How To Set Realistic Weight Loss Goals

One of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to weight loss is setting unrealistic expectations of how much weight they need to lose and how fast they can lose it.

Experts in weight loss say that a healthy weight loss rate is one to two pounds per week. That is not a lot.

If you tell yourself that you’ve got to lose ten pounds a week and that you want to lose fifty pounds by summer, that is not realistic. And if you set very unrealistic goals and then fail, you will be tempted to go off the diet thinking that you’re a failure.

Setting unrealistic weight goals is really sabotaging your diet and your efforts to lose weight. Here are some tools you can use to set realistic weight loss goals for yourself.

Lower your expectations – Losing one to two pounds per week is healthy, so if you weigh yourself at the end of the week and you’ve only lost one or two pounds, don’t consider that a failure because it’s not. Congratulate yourself on losing that weight and focus on losing another one to two pounds the next week.

If you celebrate each pound lost you will be motivated to keep losing weight.

Think in percentages, not pounds – If you want to get down to a healthy weight and stay there you should focus on losing 10-20% of your whole body weight, not just the amount of pounds you want to lose. So if you weigh 200 pounds, losing just 20-40 pounds could put in a healthy weight range.

Do the math – If you want to lose 25 pounds and you know that a safe weight loss rate is 2 pounds per week then plan on it taking 12 to 14 weeks to lose the weight that you want to lose. In the beginning that might make it seem more difficult to lose weight, but if you have a realistic expectation of how long it will take to lose the amount of weight that you want to lose, it will help you stay focused and stay on your diet.

Try to reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 per day either by exercising more and burning more calories or by eating less. Losing weight is a numbers game so get familiar with those numbers and how to use them to lose weight.

Set short term goals, but think of long term goals – Set weight loss milestones and celebrate when you reach them. Buy yourself a new book when you lose 5 pounds, or a new dress when you hit 10 pounds lost. But even as you’re celebrating each milestone, keep focused on the big picture and how much weight you want to lose total. You need to celebrate your progress but also stay focused on the big prize.

Filed under: Weight Loss Articles

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