What is your fitness goal?

cbarnett914

I think too many people think that dieting and exercising automatically means a person wants to lose weight. I HATE when I tell people I work out, they’re response is “to lose WHAT, you’re so small” 🙄🤦🏾‍♀️ A healthy diet and regular exercise is not always about losing weight. I’m actually trying to maintain my weight, eat healthier and tone my body.

glassyo

I put maintain but I really only exercise so I can eat more. Maintenance calories for me would MAYBE be 1500 or 1600 and that's nothing!

bojaantje3822

I put losing weight because that's what's happening right now but that isn't actually my fitness goal. I've always been active and got to 300+lbs while very active so they're unrelated for me as well. I like to exercise because it's fun and it feels good.
My long term fitness goals are being able to do pull ups and handstand push ups and double unders and box jumps and a 60kg squat snatch. Some of those would be easier if I was lighter but weight changes aren't a fitness goal for me. I'm just doing that because it got triggered and I just went with the flow.

Xellercin

I don't exercise for anything to do with my weight.

I exercise for my health, pretty much the same way every day, regardless of what my weight is. I've done the same general exercises at 120lbs as I have at over 200lbs.

I exercise for bone density, joint health, cardiovascular health, brain health, skin health, mental health, etc.

I just don't even think of exercise in terms of my weight. It's not relevant, because my need for exercise doesn't change according to my weight. That would make absolutely no sense.

I don't know where society went wrong equating exercise with weight loss, but it's done a huge disservice to people.

ythannah

I said maintain although technically I'm supposed to be recouping the remaining 6 lbs from what I lost Jan/21 but that seems to be a lost cause atm.

"Diet" simply means what you eat regularly. Period. I hate that the word has become synonymous with weight loss. I was telling someone that I was trying to follow the principles of the OmniHeart (heart health) diet and he immediately said "What do you need a diet for? You don't need to lose weight!" Ummm, because without a diet I'd die of starvation? /rant

My dietary goals are to restrict sodium and increase protein. My fitness goals are to maintain bone density and cardiovascular health, and hopefully grow some more muscle.

JolieSvelte

I voted "lose weight." Since Jan 17, I've lost 29 lbs. I still have 19 lbs to lose and then I will be at my goal weight of 130 lbs.

I've gained and lost a significant amount of weight at least 5 times over the last 17 years. I've been quite overweight and I've also been in fitness model shape. I yo-yo because I struggle with mood issues, and when I'm down I eat like crap and don't exercise, then I put on a bunch of weight. When I start to feel better, I regret what I've done and work my butt off to get back into shape.

My goal right now is to lose fat and build lean muscle, and pray that my skin snaps back and isn't all loose when I get down to my rightful size.

The interesting thing is that, during my recent weight loss journey I've finally, FINALLY realized that exercise is not just for making your body look good. Now, when I miss more than one day of exercise, of course I say to myself, "do you want to lose weight this week, or don't you?" But, I also say to myself, "gotta get in a workout to keep the mood up!"

I've read dozens of self-help and psychology books. I'm currently on my sixth book about neuroplasticity and neurochemistry. There is one point that keeps popping up again and again, and I will paraphrase: "Exercise is better than any pill they can make for lifting people out of depression or keeping them from falling into depression. Exercise is more clinically, scientifically, statistically better for mental health than any drug on the market."

Just within the last 4 months, I have come to understand that my body and my brain AND my mind want and need exercise. I'm also working on building much better cardiovascular health and lung capacity, something that I need very much because I used to smoke. I would love to start boxing regularly, because I once took a boxing class for one month about 3 days a week and I have never done any other exercise that worked my lungs half as much.

Once I reach my goal weight/measurements I will be dedicated to maintaining that size, but I will also be working hard every day to improve my overall fitness and become as fit as is possible for my age. I kind of have this fantasy of doing a triathlon one day. I watch people on Ninja Warrior and I ask myself what it would be like to be that fit!

What the OP said about people assuming exercise is just for weight loss is really too bad and I think it's a detrimental attitude. I live in LA and I've been to other parts of the country where physical appearance clearly doesn't matter as much and where the cooking style of that region is very heavy on oils, fats, and butter. I was shocked and a little bit horrified to see how many obese people there were. But we obviously have an epidemic of obesity in part because of the attitude that exercise is for losing weight only. For some reason there are so many people who can't get up the motivation to eat right and workout for their general health, and I can empathize with that because there have been many times in my life when I didn't care enough to do those things or physically/mentally simply could not.

To give you an example, I follow a girl on Instagram who is heavyset, and she has been posting videos of her extensive and fairly difficult workout routine for like a year. She recently complained in her stories that she has been working out too hard not to see any weight loss results and she and her doctors now think it's a hormone thing. She said, "I eat really healthy and I still don't lose weight." My immediate thought was: "but are you counting calories?" She also posts quite a bit of videos about food and recently showed off her new meal subscription plan. I'm sorry to see that she hasn't figured out yet that all the working out she does cannot make up for her eating more calories than she burns. But how do you tell that to someone?

I remember when I was on the Atkins diet and how miserable I was not having any carbs. It seems like you always hear about the new extremely low-carb diet where people are shoveling meat and cheese into their mouths but that doesn't seem to stave off the cravings for bread and sugar. The nearly 30 lbs I have lost in the last 4 months I have achieved by reducing my calories down to 1700 a day while still eating foods I love in smaller portions and allowing myself little treats like chocolate and bread with peanut butter. I don't think cutting out entire food groups is the answer. Of course, after I have two squares of chocolate, I would love to scarf the whole bar, but that is where the restraint comes in. That is where you say, "do you want that body, or not?"

I plan on posting my weight loss before and after photos in Success Stories on Monday, if anyone's interested.

gpanda103

Both of my parents have heart issues, not sure if it’s genetic or lifestyle based, but ideally I get to grow old without worrying about sodium and taking my medicine