How to Set Fitness Goals You Can Actually Reach

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00:01 Welcome back to the Body by Phil podcast. This is Phil. In today's podcast, I'm entitling it how to set realistic goals you can actually achieve. Coming up on this New Year's resolution season. Going to talk about something that's going to resonate with pretty much every person on the planet. When you go back 30 plus years and you look at the number one New Year's resolution for most people, the number one resolution, even over finding a

00:33 better job or making more money, is always some form of health related goal. It's either lose weight or start getting in shape. This has been the number one New Year's resolution for 30 to 50 years. I mean, it's been the same thing. When you go back and you look at the most number one failed resolution, it's the same. Why? Why every single year do we set

01:04 this goal, this resolution of getting healthier, eating better, dropping those unwanted pounds, ultimately to fail. This should not be the case year after year, but it is. It comes down to something very simple. And I talk to my clients about this every single day. It's about how to set goals. Setting goals needs to be something that you don't want to just throw out there

01:35 haphazardly. You just don't want to say, "I'm going to lose weight this year. I'm going to get in shape and I'm going to start January 1 and everything's going to go fine." because it's the new year, new me, and uh the whole bit that we say every year. That's a good start. But here's what's going wrong. There's no plan. We don't have a battle plan. So, as soon as we go into this mental state of I'm going to have tremendous success. And the moment that we don't have that success, we get frustrated. We feel like we're doing something wrong. We are

02:07 paying for a gym membership or a trainer and it's going nowhere. So, we quit. And this usually happens two weeks. Two weeks. So by January 15th, the gyms are empty again and everybody is back to their own ways because they feel like they have let themselves down in some way or they failed their New Year's resolution. And that's a very very sad and depressing thing. So why does this keep happening? Well, again, it is how to set a realistic goal. I'm going to

02:38 give a couple examples. Okay. Number one, when I got into fitness, I got into it kind of kicking and screaming. I really didn't want to go into it. I feel like I I had to. I was well over 300 pounds and I was really struggling with my obesity, alcoholism, addictions, and my health was starting to fade. So, I was really forced into this. And I I tried to do things on my own a few times before that. But again, because there was no real plan of action, there was really no thought into it. It was just

03:10 that let's go ahead and wave the magic wand on January 1st and let's just hope everything planets align and everything works out perfectly which is never the case in fitness. So not knowing that there is a process behind this I would fail and fail and fail and then ultimately give up. But when I hired a trainer when I hired somebody who really understood the process and started with the goal everything changed. All right. So, for example, say you you want to lose weight and let's just go after 100

03:41 lb. Let's go after a 100 lb goal. You don't focus on that 100 lb because the average person, it's going to take roughly 9 months to a 9 months is being, you know, really aggressive. It's usually going to take about a month, about a year to drop a 100 pounds. That's a pretty good rule of thumb. where that may seem like a daunting, oh well, if it's going to take me a year, forget it, case, actually, it shouldn't. You should look at this as like, okay,

04:11 look, I'm going to make an a commitment. If I'm going to lose 100 pounds, I don't look at the whole 100 pounds and feel like I'm in some sort of rush or some sort of hurry. You want to stop and take a breath and think, okay, we're going to set a realistic goal of say 1 lb to 1 12 lb lost per week. Now, that doesn't sound so bad. So, we we look at our nutrition. We look at what kind of macronutrients we're bringing into our body.

04:42 Macronutrients meaning your carbohydrates, your fats, and your proteins, and you find out what is right for me for my goal. There are a ton of ways you can do this, okay? You could hire a trainer to help you with this or you can actually go online and look up macronutrient deficit calculator. And what that does, you will you type in your gender, your age, okay, your birth date, your current weight, and your goal weight. And these apps,

05:13 they're all free anymore. You can just punch in these numbers, and it'll give you a a number back on how many calories that you should be burning um in a 24-h hour period. based on your goal and keep your goal at between one and a half and two pounds per week. Don't go into it and think, well, I'm going to really work out hard and I'm going to do everything perfect and I'm going to drop 5 10 lbs a week. You're not. So, keep yourself under the radar. Look, if you set a low goal, all

05:44 right, say you set a a a pound and you come in at two or two and a half or more in your first week, rally around that. Congratulations. That's fantastic. Don't get used to that. That's probably not always going to be the case. All right. Again, it's not meant to defeat you by saying this. It's just the truth. Your body's going to go through fluctuations when you're trying to lose weight. It'll give you a little and it'll take a little. And this is if you do everything perfect, you'll still hit plateaus and you'll still see ups and downs. We have

06:15 to keep in consideration honesty. We have to be honest with ourselves and know that there is no way that if you have a 100 pounds to lose that you're going to walk into that goal doing everything exactly right every single day, every single meal, every single month. This is an unrealistic expectation. So don't set yourself up to ultimately fail. Understand that we're going to make mistakes and understand that it's all about impulse control. And when we do make a mistake, we don't live

06:45 in it. We just say, "Okay, I made a mistake. I can't fix that, but I can go ahead and be a little bit more diligent in my next food or eating choice." What happens in a mindset when you set a small goal? Number one, it doesn't seem so daunting to lose a pound or a week. And also when you do get on the scale and you see the effort of your sacrifice, your discipline, your training, and you see that number

07:15 looking back at you in that deficit, say it you hit your pound or even more. Mentally, you have that light bulb clarity moment where you think, okay, look, I did that. All right, I I control that. Nobody did that for me. You may have somebody helping you or giving you a nutrition plan or uh pushing you or kicking your butt in the gym, but uh nobody forced you to do it. You did it. All right. So then all of a sudden your mental toughness starts to

07:47 surpass your physical being, which is the whole game. This physical fitness, goal set, goal reach mindset is mental. The physical part is great. and there's a lot of stress and there's a lot of work. But here's what happens when your body starts to break down and things get hard. What pushes you through is your mental state and your brain will say, "Okay, yeah, you're tired, your muscles are sore, we're working hard, but you

08:19 have more in you. You don't have to quit when something gets challenging." So, we start to rethink and relearn this entire thing. Our brains get stronger, our minds get stronger, our bodies get stronger, and then something miraculous starts to happen. We start to feel confident. All of a sudden, the scale doesn't rule you anymore. You determine your destiny on the scale based on what you want to do. When you switch seats and now you're in control, you're the driver, everything changes. Everything

08:52 changes. All right? All of your hard work is now paying off. The greatest motivator in weight loss or reaching a goal is seeing and feeling the change that only you you did. So when it comes back to goal setting now the New Year's is coming up. It's a numbers game. I'm using weight loss as an example because this is 95% of my client base and most people that do set a fitness goal weight loss is

09:24 somewhere in there. It may not be 100 pounds, but it may be something. There's usually some sort of weight loss goal attached to a New Year's resolution. Set the reachable goal. Set something that sets you up for that positive experience and not that dread of, "Oh man, I didn't hit 50 lbs this week." You're not going to. Shoot for the one pound. Shoot for the one and a half to two. shoot for something that you can really really rally around and say, "Wow, okay,

09:55 I can do this. I have this." And tell others, you know, have people around you that can help inspire you, that are in your corner encouraging you. You're always going to have the people around you that are going to tell you, "Hey, look, forget diet and forget numbers and forget working out. I took this potion. I drank it and 50 lbs fell off my body." or yeah, I took this pill or I took this injection and it changed my whole life. Okay, fine.

10:26 But this is something that you can control on your own without the need of any other kinds of medical enhancements which cause dependency and can cause long-term side effects. We're already starting to see it, guys. We're already starting to see the negative side effects of the long-term weight loss solutions. In my experience, nothing has ever come close to the result that you get and the long-term success is a healthy lifestyle. A good pattern of eating right, staying fit, staying

10:58 active. A magic potion, a magic pill, and a magic shot does not keep your body strong. It does not keep your body healthy. All it can do is just kind of weaken your state. There's so much more involved reaching your goals through physical fitness. the mental clarity, the confidence, and the self-esteem that these other kind of shortcuts don't always offer. So again, when we go back to our goal setting, and the new year's coming just a few days away, keep in mind, all right, first take a deep

11:29 breath and make a realistic goal. Look at where you are right now. Visualize where it is that you want to be, how you want to look, and how you want to feel. Understand that you you alone are in charge of that destiny. Pick a realistic goal and start doing your research. The internet is loaded with tools that can help you with this. Subscribe, message me, and I'll help you. All right?

11:59 Find the reasonable goal for you and really understand that you're going to be in this for the long haul, okay? Because it's a lifestyle. Once you hit your goal, we don't stop there because we want to keep our goal. You worked really hard to get to that goal. So, you want to stay on it, right? New Year's resolutions coming up, guys. Remember, don't be that statistic. 90% of people fail at that New Year's resolution. Don't be one of them. I gave it I did it for 20 years. I set the same

12:31 goal and I never achieved it. I was lucky if I made it two weeks in trying because I wanted too much too fast. So pull in those expectations, set good, reachable uh goals for yourself, believe in yourself, and take it literally one step at a time. If you don't do it perfectly, that's fitness. It's not going to be perfect. All right? Pick yourself up when you fail or make a mistake, brush yourself off, get back in the fight, and keep working. This is Body by Phil podcast. Thanks for watching.