Goals
Following on from last week, we are building on the New Year’s Resolution process by looking at goals. The end of this week is Quitters’ day, the day when 85% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions. We want to make 2019, the year we don’t quit on our resolutions, and use goals to go from strength to strength!
Do you have a particular goal in mind that you would like to achieve? If you have – great! If not, we have some ideas for you later in this article, and we have lots of ready-made programmes available in the shop for you too! Any new people will have the ‘Starter programme’ to be working through, and what we talk about later uses that as a guide.
Why set a goal?
The call to achieve a goal pulls you away from the normal grind to a journey filled with unknowns. Physical and mental training, self-improvement, highs and lows, growth in mind and body, challenges, encounters and hurdles, connection and loneliness, peaks and valleys. The road ahead leads to battles royal with yourself and others. Whether you started this journey due to inspiration or desperation – you’ll be glad you did.
- Setting goals and writing them down is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible
- Goals ‘held’ in the mind are more likely to be jumbled up with the other 1500 thoughts per minute that the average human being experiences
- People with written goals are 50% more likely to achieve than people without goals
- All motivational ‘gurus’ agree that goals should be written down
- The act of writing down a goal down in is a very powerful motivator
- Writing down goals forces us to be avoid being vague
- Specific goals which are time-bound and measurable work best
- In the process of achieving your goal you must be prepared to make sacrifices
- Sharing your goals with a close friend is proven to increase the chances of you achieving your goal
- The world’s most successful people agree that what you get by achieving your goal is not as important as what you become in the process
The key to achieving your goals
To ensure that you achieve your goal, you need to know what success looks like. Make your goal ‘smart!’ Is it specific? Can it be measured? Is it realistic? And the most important question – do you have a plan in place as to how you will achieve it?
Then you need to write it down! Record it in one of our goal setting sheets, and display it somewhere prominent, or carry it with you at all times, then it is always on your mind
Two types of goals…
Long Term
We can set ourselves two types of goals… the first would be long term e.g. I am going to lose 4 stones by Christmas (1lb a week).
This goal is specific, it can be measured, and it is realistic. But, Christmas is 11 months off, and it’s going to take a lot to keep me focused on that goal for the whole of the year.
Process Goals
So, it would make sense to break this down into smaller goals, we call these process goals. A process goal is where you aim to complete a process for a period of time.
The process goals that I could put in place to achieve my long-term goal would be a series of short term goals that form my plan to reach the ultimate long-term goal:-
Process Goal 1
1 – I will write down everything that I put in my mouth, including the calories, (before I do so) in my ‘Check it before you wreck it’ book, for 3 weeks. I will be 100% honest with myself during this process.
2 – I will record a weight, every week with Be Strong.
For this goal, you need to do nothing other than understand what you are fuelling your body with, and write it down, before you eat it. If you need some help understanding the calories that are in the foods you are eating, they are on near enough all food packaging now, and if you like to cook from fresh, you can use our calorie reference guide, to help you calculate how many calories are in the food that you prepare.
The benefits of doing this are twofold:
- By honestly tracking our food we subconsciously make better choices, because we don’t want to spoil the book!
- We can learn so much in this period about the food we like to eat, and where it fits in our calorie allowance. This knowledge reveals enormous opportunities as to where we can make a couple of sacrifices to achieve our ultimate goal.
Then three weeks later I could build on this.
Process Goal 2
Stairs
1 – I will no longer take the lift anywhere, I will take the stairs every single time.
2 – I will use the information in my last 3 weeks entries in the CIBYWI book to identify where my biggest opportunities are for making some sacrifices. I will choose one food that’s doing me the most damage and I will sacrifice this, in order to meet my goal.
3 – I will record a weight every week with Be Strong.
4 – I will do this for 3 weeks.
Then before we know it, we are a month and a half into our year, and probably seeing some success on the scales, with the potential to have lost anything between 6 and 12 pounds. And, most importantly we are on track to achieving our long-term goal.
By this time, you are probably growing in confidence, people are starting to comment that you are looking well, and you are feeling a lot better in yourself. You’ve got more energy, and you aren’t as out of breath climbing the stairs. You also have a good understanding of the sorts of foods you like eating that are within your calorie allowance. So you might decide you want to challenge yourself a little.
Your next goal, therefore could be as follows:
Process Goal 3
1 – I will continue to take the stairs and give the lift a swerve – every single time.
2 – I will spend my calories wisely and consume no more than 1400 a day. I will use my Check it before you wreck it book to ensure that I stay within my allowance.
3 – I will go for a walk three times a week with Mum. We will walk on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7pm and Saturdays at 11am. We will walk for 30 minutes each time. We will go out at these times, without fail, no matter what the weather is doing.
4 – I will record a weight with Be Strong every week.
5 – I will do this for 3 weeks.
By the end of this short process goal, we are now getting towards the middle of march. It’s almost Easter and the nights are getting lighter. We have successfully achieved 9 weeks worth of goals! We can feel a huge difference in the way our clothes fit, and more people are asking us if we have lost weight, and how we have done it. We have also now lost anywhere up to 18lbs, that’s well on your way to a stone and a half and over a third of the way to our long-term goal of losing 4 stone by Christmas.
The best part is, you’re hitting the middle of March, and you haven’t given up on your New Year’s Resolution!
Sounds do-able doesn’t it? That’s because it is. All we ask is that you trust us and give it a go.
Take Action!
This week have a think about what you really want to achieve and how you are going to get there.
If you are stuck for some short-term goal ideas, go to the shop and download one of our programmes or have a look at the list below:
- Goal Idea – Close the kitchen each night at 8pm and don’t reopen it until breakfast
- Goal Idea – Take the stairs at work instead of the lift
- Goal Idea – Clear out your cupboards of all your ‘trigger foods’
- Goal Idea – Introduce the 1 mile rule! If the round trip journey is less than 1 mile you walk it.
- Goal Idea – No chocolate, cakes, biscuits or sweets week
- Goal Idea – Attend an additional Be Strong HIIT session each week
- Goal Idea – Write a weekly exercise plan and follow it
- Goal Idea – Cut up all your food at every meal and eat slowly, stop eating when you are full
- Goal Idea – Drink 750 ml water before every meal
- Goal Idea – Eat your five a day, every day
- Goal Idea – Create a menu for your kitchen and eat from it each day
- Goal Idea – Walk for one hour on three days, walk for 30 mins on the other four days
- Goal Idea – 10 min Be Strong HIIT session alternating 2 of your favourite exercises every day
- Goal Idea – No cheese week
- Goal Idea – Sign up to a Be Strong challenge
- Goal Idea – Prepare your next day’s breakfast and lunch the night before, every day
- Goal Idea – Eat to your calories every day
- Goal Idea – Add weights to your Be Strong HIIT sessions
- Goal Idea – No alcohol week
- Goal Idea – Join a Couch to 5k group!
Many people would ask you, or we might ask ourselves, to do a combination of all of these at once. That is just impossible and crucially, it is unsustainable! Our advice is to repeat the ones that you enjoy and use these ideas, and some of your own, to create your next 3 – 6 months plan. Introduce each one individually and you will find that not only will you have success, because you can devote the time and energy to one thing, you will also subconsciously learn the new behaviours. And this will undoubtedly lead us to that long-term goal that we are aiming for.