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teresatg
teresatg Posts: 2 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Hi I’m back and ready! I started last week and I set a small goal for myself 15lbs by Feb 20! Anyone else set a goal for Feb?

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  • ecjim
    ecjim Posts: 1,001 Member
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    Hi - 15 lbs in a month sounds ambitious - do you have a plan?
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,540 Member
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    15lbs would be a lot for a male who's moderately overweight to lose. How much do you have to lose? Ideally you shouldn't try to lose more than 1% of your bodyweight a week because that would mean you're doing something pretty extreme and may not STAY on the program long term.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,227 Member
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    Wow, that's a pretty big goal! It's probably fine if you're getting close to 400 pounds, but if lighter than that now, it could be a bit aggressive in terms of health risks or compliance. Of course, if you're ata a point where your weight by itself is an urgent health risk, fast loss may be the best thing, but in that case close medical supervision (to watch for deficiencies or complications) is a good thing.

    Personally, when it comes to health, fitness and weight management, I like setting process goals rather than outcome goals.

    With outcome goals like "X pounds by Y date", there can be random factors that have an impact, things outside our control that can result in the goal not happening, and there's no point in feeling like I've failed if something I couldn't control was the cause. In the case of scale weight, water retention shifts or varying amounts of digestive waste on the way to the exit - those can cause scale distortions, but have zero to do with the fat loss most of us really care about. Water shifts in particular are part of how our healthy bodies stay healthy, so we don't want to try to manipulate that - our body knows what it's doing.

    On the other hand, I can completely control process goals. Some example process goals that worked for me back when I was losing were:

    * Log every bite, lick or taste of food every day . . . good, bad or indifferent.
    * Weigh myself every morning, put the daily weight in my weight trending app, don't stress about those water shifts
    * Stick to a realistic activity or exercise plan (details depend on current fitness level, so I won't be specific here)

    Etc.

    These days, in weight maintenance, my details are different, but I still think in terms of the things I can control. If I do the right things on that front - giving myself a little grace for the rare slip because I'm only human - usually the outcomes fall into place, just maybe not exactly on a predefine-able schedule.

    Wishing you much success!
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 13,287 Member
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    I have to echo what @ninerbuff and @AnnPT77 say: 15 pounds in 22 days is not a small goal at all. If you said March 20, which is a nice date to pick because, depending where you are in the world, that is the date of the March Equinox when daylight and darkness are equal. Even that would be a fairly aggressive target at around two pounds per week. You probably should have at least 60 pounds to lose to choose a two pound per week rate. This chart might help; it's available in the "Most Helpful Posts" section of the Getting Started area:

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