SMART Goals and Weight Regain

So today I want to extend that line of thinking by looking at weight goals.

Now weight goals are something we're very familiar with, but we often don't examine them very closely.

So you might think of goals as the number of kilos you want to lose, or it might be fitting into those jeans that you bought a year ago.

But whatever it is for you, once you've settled on the goal, attention moves almost immediately to how you're going to get there.

It's about which diet plan to follow, or how long will it take, and what will you need to change.

But the goal itself rarely gets much scrutiny, because it appears to be the clearest part of the whole exercise.

But that apparent clarity can be deceptive.

When we choose a weight goal, it's usually numerical, whether that be a number on the scales, or maybe a clothing size.

And there can be multiple meanings sitting beneath something as straightforward as, I want to lose 15 kilos.

And hopefully if you've been listening for a while, you'll know by now that understanding weight regain requires more information, not less.

So if I tell you that I want to lose 15 kilos, it doesn't sound like there's anything vague about that.

I'll know the weight I'm starting from, where I'm trying to get to, and I have a perfectly good instrument sitting on the bathroom floor that can report back on my progress.

Yet if you asked me how I'd feel if I lost 10 kilos instead of 15, I'd tell you I'd be thrilled.

Something has immediately happened to my very precise goal.

If 10 kilos would give me an outcome I'm delighted with, what were the other 5 kilos for? Whatever the answer to that question, it's important to register that a goal doesn't just describe the destination.

Once we settle on it, it starts directing what we do.

If I define the problem as I need to lose 15 kilos, then a diet designed to remove those 15 kilos starts to look like the obvious solution.

The goal has narrowed the problem before I really establish what the problem is I'm trying to solve.