range if I hit it hard from the get go. Don't think you have to go balls out from the beginning. Take things slowly! Set sub goals for yourself. Take it in steps. I have compiled an example of the first three months my own personal process to losing 50lbs and 12% body fat (the finish) below.




GOAL- 50lbs and 12% fat loss!



January-

1. Get a gym membership
2. Start exercising 2-3 times per week.
3. Cut out fast food.
4. Cut back on beer.
5. Drink one glass of water for every soda.

February-

1. Increase exercising to 3-4 times per week.
2. Pick up a sport.
3. Switch to diet soda.
4. Drink 2-3 liters of water a day.

March-

1. Increase length and intensity of workouts.
2. Switch from beer to vodka.
3. Increase the amount of home cooked meals you eat.

By creating sub-goals that you can monitor on a day to day basis the end result is much easier to attain. I promise that if you were to follow that brief three month plan alone you would see a drastic change in your appearance. The same rules apply to things like personal debt. If you want to be out of debt in 2010 then start by paying your highest interest rate credit cards off first. Set a goal to take care of one card every two months and make the small changes in your life to attain that goal.


I know this post was a bit long winded, but it is amazing information that has been passed onto me. I promise if you heed it you will not be one of the people that vanish from the gym on the 20th! Good luck.