Goals

rlzwakenberg

So, I'm trying to figure out what goals are appropriate to set. I've tried "long-term" (less than a year) and that seemed to far away and I kept telling myself that I had time, I didn't need to start now. Then I tried NSV goals such as to fit in a pair of pants or something, but I have no idea what is a reasonable time for that kind of stuff. I have a bad habit of creating unattainable goals and getting really disappointed.

I've had up to my teeth with hearing, "well goals are personal so no one can decide that but you." Which I already know I will get an over abundance of on here. I'm just hoping that at least one person will be able to give me advice on what is reasonable. I'm not saying make my goals for me, but what is a reasonable time to want to drop a pant size by? 1 month? 6 months? Say I want to go from 273 to 250 as a short-term goal, how long do I give myself for that?

malibu927

Time limit goals aren't the greatest. When I first started I thought eighteen months to goal weight would be good. I'm four months away from that particular date, and I'm still 28 pounds from the number (which I've lowered, but this is the original one). Start out aiming for those 23 pounds, with no goal date, and when you get there go for another 25.

rlzwakenberg

malibu927 wrote: »

Time limit goals aren't the greatest. When I first started I thought eighteen months to goal weight would be good. I'm four months away from that particular date, and I'm still 28 pounds from the number (which I've lowered, but this is the original one). Start out aiming for those 23 pounds, with no goal date, and when you get there go for another 25.

My fear is that that will be to open ended. I'm not working on a dead line, and I always do much better on a dead line. Maybe i will just try that.

Also, what do you even do to reward yourself for meeting your goals. Obvi, I wont order 3 pizzas and a gallon of ice cream. But, what do most people do? Go shopping?

cosmo_momo

I would suggest finding an amount you feel almost comfortable eating (at a deficit), weigh yourself after a week, maybe even two weeks and then divide that loss by how many pounds you want to lose to give you an estimate of how many weeks it "should" take. I would tack a few weeks onto that since weight loss is not linear and there may be a few weeks where you mess up, don't lose, etc.

In my brain the equation looks like this: 50lbs to lose, lost 1lb in the first two weeks. So it "should" take 100 weeks to lose 50lbs. Obviously you may lose more or less than this, but that is why I suggest adding some extra time. If you finish before then, no harm done Also I would increase the deficit gradually as you lose weight, maybe every 5 or 10lbs.

P.S. I'm not an expert by any means on this, but this is what I would do if I wanted a timeline

anacd

Well, I'll share my goals with you and hopefully that will help

I need to lose about 50lbs and obviously this is not going to happen overnight. However, if I just say I want to lose 50lbs by Dec, it is way too far ahead and I will get discourage. So what I've been doing is so set a goal of losing 1-1.5lb/week, which will give me about 4-6lbs per month. That may sound little but I prefer underestimate my weight loss and lose more weight that I aimed for in a week, than overestimate it, and get disappointed if I lose less (many times in the past I would set a goal of losing 10lb/month and if I lost just 7lb I would get extremely demotivated).

I hope that will help you

TimothyFish

I don't set time limits on goals. My goal is 208 lbs. I know I have a little over twenty pounds to go and I want to get there as soon as possible. It is possible that I'll be there in ten weeks, but realistically, I don't expect that to happen. No matter when I get there, I know that I need to aim for 1 to 2 pounds a week, so I keep aiming for that and I'll eventually reach my goal.