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Do you want to achieve the body you’ve always dreamed of? Are you focused enough to do what it takes? When you really want that body you’ve been dreaming of for years? Then you must set goals and commit yourself entirely to achieving those goals.
Most people know what they need to do to lose their excess fat, but there is a difference between knowing what to do and doing what you know. Goal-oriented training turns that knowledge into targeted actions. When your objectives are planted in your subconscious, they prompt you to take action.
How do I set a goal?
Those goals – mixed with the right emotion – get you to the gym, get you eating healthy, get you doing cardio, and all those other things necessary to achieve your goal. Your behavior is determined by your subconscious, and the thoughts and ideas you have in your subconscious – positive or negative – determine your actions. This forms the basis of your motivation and training intensity.
If you want to lose weight, it’s important to make the decision to lose weight. The thoughts already start you on the path to losing weight. No, it’s not just those thoughts but the actions that result from those thoughts. By consciously and subconsciously deciding to lose weight, your behavior will adapt accordingly, so you won’t eat those chips and you will do that cardio training. Your mind is ready, and your body follows!
If you spend the whole day thinking you won’t lose weight, then your mind will sabotage the process by making it easy for you to finish that bag of chips. You become what you think you become, positive or negative. It is therefore important that your subconscious absorbs those positive thoughts and banishes the negative ones. It is important to focus on what you want to achieve and not what you want to avoid.
Make sure you control your thoughts and not the other way around. If you have positive thoughts, your subconscious will absorb them and be positive. If a bad thought comes up, replace it immediately with a good thought. If you think ‘I will try’, replace it with ‘I will do’!
The 11-step formula is the most powerful goal-setting formula there is. Follow the 11 steps and you are well on your way to achieving your ultimate goal!
Set specific goals
A problem for many people is naming their ultimate goal. ‘I want to get slimmer’ or ‘I want to get more muscular’ is usually the comment you hear when someone enters the gym. Nice but not specific enough.
It is important to have precise goals. How much exactly do you want to lose? What do you want your body fat percentage to be? How big should your arms get? What size clothes do you want to be able to wear?
Set measurable goals
You need to be able to measure your progress, otherwise you will never know if your goal has been achieved. The mirror is a good tool to see if your goal has been achieved, a scale is a little less (weight is not important, it’s about how you look). If you want to know what your body fat percentage is, then a skinfold caliper is the best tool.
If you want to measure your body fat percentage without using complicated tables, there are body fat percentage meters that work in the same way as the skinfold measurement, but do the calculation for you.
Set big goals
It often happens that people set their goals too low, like ‘I can achieve that at least’. This is not about realistic goals, it’s about setting the goal you really want to achieve. It is much more motivating to work for what you really want than to work on something you think you can achieve. Small, realistic goals are not motivating, but what you want is!
That big goal can be scary, but that’s good. It makes you get out of your chair and work on your goal. Think about how you really want your body to look. Dream and fantasize about what you want to achieve. Although there are always limits to what you can achieve – including genetic limits – you can only get far if you think big! Don’t think ‘is it possible to achieve this goal?’ but think ‘how can I achieve this goal and am I willing to pay the price for it?’.
Set realistic deadlines or end times
Advertising is misleading. How often do you read ads that promise you to lose ten kilos in ten days? That is certainly possible, but it will mainly be water and muscle mass!
You are best off losing fat slowly to avoid giving up all your muscle mass. A safe goal is one to two pounds of fat per week, which is about half a percent per week. You can lose weight faster, but that extra weight will mainly be water and muscle mass. This in turn has the effect of reducing your metabolism and you will lose less fat… Not a good situation.
Big goals are fantastic, but be realistic about how quickly you want to achieve those goals!
Set long-term and short-term goals
When setting goals, don’t just write down one goal but a whole list. That list should contain short-term and long-term goals. There are six types of goals you can include in your list:
- Your ultimate long-term goal
- Twelve-month goal
- Three-month goal
- Weekly goals (weighing, body fat measurement)
- Daily goals (habits you want to develop, things you need to do every day)
- The goal of becoming better than you have ever been
Your long-term goal is what you ultimately want to achieve. How do you want to look? They are your thoughts, so don’t let others influence you!
Your year-end goal is mainly important if you have a lot to do. If you want to lose fifty kilos of fat, that’s at least a one-year project!
Your three-month goal is very important. It is the perfect timeframe to set a short-term goal because you can achieve a lot in ninety days. In ninety days, your whole body can change; for example, you could have lost ten kilos of fat. Three months is also short enough to put pressure on your actions.
Weekly goals are mainly there to see if you are on the right track. For example, you could have a goal to lose a kilo of fat weekly and then measure it with a skinfold caliper. If the results are there, you are on the right track, otherwise you need to adjust what needs to be adjusted to still achieve the goals.
To achieve all those goals, your daily habits are very important. Those habits should become as natural as brushing your teeth: it’s part of it. Examples include: using less sugar, getting up early to train, eating small regular meals, and so on. All those little things bring your ultimate goal closer!
The last goal is more a way of thinking. You must ensure that you compare yourself to yourself, not to others. Other people have different talents and gifts, and they are never exactly like you. So it is unrealistic to compare yourself to other people.
Challenge yourself! Make sure you get better than you ever have been!
Provide emotional reasons why you want to achieve the goals
Goals become easier to achieve if you can determine for yourself why you want to achieve them. What are your reasons? Do you want to look good for a wedding? Do you want to become a fitness model? Mix emotions with your goals and you are much less likely to give up!
Focus on your main goal
When goals conflict with each other, it is impossible to achieve them. An example is ‘I want to gain ten kilos of muscle and lose ten kilos of fat at the same time’. Such a goal is not realistic, because to gain more muscle you need to eat more calories, while to lose fat you need to eat fewer calories. Both are possible, just not at the same time!
Decide what the main goal is for you and focus on that.
Use positive wording
Write all your goals in positive wording. There are three rules when writing these positive statements:
Make sure the statements are personal. Start with ‘I am’ or ‘I have’. Your subconscious only works with personal commands. An example is: ‘I am happy now that I have achieved …’.
Your statement must be in the present tense. For your subconscious, there is no future. When your goals are set in future tense, your subconscious will ensure they remain in the future! Write as if your goal has already been achieved.
Write your goal in positive terms. Your subconscious follows what you put into it, positive or negative. Provide positive thoughts!
Read your list of goals twice a day
Okay, this seems very American, but it works when you surrender to it. Your subconscious works best when your goals are repeatedly taken in. It eventually becomes your thought pattern, so your subconscious is busy with those goals.
Hang your list in a place where you can see it (on your screen or on the refrigerator). Read the list at least twice daily. Repetition is the key to success!
Read your goals with belief
Belief is unwavering confidence. Belief is knowing that your goal will be achieved, even if you look in the mirror and see no changes.
The best way to grow belief is to ACT AS IF. Read the positive statements written in the present tense as if they have already been achieved. See a picture in your mind of yourself as if you already have the body you want to achieve. Behave as if you have already achieved the ultimate goal. Yes, it’s lying to yourself, but it works!
When you read the list of goals, read it with belief in what you read. Believe it will happen, no matter what happens! If you go through the list while you have doubts, you will never achieve the goals.
When reading the list of goals, visualize them as if you have already achieved them
Your brain thinks in pictures. If you have a good and clear picture in your head of what you want to achieve, it will be easier to be absorbed by your subconscious. It works deeper than just reading your goals. Try to do this when you are in bed and relaxed; it is easier to pass those images on to your subconscious.
Does all this sound rather airy-fairy? At first glance it does. Dutch people are quite down-to-earth, but I still want to ask you to give all this a real chance. Really try it for three weeks and see if it benefits you. There are too many indications that it works to just ignore it!
