How to Create Systems to Actually Reach Your Goals
As a telehealth weight loss service, one of the main things we talk to patients about is setting and achieving weight loss goals. One thing we have noticed is how ineffectual goal setting can be. Let’s talk about why that is.
You are probably familiar with the term “yo-yo dieting,” which certainly describes the unfortunate reality that around 80% of dieters gain the weight back within five years.
This sums up our biggest qualm with goal setting: what happens after you reach your goal?
That’s where creating systems comes in.
Goals are finite and although they give you something to work toward, they don’t lay out the roadmap to get there. We want to talk about how you can shift your mindset to develop systems that keep you motivated to maintain your goal weight once you achieve it.
Let’s dive deep and learn the three biggest reasons that goals fail and how to use them to create systems that will actually help you in the long term.
Goals Vs. Systems
First, let’s define what we actually mean when we discuss goals and systems.
A goal can be defined as the desired outcome, likely a certain number on the scale, your jeans size, or number of inches reduced from your waistline.
A system is the how. It consists of commitments or tasks that you can commit to each day or each week that help you achieve your ultimate goal. Examples of this include eating in a calorie deficit or hitting the gym four days per week.
Put simply, if your goal is the destination, then a system is the journey it takes to get there.
While setting your goal points you in the right direction, you still need to plan your route, check the air in your tires, and stop for gas along the way.
Three Reasons Why Goals Fail Us
Many people know they want to lose weight, but don’t have a solid grasp on how they plan to do it. They begin their journey with no road map, trying out different diets or getting a membership at their local gym.
But what happens when they hit a roadblock?
Many things can thwart your weight loss from simple frustration to an injury or burnout. Let’s talk about the tree main reasons why your goals have set you up for failure.
Goals Create a Yo-Yo Effect
Remember that yo-yo dieting we talked about? The term might not just apply to dieting, but the whole process of weight loss.
Have you ever had a big goal like running a marathon?
Many people do intensive training to run a marathon. When they achieve their goal, there is a fleeting feeling of victory and then life continues on much the same as it did before. The marathon runner might take a break from training after their win, lose interest, and go right back to their couch potato routine.
Goals are such unstable grounds for meaningful change because once they’re reached, there is nothing motivating you to keep going.
To bring it back to weight loss goals, once the weight is gone, many people go right back to their old routine of overeating and skipping workouts and land right back where they began.
Not only is this frustrating, but it can actually have a negative impact on your body, hurting your metabolism and making weight loss harder and harder to achieve.
Goals Hinge Happiness on Results
Don’t get us wrong, we think that goals are a good way to have something concrete to work toward, but they can become toxic when you begin to frame your idea of success or happiness around them.
Goals can create a mindset centered around if/then statements. For example, “If I weigh X number of pounds then I will be happy.”
This frames your happiness as a result of or beholden to your goal. So what happens until then? To create a sustainable healthy lifestyle that helps you not only reach your goal weight but actually maintain it long term, you need to find a way to enjoy your life in the in between.
Anyone can endure temporary suffering to reach a goal, but is this the best way to go about it?
Instead of crash diets and killing yourself at the gym seven days per week, you should focus on finding a way of eating or moving that you actually enjoy so that you’ll keep it up even after your goal is met.
Goals Remove Freedom to Adapt
Goals by definition are not flexible.
The problem is, life tends to throw us many curve balls no matter how much we try to plan and prepare.
Maybe you have a huge deadline at work looming over you, your kids get sick, or you twist your ankle getting off the treadmill. Whatever it is, life will always introduce obstacles that throw you off track temporarily.
The difference between having a system and having a goal is that you have the freedom to adapt a system to suit your current needs while keeping those goals in mind.
For example, imagine there are two people going to the gym. One of them wants to lose 20 pounds and one of them wants to go to the gym regularly and stay fit. Now imagine both of these people twist their ankle during Zumba class.
The person who wants to lose 20 pounds sees this event as a huge setback and may continue to exercise on the injury. The person who is more focused on holistic fitness will take the necessary time off to heal and come back stronger and more aware of proper form.
We sometimes call this maladaptive mindset “all or nothing thinking,” which you can read more about in this past blog post.
How to Use Your Goals to Create a System
We aren’t telling you to scrap all of your goals. Having these in mind is excellent motivation to maintain your momentum. However, let’s talk about how you can use these goals as a tool to create your system just like we used a destination to direct a journey in our transportation analogy.
So, if your goal is to lose 20 pounds, what is the system that will get you there?
Here four examples of what you might do to get there:
Eat within a calorie deficit.
Eat more fresh whole foods and reduce consumption of processed foods.
Exercise four times per week focusing on a combination of strength training and cardio.
Get at least eight hours of sleep per night.
This system gives you specific actions to take each day or each week which ultimately get you closer to that goal of yours but which actually start to build a lifestyle you can maintain.
Sum it Up
We aren’t telling you to abandon your goals entirely. In fact, we might be telling you to set more of them.
What we are saying is that you should not focus all of your effort on the end goal, but rather put that energy into building a lifestyle that supports your health and your happiness.
You can do this yourself by first defining your goal and then breaking it down into several actionable steps. Decide how often you will be engaging in these steps and make it work for your unique lifestyle.
If you need help or extra support creating your system, you can always reach out to us here at TeleHealthNP and receive guidance from a weight loss specialist.
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