Setting Realistic Fitness Goals For The Year

Naturally enough, when I talk with someone on the phone or sit down with them for the first time, the subject of goals comes up. The conversation always starts a certain way but often ends up much differently than how it started:

Me: “What are your goals? What are you looking to accomplish?”

Client: “I want to lose weight, firm up and have more energy”

Me (thinking ‘this should be easy, that describes about 90% of our clients’): “Okay, how long have you been struggling with these goals?”

Client: “About 5 years now…”

And on it goes… we discuss their challenges, why they want to attain these goals, realistic timeframes for achieving them, etc.

While this is how the conversation typically starts, by the time we delve into the reasons why and what they will need to do to attain their goals, the conversation starts to take a much different turn. At some point, we begin transitioning from Achievement Goals to Behavior Goals.

Achievement Goals are the desired end result of embarking on a training program. They also work best when applying the SMART principle to them:

• Specific: “Lose bodyfat, so I can feel as good as I used to” as opposed to “Lose weight”
• Measurable: “15 lbs” as opposed to an undetermined amount of bodyfat
• Achievable: “I was there before, so I know I can get there again” as opposed to “Lose whatever I can and see what happens”
• Relevant: “I felt lighter and more energetic when I weighed less” as opposed to “I read online that someone else lost 15 lbs, so I thought it would be good for me too”
• Time-bound: “I want to get there by October 1^st when I go away on a trip filled with activities” as opposed to having no soft deadline to hold oneself to

Put together, the goal of “losing weight” has been transformed to “lose 15 lbs of bodyfat by October 1^st so I can feel as good as I used to for my active trip” – apply the SMART principle to the achievements you seek to accomplish!

So you have one, two, three, or more Achievement Goals that you have delineated and are now motivated to accomplish. But there’s just one more snag to overcome: they won’t accomplish themselves. All goals, particularly fitness-related ones, require some degree of behavior change in order to be realized. This is where the listing of Behavior Goals enters the picture.

Everything is a learned behavior. Whether it’s driving a car, catching a baseball, meditating, exercising… our brains are wired to adapt to where we create action. Physical fitness is no different – if you want to reach a SMART goal, you have to have a plan on how to get there.

Taking our previous example, my client wants to lose 15 lbs in 4 months. That equals a 3 ¾ loss per month, or a little less than a pound per week. For simplicity's sake (and for the purpose of exceeding rather than just meeting goals) I’ll round that up to a solid pound per week. There are 3500 calories in one pound of fat, so I know that this client needs to be in a caloric deficit of 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week. By using our nifty Calorie Calculator that we use with clients to determine where their calories should be, I calculate that this client, in order to be in an appropriate deficit at their particular activity level, should be consuming about 1800 calories per day. And in order to make sure they are doing that, they must start recording in some fashion what they are eating per day, so we can make sure they are on target. We set their first Behavior Goal to record everything that goes in their mouth. Simple, yet effective.

Behavior Goals are best set in simple, doable terms. “Consume one fistful of vegetables per day” as opposed to “eat more veggies”; or in the case given above, “Starting tomorrow morning, track all of your food/drink intake on your smartphone app” as opposed to “Record your intake.” Once you attain a Behavior Goal, it is time to set another one that is in line with your Achievement Goal – and continue until you are on track towards success!

In summary, set Achievement Goals SMARTly and follow that up with appropriate Behavior Goals simply. With that winning combination, you won’t lose – unless it’s something you want to lose ;)