How to Create Attainable Fitness Goals:
Without goals, you can lack focus and direction.
This is especially true when trying to lose weight, build muscle, improving your health, or anything in life really, you know you need to set goals.
While it sounds easy enough, people often set goals that end up demotivating them when it’s not reached. This results in you wasting your time in the gym or being in dieting purgatory hell.
I know because I’ve wasted years of my life without making noticeable progress. There is nothing worse than spending your time, money, and effort and getting nowhere.
If you’ve tried and failed to establish long-term, healthy habits, then you know all too well what I’m talking about.
Fitness goals hold us accountable, challenge ourselves, and encourage us to push through temporary discomfort for longer-lasting change. However, to accomplish your goals, you need to know how to set them. This process begins with careful consideration, followed by consistency to achieve what we set out to do.
Motivation is an excellent tool to kick your butt into gear and get started. However, it’s your habits and deeper understanding of why your goals truly matter to you that will be more powerful than desires or simply “wanting to get into shape.”
It’s far too easy to get caught up in the rush of setting goals that are too lofty, unsustainable, or otherwise unrealistic.
Without question, your habits are more powerful than desire or motivation. Motivation is an excellent tool to kick your butt into gear and get started, however it will be your habits that will power you throughout to the end. You see, in order to successfully change, you must prepare for that change and understand that it isn’t a linear path.
1) The Power of Why
You have to know why this matters to you.
It’s completely natural and normal to want to look, feel, and perform at your best. Honestly, who doesn’t want to look into the mirror and see a stronger, leaner version of themself?! Having that feeling of being superiorly confident in yourself, easily translates into all other aspects of your life.
I’ll cover how to lose body fat and keep it off in a minute but first, I need you to answer an important question:
Ask yourself, “Why do I want to get leaner?”
Don’t just focus on the superficial level, go deep.
Dig deep, and please, don’t say because abs are hawt.
For example, when I embarked on my fat loss journey, I established my “why” for two reasons:
I was tired of seeing what I saw in the mirror. I was extremely disappointed and sad to see the individual looking back at me and it would wreck my confidence and pride. I didn’t want that anymore.
I wanted to undergo my own transformation so I can use my own knowledge and experience to help others.
Working out because “you kinda know you should” isn’t enough to get you motivated. However, working out as an expression of your commitment to your family or self will do the trick. Everyone is slightly different and their reasons for working out are different. By linking that personal value to your fitness activity, you’ll get more oomph that can inspire you to get off the couch.
The point is you need to discover your “why”. This is what separates those who achieve their goals and those who don’t.
Take five minutes, grab another coffee, and write down your “why”. Put it on your phone or on your dashboard so you see it every day.
2) Focus on One Goal at a Time
When it comes to setting a fitness goal, without a doubt, the biggest mistake people make is trying to completely overhaul their life. Social media makes this even more difficult as we are bombarded with images of super-fit, muscular gals and girls. Basing your goals off of what you see others achieving is neither productive nor practical.
Going from barely working out and doing nothing nutritionally to training 5 days a week and tracking calories and macros is a recipe for failure. Trying to tackle that much at once is essentially just setting yourself up for failure. This will lead to negative self-talk, getting anxious, and feeling like a failure.
Instead, focus on one or two things you know you want to accomplish, like doing your first push up or chin up, or recording everything you eat for 5 days. Channel your efforts into creating smaller, actionable goals before exploring more complex or another goal.
Your goals should be your goal, something that matters to you and personally excited about achieving, not someone else’s.
3) Set goals that are specific and measurable:
You know you need to make improvements and goal setting is a combination of science and art. This is why having measurable goals allows you to track your progress and the more specific your goal, the clearer the path to achieving it becomes.
For example, simply saying, “I want to lose 20 pounds” isn’t much of a goal because it doesn’t really give you anything measurable or specific to work on. That’s a statement, not a goal. In order to set your goal, you’ll need to make it specific, realistic, with short and long-term measurements, and focus on behaviors rather than outcomes.
For example, let’s say you want to get stronger. Well, what does “getting stronger” exactly mean to you?? Saying you want to increase your push-up total from 3 push-ups to 15 push-ups makes the goal measurable. To make it more specific, you can complete your 15 push-ups within a minute. To take it even a step further, your goal should be time-bound as this helps focuses your efforts, develop a more structured plan, and a sense of urgency that is motivating.
4) Frame your goals around behavior, rather than outcomes:
This is often an overlooked aspect of goal setting. Everyone is super excited about what they want to accomplish (i.e. losing 20 pounds) that they forget to consider how they’ll achieve their goal. They are so focused on their outcome, they are ignoring the necessary behaviors to achieve their goal.
When it comes to creating fitness goals, it is always better to frame your goals around your behavior rather than the outcome. This is often an overlooked aspect of goal setting. Everyone is super excited about what they want to accomplish (i.e. losing 20 pounds) that they forget to consider the necessary behavioral goals in how you’ll actually accomplish their goal.
Let’s clarify the difference between these two:
Outcome goals focus on the end result, like losing 20 pounds, but don’t account for what happens between now and then.
Behavioral goals are centered on the actions you take, like eating three servings of vegetables per day.
Outcome-based goals are extremely difficult to control. Everyone’s bodies respond differently to a new way of eating, exercising, or how much daily stress we are under. By only focusing on the end result (i.e the outcome), this can become very dissatisfied or even demoralizing after a few weeks.
Behavioral goals require us to focus on the things we can control. Remember, it’s our daily actions, behaviors, and habits that are responsible for our success, not the spasmodic herculean effort to overhaul everything at once.
The sad truth is too many individuals only set outcome-based goals such as:
I want to lose 20 pounds
I want to make $100,000/year
I want to squat 315 pounds
While these goals are specific, measurable as well as challenging, and realistic, they are focused only on the outcome. Outcomes are beyond your control. You cannot control your rate of fat metabolism, or force your boss to pay you 100K. You can, however, focus on your behaviors. So, how do you pick behavior-based goals? Try these:
I will exercise 5 times a week
I will eat protein with every meal
I will have either fruit or veggies with each meal
I will drink 150oz of water daily
In the end, if you make goals out of your behavior and things you can control, your outcome goals (i.e. lose 20 pounds) will fall right in line - without you having to worry about them (Sorry, but I cannot help you with getting that 100K job; still working on that one myself).
5) Play the Long Game
We all want that instant gratification, yet it’s important to be realistic with your timeframe to achieve your goals. Knowing that you’re never going to overhaul your life in a week is super important for creating realistic expectations. A long term mentality will help you see your goal as a lifestyle change, rather than a quick fix, and you’ll be much more likely to adhere to it.
This is just another reason why we want to focus on behavioral-based goals. If you want a habit to stick for good, a simple and effective thing you can do is keep a habit tracker. This will allow you to measure, quantify, and track your progress. In addition, it provides a clear signal of whether you’re making progress or you need to course correct.
6) Understand what’s driving your goal
Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, it can stir up a lot of emotions. More often than not, fitness goals are driven by underlying fears, insecurities, and/or body-related issues. For example, I started running marathons as a means to escape my depressions, school-related anxiety, and my parent’s divorce. Later in life, I got into strength training as a means to rebuild my life after my girlfriend brutally broke up with me weeks before moving into our new house in Columbia, South Carolina.
Physical activity is the best form of stress release as it allows you to use those negative emotions in a more positive means to better your life. However, those issues may still be present, despite your working your ass off for months or years. If thinking about your goals brings anxiety and/or triggers past mental struggles, consider talking with a therapist. I’ve started doing so and it has helped tremendously.
7) Embrace a Growth Mindset along your Journey
Although it’s important to make your goal specific, it’s just as important to give yourself permission to alter it as you progress. You might find your initial goal seemed approximately challenging (i.e. working out 4 days a week) is now too challenging and tough to maintain or vice versa. Set goals you think you can achieve then modify based on your level of consistency and what you're capable of.
Also, embrace your smaller victories as much as your larger successes. Your smaller victories are just as confidence-building as accomplishing your main goal. Using our push-up example, if you can now do 7 push-ups from previously only doing 3 push-ups to doing 7 push-ups, that’s a reason to celebrate! You want to be able to reward yourself mentally. Having to wait too long to feel like you’ve accomplished anything will diminish your motivation and pull you off track entirely.
8) Being Honest about your prior and current habits
This one falls in line with our first tip: The Power of Why. Asking yourself the tough questions can help you honestly evaluate what’s most appreciate for you. Are you currently crushing your fitness routine in the past few weeks or are you skipping your workouts and lying with your food logs?
Changing your behaviors into a healthier lifestyle takes time, However, bringing awareness towards your actions, this will allow you to change your behavior bit by bit until you install those healthy behaviors. Also, it’s helpful to know what has stopped you from achieving your goals in the past. Being honest with yourself will help you identify and eliminate those barriers before you get started.
Everyone had their own struggles along their fitness journey and wish it was easier to implement those healthier habits. However, for those healthy habits to truly stick, we need to bring awareness towards our actions. If you want to see measurable progression, you have to be realistic and honest with what you are currently doing.
9) Tell someone your goals:
It’s one thing to do all the research and come up with the perfect plan, yet if you don’t have someone to hold you accountable for said plan, then it’s worthless. That’s why public accountability is such an incredible motivator.
Make sure to tell your friends, significant other, co-workers, or anyone else who will encourage, motivate, and hold you accountable for it. With that secret ingredient, you can have someone hold you accountable when you fail to follow through on that free advice. Instead, you’ll start making dramatic changes to your body and life, become more capable and productive.
Two other critical factors to whether your training program succeeds or not?
Accountability
Structure and a clear plan to follow
My online coaching service provides you with both. At Mack Performance, I firmly believe that the best diet is the one you enjoy while making long-term, objective-based progress.
Together, we’ll create a tailored plan to get you to the physique you’ve always wanted, and expertly guide you through every step of your transformation.