Establishing Weight-Loss Goals You Want to Achieve

Losing weight isn't easy and the more weight you have to lose, the tougher it is to stay motivated to continue onwards. That is why it is so important to set yourself goals, as this can help you to maintain your focus and carry on doing what needs to be done to lose weight. If you know precisely what you would like to achieve, you will find a way to achieve it, which is surely better than having a slight inclination to lose weight, but no concrete plans. Setting yourself goals won't automatically lead to weight-loss success, but it will certainly help to keep you on track.

It might be difficult to establish how much weight you'd like to lose weight if you've always been overweight, but you need a place to start. The Body Mass Index (BMI) is hardly a faultless measure of whether you're overweight or not, but it is generally used by the medical profession to determine whether you could do with losing a few pounds. You may prefer to concentrate on your measurements, rather than a specific weight, so that you can fit into a particular dress size, for instance. At least if you set yourself a long-term goal you will know how far you've got left to go.

However, if your final goal will require you to lose over 50 pounds, it is going to take quite some time to get there and, sometimes, you can find yourself becoming demoralised when you know how far you still have left to go. Consequently, it may be worth breaking up your goal into smaller aims, so that you will be able to appreciate the fact that you've achieved something as you progress, despite not yet reaching your goal weight. You might decide to do something as simple as increase the number of steps you walk every day or to treat yourself every time you lose 10 pounds, so that there is something to look forward to besides the actual weight loss.

When you intend to lose weight it is worth establishing some goals for yourself, because if you don't have something to aim for you may find it harder to actually get anywhere. The trouble is when you want to lose weight, but have no structured plan, it is very easy to just carry on eating the way you normally do, because you're in no rush to get down to your goal weight. This puts less pressure on you, of course, which might be a good thing, sometimes, but only if you can actually motivate yourself to make changes that will help you lose weight. Without any goals to aim for, you might just end up staying as you are.