Are small weight loss goals better?

I had a large goal of 50 pounds at first.

But I broke that down into smaller “bites”, of five pounds.

I found five pounds easy to reach, and those five added up. My first five was halfway to ten, which was 1/5 of my goal.

Ten pounds was 20% there.

Fifteen pounds was 3/10 which was getting darn close to halfway.

Kind of whacko thinking, but that really helped me.

I also made sure I rewarded myself at various goal levels. But not via food!!! I “earned” foot massages, or workout wear.

I ultimately lost almost twice my goal, and now my drawer full of workout duds are well loved- and earned- friends.

My daughter used to like to cadge her grandparents for rubber balls from the 25¢ gumball machine at the Mexican restaurant we visited every week. She’s add them to a jar on her dresser. I got after her about it after months of this. “You don’t need them? What will you do with them? Stop bugging your grandpa!”

She started unpacking her jar. “This one was Dad’s birthday. This one I got when I got an A+ on a test. This one is from so and so.”

😱

I feel the same way about my leggings now. No human needs as many leggings as I’ve got, but each was a reward for reaching a particular goal or achieving a headstand or so on.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Small goals are good. But here's a thing I think some of us are getting at:

Scale weight fluctuates from one day to the next, up and down, and it's often by multiple pounds. Most of that variability is water retention shifts, and differences in what's in our digestive tract (waste on the way to the exit, basically). Fat changes, even during consistent fast loss, are a few ounces a day. Those few ounces play peek-a-boo on the scale with the larger daily water and waste shifts.

Actual fat losses show up in weight trends over multiple weeks. Day to day looks like a bunch of random ups and downs: Maybe discouraging. But over (say) 4-6 weeks, it becomes obvious that those ups and downs are bumps on an overall downhill slope.

Let's say a person decides they're going to lose a pound a week. That's sensible for most people. For the sake of discussion, lets assume perfect accuracy in logging, calorie needs estimates, etc. Even so, that example person is highly unlikely to lose one pound between Monday and Sunday of each and every week . . . but has decent odds of losing around 4 pounds after 4 weeks.

Aiming to lose 0.4 pounds, and see it on the scale regularly, is likely to be frustrating, just frustrating in a different way than having a discouragingly big goal.

I hope that makes sense. We're trying to help you find a goal that satisfies your need for it to be smaller increments, but that can actually show up with reasonable reliability.

I think you can find a way to make this work!

It’s kinda freaky at first, watching it go up and down. But after a while, you’ll detect and be prepared for trends. They won’t be such a surprise, or at least you’ll understand why it went one way or the other.

For example, my lowest weight of the week is reliably after pulling a pair of hot yoga classes and then walking the dog to the park every Saturday morning. Literally a gallon or two of sweat, despite drinking a couple of quarts before I go to the studio.

My highest of the week will be Monday morning, because I take Sunday as a rest day, plus we always enjoy a giant apple fritter for breakfast. Sunday tends to be higher carb and lower protein fhan the rest of the week for me. I have studied my numbers long enough to expect a small jump Monday morning.

It’s a very interesting opportunity to learn your body. Endlessly fascinating.

I use a weight trending app (happy scale) and for weightloss I set my goal, and get subgoals ever 500gr or so.