The Importance Of Regular Goal Setting

“I want to lose weight.”

How many times have you said those words, or heard a family member, friend or colleague utter them?

If you’re anything like most, it probably happens an virtually a weekly basis, and steps up to several times daily after Christmas, and on the lead up to Summer. Wanting to lose weight is awesome – you’ll improve your health, look better, feel fantastic and improve your appearance, but as much as people want to lose weight, most don’t manage it. Or, if they do, it comes back on it half the time it took to get off.

The issue?

It’s not necessarily the wrong type of diet or training program, rather it’s a lack of goal setting.

Setting goals is huge when it comes to achieving what you want to, be that weight loss, muscle gain, increased fitness, or anything in life. Not only do you need general goals though, these should be split up into different types of goals, with several different targets for different periods of time.

When talking about goals, we want them to be Smart.

Be SMART

Before delving into the importance of goal setting, and how you can set up your own goals to ensure you achieve exactly what you want to in a fast, efficient and easy manner, it’s important to know exactly how your goals should be structured. The best way to do this is to use the SMART template.

S – specific

M – measurable

A – attainable

R – relevant

T – time-based

Specificity means that your goal should be clearly defined. Saying “I want to lose weight” is rubbish. If you lost 20 pounds, but looked the same, you likely wouldn’t be happy. Similarly, if you dropped 20 pounds of muscle mass, and kept all your fat, you’d look worse, which isn’t what you want.

Therefore, make your goal as specific and detailed as possible. Instead of saying “I want to lose weight,” say “I want to lose 20 pounds of fat, reduce my body fat percentage from 20 to 12 percent and fit into my size 32” jeans.”

There’s no point having unrealistic goals. If you’re 60 years old, and haven’t trained a day in your life, then saying you want to be Mr. Olympia is probably just slightly out of reach. Pick something you know you can do. Make it challenging, but don’t make it impossible. This also links into the time-based point that makes up the “T” in SMART.

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For relevance, your goals should fit your lifestyle. If you enjoy running, cycling and rowing, then having a goal of adding 30 pounds of muscle mass won’t be conducive to the activities you enjoy. Likewise, if you’ve got a family and work 60 hours per week, picking a goal that requires daily 2 hours plus training sessions doesn’t really work.

Give yourself a time frame to achieve your aims, but make this target realistic. You can get to 10% body fat in 6 weeks, but only if you’re already 15% or under. If you’re 20, 25 or 30%, you’ll need a little longer.

How Setting Goals Can Make You Awesome

First and foremost, goals make you accountable.

Even the rather vague, useless goal of “I want to lose weight” at least gives you some sort of direction. Without goals, you essentially have no purpose for training or dieting.

By making your goals SMART, you also set yourself up for success.

Too often people tell themselves they’d like to do something, but whatever that is can just seem too far out of reach. Sitting down with a pen and paper, and writing everything down actually focuses your mind, and makes you think “Yeah, maybe I CAN do this.”

Break your big goal down into mini goals

The next stage in goal setting is to break your big goal down into mini goals. This should be done in two ways.

Firstly, you can set yourself results-based goals. These are your typical “lose x amount of fat,” “gain so-and-so pounds of muscle” or “improve my 10k time by…..”

Your initial SMART goal will probably be a fairly lofty one. Most people do set their main goal as a large amount of weight loss, or to achieve their dream physique. This is fine, and having an ultimate goal is great, but you need to take baby steps first.

This could be something as simple as breaking down a 30 pound weight loss into losing 5 pounds per month for the next 6 months. A muscle gain goal could be made more tangible by aiming for 2 pounds of weight gain a month, while shaving time off a personal best should be given clear stepping stones of 10, 20 or 30 second improvements, rather than aiming to knock five minutes off in one go.

Secondly, you need behavioral goals

To reach your results-based goals, you must have behavioral goals. That weight loss, muscle gain or new gym personal best won’t happen on its own.

Behavioral goals set you up to actually DO something.

For weight loss, these could be – Eat a lean protein at every meal, eat at least five portions of green vegetables every day and train for 45 minutes, three times per week.

See Also: How To Set New Fitness Goals? Try These 8 Fitness Tests

The final step in making sure you’re on point with goal setting is to tell people what you’re going to do. This gives you some accountability, and ensures that other people know about what you’re doing, so can support you and give you a helping hand should things get tough along the way.