Small Goals!

As I read through some of these posts, I see a lot of people working on 30 lbs and 50 lbs and 100 lbs! These are fantastic goals! But you are looking at this whole weight/fat loss thing in a perspective that is just a little skewed!

STOP! You are setting yourselves up for failure!

Your goals aren’t that you want to lose 50 pounds! You goals are, you want to lose 1! When you lose 1 pound, you will set another goal to lose 1 pound! And so on…
I can understand why you all want to lose 50 pounds. But do it with a little more realism…

Here’s the reasoning behind it. When we were all little we all had a goal to be lets say an astronaut! Are any of us astronauts? Probably not… Did you go to a military academy? Were your grades in school even good enough to even go? Did you show up every day to class? Did you pass each test with the highest marks? Did you do every piece of homework you teachers gave you? Did you listen in class that day? See where it all starts? It starts with the little steps, like good grades in school, then to a good college, then to something else, then to NASA!
It’s the same with weight loss! You need to focus on the small things, day by day. It’s great to have a larger overall goal! But focus on the small goals every day. Instead of eating a pizza, eat two slices. Instead of drinking a six pack of regular soda, drink one diet soda.

You will get there! If you focus on the small things every day!

Mon. May 14, 3:47pm

Telling me what I need to do isn't as helpful as showing me how you've lost weight through your logs. Do you have a public log? Would love to see it and to get pointers.

Monday, May 14, 2007, 3:48 PM

Excellent input!
Let me rephrase my goal:
instead of losing 25 lbs. --I want to stop drinkingsoda (diet or reg0 and switch to water for the next week!

Monday, May 14, 2007, 3:53 PM

My Log

Yes it is public. Search Katesron.
I am a very suportive husband of Kates. We work together each day on how to keep up our goals.

Please feel free to watch my logs! Please let me know if you need support! I'm very willing to help as much as I can. We're all in this as a community together!

Keep up the good work everyone!

Monday, May 14, 2007, 4:01 PM

No offense intended because you seem very in love with your philosophy, but I don't care to be preached to and I rather enjoy keeping the big picture in mind thankyouverymuch. We're all different and what works for some may not work for others. Breaking down large goals into small attainable milestones is great advice, but if you don't keep the end result firmly in mind it's also easy to get sidetracked and bogged down in the small challenges.

And to apply this to your analogy, I didn't want to be an astronaut - I wanted to build kewl things that changed people's lives. Every day I showed up to class, got good grades and took on interesting outside projects becasue otherwise I wouldn't get to work on the really neat stuff. Keeping my eye on the reason why I was doing this in the first place helped me when the classes got tough and I had 18 hours of homework over the weekend. If we don't know the 'why' it's easy to get discouraged when 'how' becomes difficult. There was a 50% drop-out rate in my program and I didn't make it because I was smarter, I made it because I was focused. Now I get to work on things that I think are really neat and I'm happy that I kept my eye on the goal and kept moving forward one step at a time - sometimes the small challenges seemed insurmountable, but keeping in mind why I was doing this helped me power through them.

I agree that we need to break up our large goals into smaller, attainable tasks and concrete steps, but I do not agree that staying focused on the end goal is setting one's self up for failure.

Best wishes to you and kudos for your enthusiasm.

Monday, May 14, 2007, 4:20 PM

Lo Siento

I can see you point.

No offnse taken. When you look at 1 pound a week lost though, by the end of the year, you're looking at 52 pounds lost! that's a huge amount to lose.

I wasn't preaching. Sorry you took it that way.

Monday, May 14, 2007, 4:26 PM

I started off reading the OP's post with my hackles up, a pretty typical human response when someone starts off with an "I'm right, you're wrong" approach.

However, getting past that..... as someone who used to set goal after goal and just ended up feeling like a failure for not attaining them (lesson learned: try as I might, I can't force my body to submit to the mathematic concept of calories in minus calories out), he's right. It's only a short hop from feeling like a failure to giving up completely. Now every new number I see on my scale is an achievement, and I've made goals that have nothing to do with the scale but will naturally affect it, like "run for 5 minutes" (since a 5K can be a pretty big goal rather than a small step for some of us).

Monday, May 14, 2007, 5:47 PM

I understand what you mean. I have lost a 180 pounds. I set a goal of five pounds at a time. setting reasonable goals that you can achieve does help .

Monday, May 14, 2007, 7:00 PM

WOW!

That's fantastic! Where were your sights each day when you woke? Were they more or less, I need to make the next five pounds? or were they I'm going for the 180 today?
again congrats!

Monday, May 14, 2007, 7:04 PM

omg 180 pounds! way to go!!!!

Monday, May 14, 2007, 7:07 PM

to the op-

some of us need to look at the big picture, and require drastic goals. if i said i'm going to cut out regular soda today, and truly took baby steps i'd be going nowhere fast just like my other failed attempts. what might work for some, doesn't always work for others.

i didn't lose 21 pounds in 2 months by cutting out one thing at a time, if i had gone with your approach i'd have lost focus and quit already. however i do have short term goals and they do help in adding up to the big picture at the end, but they're much more than baby steps.

Monday, May 14, 2007, 7:12 PM

Combine methods

There's no reason not to both focus on the big goal and the little steps along the way. I have a main goal of reaching 125 lbs (among other things) but I also set out methods and sub-goals to reach the final objective. On the other hand, that 125 lb me is the image I keep in mind of where everything is headed.

Monday, May 14, 2007, 8:04 PM

small goals

Okay, I agree with you in principle. My goal this week is to drink my 8 glasses of water each day - not to lose pounds. But if I don't look at the biggest picture every once in awhile, I will continue to be 100 pounds overweight. I need to remind myself that I am not healthy and 10 pounds isn't going to be enough in the long run.

Monday, May 14, 2007, 8:49 PM

CONGRATS ON THE 180!

I am a newbie, so jumping right on in!

I have to agree with both, I want to loose 50 pounds and I keep that in sight but also work out 40 mins on my treadmill but have a goal of 10 mins of that jogging-that is my short term goal-I did 8.5 this morning!

So, I think you have to do what is right for you, as someone else said-not everyone works the same way-not everyone sees their ex husbands face as perfect motivation! :)

Tuesday, May 15, 2007, 10:16 AM

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