10 Tips for Setting and Achieving Fitness Goals, Part 1 (tips 1-4)

Table of Contents

• Have a Goal

• Thinking Realistic and Attainable

• Goals Beyond "Mirror Goals"

• Thinking in terms of Days and Years

  • BEN’S BEST

  • WEEKLY ACTION POINTS

Setting fitness goals is maybe one of the most talked about topics in the health and fitness space.

The thing is, I believe that most people (fitness professionals included) don’t have a great approach for setting fitness goals.

I’m gonna lay out 10 tips that help you think about how to set useful fitness goals, and more importantly: actually achieve those goals. Since there’s so much information that plays into goal setting, I split goal setting into two parts. So this week we’ll look at tips 1-4, and next week we will tackle tips 5-10.

My first tip for setting goals is about as simple as it gets: have a goal. Taken at surface value this might seem completely obvious, but you’d be shocked how many people are just going through the motions with no clue what they are trying to achieve.

I ask my fitness clients all the time what their goals are, and countless times the response I get goes something like this:

*shrugs shoulders*

“I’m just trying to get in back in shape”

A response like this is destined for failure. We need to have meaning and purpose behind the goal. What do you want to achieve? And why do you want to achieve it?

If your goal is to “get back in shape”, what does that mean for you? Are you trying to lose fat or build muscle? Both? Or maybe being back in shape means that you will be able to run a 5k.

Whatever it means to you, the most basic tip about goals I can give you is to actually have one. Once you have one, write it down in some place obvious so that you will see it every day.

Let’s face it, fitness goals are not short term goals. “I want to lose 40 pounds in two months” is not a realistic goal. And even if you were able to lose 40 pounds in two months, it would have to be done by extreme restriction and exercise, something that certainly wouldn’t be maintained. You would take drastic measures to lose weight as fast as you can, only do gain it all back and more when you go back to “real life”.

So set goals that are realistic and attainable by thinking small. Wanting to lose 5-10 pounds in two months, for example, is far more achievable. The best part about setting small goals? Each time you reach a goal, it motivates you to set and achieve another goal.

Instead of dreaming about impossible goals and then feeling disappointed and stressed out when you fail to achieve them, set goals that are you are confident you can achieve. I’m not necessarily telling you to just set easy goals so that you can say “Yay, look at me I did it!”.

There’s a balance. Research studies have shown that extremely lofty goals can decrease motivation and lead to quitting all together. It has also been shown that the best long term goals are big enough that they excite you and challenge you, but not so big that they are discouraging.

When thinking about their fitness goals, the vast majority of people think about how they look in the mirror. Wanting to lose fat or gain muscle are the most common fitness goals. And don’t get me wrong, they are awesome goals to have, and I personally have a goal of losing fat currently.

However, where they are problematic is when they are your only goal. “Mirror goals” take a long time to see any meaningful change. Plus, if you are looking at yourself in the mirror every single day, you will never notice a change because the day-to-day differences are so insignificant.

After you’ve had multiple days in a row of looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing no change, you might say screw this and quit all together. You’ll think the whole “working out and eating healthy” thing has no use because you see no change in the mirror.

The way to combat this: find other goals that give you meaning and purpose beyond just how you look. Some examples of goals that are not “mirror goals”:

• Wanting to sleep better at night

• Having a healthy heart and good circulation

• Having a better daily routine

• Improving your balance and flexibility

• Wanting to have strong bones and muscles late into life

• Increasing your energy levels

• Improving mood and mental well being

• Wanting to be able to walk up the stairs without being out of breath

So let me say this again: there is nothing wrong with having goals that relate to your body image. If you only have goals related to how you look, however, you are gonna have a lot of struggle ahead of you. Find other things (you could have many!) that you are trying to work towards.

This will be motivating for you because you are making a bunch of different areas of your life better, and you’ll look better as a result.

This is something that I’m super passionate about and shapes the basis of my mindset about fitness. So I apologize, but I’m going to climb on my soapbox for a bit to explain this tip.

The vast majority of people think in terms of weeks and months. For example, someone might state that in three months they are going on spring break, so starting Monday will be week one of their new fitness routine. They’ll tell themselves they’re gonna have a perfect week to start off strong!

There are a couple issues with this: a week is too long of a time period, and a month is too short of a time period. Now, I know that sentence is probably confusing, so let me explain.

Various internet sources say that the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions every single day. I have no idea where that number came from or if it’s true, but let’s just use it for the sake of this discussion because when I googled it, multiple different sites used this number. That would mean we make about 245,000 decisions each week. WOW! The point isn’t the specific number, the point is that we make A TON of decisions.

Trying to commit to a “perfect week” is impossible because of the shear number of decisions we have to make - everything from the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, to which hand you hold your tooth brush in. Which is why using a week as a timeframe is too long: you are almost certain to fail because there are too many decisions to make in a week.

I’ve seen countless people start off their week on Monday strong by hitting a workout and eating healthy, but as the week goes on their motivation dwindles.

Maybe they miss a workout one day or splurge on an “unhealthy food”. And then they give up for the rest of the week telling themselves “oh well, on Monday I’m for real this time, I’ll actually start next week.”

People often start out the week full of motivation and energy to hit their goals, and their drive for success goes down throughout the week. By the time Saturday and Sunday come around, you could never even tell that they had fitness goals to begin with.

But hey, Saturday and Sunday don’t count because you’re starting fresh on Monday for a new week, right?

Wrong.

While a week is too long of a time period, a month is too short of a time period. Trying to have a goal to be in the best shape of your life in three or four months for spring break isn’t helpful. Fitness goals are big commitments that take a long time for meaningful change to develop. And even if you do race to lose weight in three months and are successful, are you just gonna gain it all back after you get back from vacation? What good is it to have one week in the year where you feel good while on vacation?

This is why I always tell people: think in terms of days and years, not weeks and months. Start fresh every day and do whatever you can to make each small decision count towards your goals. Had a rough day? Oh well, tomorrow is a new day! Refocus each day to try and be the best you can for that day, with every single small decision.

Looking at one day seems a lot less daunting than trying to look at a whole week. If it’s a Wednesday, you don’t even have to worry about what happens Thursday-Sunday. You can just focus on making Wednesday the best you can.

If you take it one day at a time over and over again, I can guarantee that this time next year, you will be in better shape than you are in right now. All because you stopped thinking about weeks and months and started thinking about days and years. Cool, right?

If I could summarize this whole tip in one sentence here it is: Be the best you can each day so that every year you are improving, instead of trying to be the best you can each week so that every month you are improving.

BEN’S BEST

• My weekly meal preps:

  • Beef Bulgogi: The recipe in the video doesn’t include rice. Check out the screenshots below to see what I did for my meals and the calorie breakdown.

  

  • Bang Bang Spicy Chicken Salad: I recommend chopping up the vegetables in advance and waiting to make the dressing until you are ready to eat

  • My dessert for the week: Apple Crumble that I made each night before bed

• Two podcasts that I enjoyed this week:

  • Mind Pump 2323: The Cardiovascular Benefits of Weightlifting, Tips for Losing Stubborn Body Fat, the Muscle Building Benefits of Lunges & More

  • Huberman Lab: Protocols to Strengthen & Pain Proof Your Back

My yoga for the week:

WEEKLY ACTION POINTS

• Take some time to reflect: did you successfully complete the weekly action points from last week? If not, why? What got in the way?

• We are going to build on our 5 minute daily walk from last week by adding just one minute. So this week every single day set aside intentional time for a 6 minute walk. Again, this cannot be 6 minutes walking around doing general things in your daily life. It has to be 6 minutes intentionally set aside for walking

• Get out a pad and paper (or your notes app) and write down five goals. Only two of those goals can be related to how you look, the other three must be goals that are not “mirror goals”. It should take less than five minutes to do this. Don’t overcomplicate it, all I want you to do is have something written down. We will look at these five goals in more depth next week.

That’s it for this week, stay tuned for next week’s letter when I go through goal setting tips 5-10! Have a great week!

Ben Johnson

Know someone struggling to hit their fitness goals? Share this newsletter with them, it helps me out a ton!