Why You Should Abandon Your Weight Loss Goal In Order To Gain Control Of Your Health
When I first meet a new patient, they often ask me, “How long will it take me to lose 50 pounds?” or some other version of this question. I could come up with a fairly accurate weight loss range based on your age, current weight, calorie intake, exercise frequency and intensity, etc., etc.
The first problem with this method is that it is mercurial and influenced by so many different factors from lifestyle to genetics.
The second problem is that reaching these big goals can sometimes take months or even years, and it can be discouraging when the goal post is so far away.
Instead of focusing on how much weight in X amount of time or if you’ll fit into your size X dress by your high school reunion, I like to encourage my patients to focus on more tangible goals.
The key word here is control.
Those long-term goals are things we can strive toward, but we don’t have that much control over when we will hit them. There are, however, plenty of things that we can achieve that are within our control.
A few things that are in your control right now are:
How many calories you are consuming.
The nutrient density of the food you are eating.
How often you are exercising.
How much sleep you are getting (some people have insomnia, but we will go over good sleep hygiene in a future blog!)
How you manage stress.
How much water you are consuming.
Being consistent in your lifestyle choices.
Continuing to learn more about your health.
Re-centering your goals around the things that you have more control over will help you to hit more milestones and stay more motivated.
For example, if you decide to count calories, you have basically created a mini goal that you can achieve daily. Even when you go over calories one day, you have a new opportunity tomorrow to get a win.
Another way to change your mindset around health is to frame your progress around what you will gain. So, instead of losing a pound per week, set a goal to become an athlete who works out five times per week for 30-45 minutes (and yes, if you exercise consistently I think you can consider yourself an athlete!)
Another way you can set goals to gain rather than lose is to create strength goals. For example, you could set a goal to increase your dumbbell weight from five to ten pounds, or to do 20 pushups without stopping.
You will be surprised how quickly you can achieve these mini goals and how good it feels to do so.
I will leave you with a little bit of homework after this blog post: sit down with a pad of paper or your notes app on your phone and try to break down those big goals into bite-sized chunks, preferably into things that are within your control. Feel free use the list in this post for inspiration. From those chunks, pull out one or two things that you can start working on today.
Maybe that’s counting calories, or maybe it’s introducing exercise a few times a week. Work on those one or two things consistently until you reach your mini goal, or until it becomes a habit.
Once you see how much of your health is in your control, it will help you to create that foundation and begin to build onto it as you grow.