Goal Setting for Diets

LEARNING TO SET GOALS FOR DIETING

Ever wonder why the pro, college, and even high school sports teams set goals? When ever you walk into a locker room or a team meeting room you will see a poster with all the goals written out. From the daily goals to the weekly goals to the ultimate goal. The reason that this is done so the athletes can focus on the necessary skills and training to attain these goals. It is their road map to success.
The importance of setting goals in dieting is only seconded by you attitude when on the diet. Do not believe me try to go on a trip by car across the United States or Europe without a map. With little or no planning your trip could turn into a disaster. Do not allow your diet to become a disaster. The goal setting portion of your diet will lay down the groundwork to how well you will do on the diet and attain you weight loss. To completely understand this concept look at goal setting from a long term perspective. When you decide to go on a diet to lose weight and burn fat you usually pick a number that you figure you need to lose. This amount of weight is usually a arbitrary number and usually not a scientific number. The other fallacy about weight loss is losing weight is the same as losing fat. This is wrong. You can actually lose fat and gain weight at the same time! If you are exercising your body will turn the fat into muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat. That is the difference in losing fat and losing weight.

When losing weight you can lose weight but not fat. How? Simply put when your body recognizes a deficiency in energy available also known as the starvation response, the body will use whatever energy is the easiest and quickest available. You can lose weight which would be muscle breakdown or even water and not ever touch the extra fat you have layered n your body.

This will effect your goal setting. You need to be able to measure your weight loss in the correct terms. You need to be burning the fat and not using the muscles as a food source.

When setting goals you need to spend time deciding what is important and what is not. We have both a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Both of these work together to allow you to make decisions and do things also based on habits. Your subconscious mind is the machinery that makes everything work. You do not have to tell it breath or digest. It has been programed from birth and programmed from your habits and conscious thoughts. If you continue believe that something cannot be done it will not get done. Ever notice that most successful people are usually young and positive. The make their mark early in their lives a lot of times because they never realized that what they wanted to do was impossible or extremely hard. They had focus and a one track mind. These people are usually positive and upbeat and you will notice that they associate with positive and upbeat people. They just persevere until they attain their goal. Most initial business are started by young people, because they do not know that certain things can't be done. They just plow ahead and do them until they become successful. These people set themselves goals and do not deviate from their goal until they reach it. They program their subconscious for success and then attain it.

Goal setting is the same way. If you do not set goals that your mind can understand and attain you will never succeed in burning the fat. You need to set goals that you can teach to your subconscious that will change the bad eating habits that you have been using. Your subconscious will continue to do the bad habits that has been programmed into it because it does not think, it just carries out the command, because that is all it knows. Your subconscious works like a computer and is only as good as the programing that it has received. Your subconscious mind will carry out its commands no matter if they are correct or wrong. Your subconscious has been programmed to do certain things and it will automatically do them until you change the commands or programming. Your subconscious works 24/7 and will continue to store what you think and act upon what you tell it.

Once you have made up your mind to diet and you have started the process of choosing the correct diet you need to sit down and plan your goals. This is both your road map and your reprogramming of your mind. Initially you need to surround yourself with people that are supportive to you and have a positive outlook. If this means stop reading the paper, because these are loaded with negative thought, and start to read books or at least wait until the evening before watching the news, this is a giant step. You need to start forming positive thoughts and reprogram your subconscious. Until this is done you will have a uphill battle.

Most psychologists estimate that we have 60,000 thoughts a day and at least 98% of these are the same ones from yesterday. Most of these thoughts are negative. This is what needs to be changed and this is what focusing your goals will do. The good thing is that you can control what is saved in your subconscious if you are willing to put the time in.

There are many books on goal setting and most of your diet books will not cover this topic fully if at all. You must realize how important setting goals for not only dieting but your life. When you sit down have your diet journal with you and turn everything off and begin. The first thing you need to do is set specific goals. You need to be precise in these goals. You need to be precise to the pound. Leave nothing to chance and assume nothing. Figure that you can lose between 1-2 pounds a week. Put this down and then map out what you will do daily, weekly and monthly. You need to be able to set measurable goals. Do not just put I will lose 50 pounds. This is to broad and what if you are lifting weights and start getting more intense in lifting. You may start burning the fat and adding muscle. Muscle is heavier than fat so be careful how you measure your goals. Go by shirt/blouse size or possibly pant or dress size in addition to weight loss. You want to have lost so many inches around your chest or waist. This is why you need to take the time to choose what you want.

You need to set both realistic goals and big goals. You want the long range goals and your exercise goals to be a little harder to achieve so you have to work and continually strive to attain your goals. If the goals are too easy you will not lose weight and eventually get bored and quit. You need to set realistic deadlines that can be achieved with hard work and by sticking to your diet. When you set long term and short term goals you need to list them out and write them down. You need to set Daily Goals, these are things that you will do repeatedly every day. These will be items that will help change your bad dieting habits to good dieting habits. Daily goals such as how long and what you will do when exercising, how many meals you will eat and even how much water you will drink.

You need to set up your weekly goals and again be specific. How many times during the week will you exercise. When you will record your weekly measurements and weigh-ins and which measurements will you be taking. These need to be done and recorded so you can compare what you have done and make knowledgeable changes to your exercise or eating regimen. Leave nothing to chance. By doing this you will start building your good habits. Do not forget to include weekly or monthly rewards for achieving these goals. This is a incentive that you will start to look forward to. Write down your 3 and 6 month goals and then 12 month goals Last but not least your ultimate goal and be specific.

Once you have this down on paper go buy yourself some 3X5 cards and put all your goals and action plan on these cards. You will then take the daily cards with you and throughout the course of the day take them out and reads them. You should do this 12-20 times a day everyday. This is how you program your subconscious to the way you want it to think. There are a variety of other ways to set up your goals but this is a step that will guarantee you success.

When you start to diet, you have to exercise, cook differently, buy the food and make the portions up. This will be hard if you have a family and they want other types of foods. You will be able to gradually ignore this distraction as you start building new eating habits. You will also gradually start to change yor families poor eating habits also. This is why you do a daily goals. Do not be afraid to add to the goals as soon as you realize something you might have missed. Do not be afraid to reward yourself when you have achieved a weekly or monthly goal. By doing the goals you have now set up a plan that your mind can follow. Your mind cannot understand losing 60 pounds by Christmas but you and your mind can understand losing 2 pounds a week. If you planned properly you will be able reach these goals. The setting of goals is something that can be carried over in other aspects of your life. By setting specific and goals that force you to work you will start to realize that what you want is very possible. Losing weight is not as hard when all you need to do is lose 2-5 pounds a week and exercise a few times a week. Start to build the good eating and exercise habits from the beginning and choose to be successful on your diet. Be positive and never forget the goal. Use the cards daily and often, remind your sub conscious that you are making the changes necessary to loose weight and keep it off.