Getting in Shape Step by Step - Part Two:

Setting up for the losing
by Riggtown

Did you take 2 to 3 weeks to look at your eating habits? Ok read on then …..

By now you should have figured out why you gained your unwanted weight and determine which foods you need to reduce or eliminate from your diet. This is the first step in making a life changing decision to take control of your eating habits and become leaner and full of energy.

Before we can go much farther we need to set some goals. Lets look at your weight reduction goal(s). Are you looking to trim off 10 or 15 pounds or are you looking to drop more like 50 plus? The goal you choose will help to build your action plan. The action plan is a guide to help you maintain a healthy and motivational weight reduction effort. The amount you want to lose will affect when you start specific phases of your weight reduction effort.

The key to winning at the weight reduction game is motivation and determination. If you do not commit to losing the weight and stick to any program you will not meet the goals that you set for your self and you will return to your heavy self. This is where a lot of people fail. They hit the ground running and then get to a crawl and before you know it the weight has returned. So lets pick out the overall goal. Then we want to break it down into smaller goals.

Lets say the overall goal is to lose 40 pounds. Lets not pick out a time frame yet. Why? Because we want to break down your overall goal into smaller motivational pieces. Remember motivation and determination is key. If you see positive gains against your goals then you will remain motivated and determine.

Now that I have hammered out the point about staying committed lets really have a look at YOU and start breaking the goal apart. We want smaller goals that fit into tight time frames that will show progress and maintain motivation. I suggest no more then a 3 month time frame. Keep in mind that this is not a race but a life changing effort that should have you feeling great about your self and what you are doing. This is not some get thin fast schema that has you gaining the weight back within months of you completing the program.

Here is what I recommend If you took 40 pounds and divided that into 3 months or 90 days you would get about .44. That is about ½ pound a day. This is not realistic. So what we want to do is start creating those small easy to accomplish goals. So what we want to do is break the overall goal in half. So let try the math with 20 pounds. This is less then ¼ pound a day. This we can work with.

So now we have our first mini goal. Lose 20 pounds over the next 90 days. Does not sound like a lot. But if you lose 20 pounds in 90 days and keep that 20 pounds off that is way more motivational then dropping twice as much and the gain back 20 pounds. See the goal is to maintain a positive attitude while still meeting you over all goal of losing weight.


Lets review
So far we have determined the following:
1. We want to lose some weight
2. We feel that we have a good understanding why we gained the weight
3. We know what foods we eat and when
4. We have a overall target goal (total amount we want to lose)
5. We have a smaller goal to shot for in our first phase

In the third step we are going to put together a motivational plan to help us get to our fist goal.

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