Goal Setting

Set Reasonable Goals

Now that you know that unbalanced diets, staving yourself, fad diets, and diet pills are not the answer to your weight issues, you are in a good place to start eating in a way that will promote a healthy weight, and that will still allow you to eat like a real person. When deciding to lose weight you should sit down with yourself and truly identify weight loss and fitness goals that are reasonable for you to achieve, remembering that not everyone is designed to be 110 pounds and a size 2. Your body type, bone structure and size, and your muscle mass will determine what weight you should be. If you don’t know exactly what weight you should be, start with a short-term goal to lose 5-10% of your current weight. As you start losing weight you will start to get an idea of what weight range you feel the most comfortable at, and most importantly which weight ranges that you feel the healthiest at.

Set short-term and long-term weight loss goals.

For example, week one I will lose 2-3 pounds (short-term goal), and by July 31 I want to be 20 pounds lighter (long-term goal.) This brings me to another important point, don’ expect to lose 10 pounds overnight. The diets that claim that they can give you this kind of result are either lying to you, or they are putting your health at risk. The liquid diets that have become popular in the last several years that promise if you drink only their juice diet drink for two days that you will lose 10 pounds, are basically providing you with a 48 hour fast. While you may lose 5 to 10 pounds with this diet, it will be from the loss of water weight and the cleansing of the contents from your bowel and intestines, and not actually from losing fat. And once you start eating normally and normal materials build up again in your bowl and intestines, the weight will return.

Safe and healthy eating programs should provide you with an average weight loss of about 1-2 pounds per week. Weight loss at his rate is more likely to stay off, than weight that is lost at faster rates through unhealthy methods. You should also be prepared to hit weight loss plateaus. These plateau periods will be frustrating and they may make you want to give up, but don’t. These phases are times that your body needs to readjust to your new body composition and metabolism rates. You may notice that during this time that even though you won’t lose any pounds, you will see your body toning and firming. To get out of this plateau increase your exercising. This will help increase your metabolism and it will encourage the weight loss engine to fire back up.