In weight-loss and all other endeavors, goals are vital to success.
To put it less pretentiously, we may not always hit what we aim at in life, but the odds go up when we are, in fact, aiming. Dumb luck carries you only so far. (Believe me, I’ve tested the limits of dumb luck. Planning is better.)
Some goals are obvious. For a mountain climber, only getting to the top will do. But there will be intermediate goals along the climb to the summit.
Other goals are trickier to set.
Over the years, I’ve taught a college reading and study strategies course, one available to any student who cares to enroll in it but mostly aimed at entering students whose test scores indicate they need extra support. Such a course is sometimes called “remedial.” I think of it as “motivational.”
It’s like military boot camp — except that I can’t yell at, curse, berate or otherwise humiliate anyone. I’m also not allowed to fire a machine gun over the heads of my charges while they crawl face-down in the mud under low-hung barbed wire. (Now, that would be motivational!)
Otherwise, it’s exactly what the Marine recruits get at Parris Island.
Goal setting is a big part of the course. I tell students to set goals that are specific, realistic, measurable and that have a deadline. This is essentially the well-known “SMART” approach.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about goal-setting in relation to weight-loss.
Consider some possible weight-loss goals. How do they stand up against my criteria?
Having the goal of “losing weight” fails the specificity test. It also lacks a deadline.
Having the goal of “losing 30 pounds in the next month” is specific, measurable, and has a deadline. However, it is not realistic to lose a pound a day for 30 days. To be realistic, a goal has to be attainable.
But it also has to be worth attaining (challenging, in other words). So having the goal of “losing at least one pound in the next month” is not realistic in the sense that it isn’t a worthwhile achievement. It lacks a real challenge.
Earlier this year (on May 7), I set a goal for myself to weigh 215 or less on Labor Day (September 5) 2011. Certainly that goal is specific, measurable, and has a deadline. But is it realistic?
When I set the goal, I weighed 241 pounds. So, I was proposing to lose 26 pounds in slightly over 17 weeks. That’s an average loss of one-and-a-half pounds per week. At the time I set the goal, I felt confident of reaching it with days to spare. It seemed realistic in the sense of being attainable. But was it realistic in the sense of being worthwhile? Was it challenging enough?
With ten days to go, my current weight is 216.8 pounds. I may or may not make my Labor Day goal, but I should be close.
The question is, would I have lost more weight if I’d set a more ambitious goal? Say, two pounds a week?
Maybe I would have. Setting a high goal can strengthen motivation. It can create a greater sense of urgency. Of course, the danger is setting it too high. That can lead to discouragement, or in the case of a weight loss goal, to unsafe methods and shortcuts.
Setting a goal that is both attainable and challenging is always the tough part.
It’s also important to set the right type of goals. I tell my students, “Don’t set a goal of getting an ‘A’ in a class. You don’t completely control the grades you receive.” In other words, I want students to set goals about their own behavior, about what they will do and how often they will do it. I tell them to set goals about how they will study, when, and how much. That way, they are in control and can keep track of their progress on a daily or weekly basis.
So, applying that idea to my diet goals, I could have said, “For the next four months, my goal is to eat no more than 2,000 calories and 35 net grams of carbohydrates on any day.” I haven’t quite met that goal, not every day. If I had set that goal, and met it, I might have lost even more weight than I have. By focusing on a goal for pounds to lose — rather than behaviors to adopt — I created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, outcomes do matter. Eventually, you want to reach the top of the mountain. But what is the desired outcome for college? Earning a high GPA, or learning something useful for your life? (Even if what you learn is something about yourself that you could have learned elsewhere, for less money — say, at Parris Island.)
And what is the desired outcome of a new way of eating?
Is it losing as much weight as possible as quickly as possible? Or is it attaining a healthy and sustainable weight?
I can’t tell you now what I will weigh on Labor Day. But I can tell you what I will do.
I will set a new goal.
Another excellent presentation, from a cardiac surgeon. Note his remarks regarding the social network at about 19 minutes…………………
http://karendecoster.com/a-cardiac-surgeo-on-the-glory-of-saturated-fat.html
Have you seen this? Showed up on my Twitter today………………
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/23/health/la-he-my-turn-atkins-20100823
Jim and Squirrel88,
This was serendipitous, that I ran into your comment on the LA Times article and 2 critical reviews of exactly the same clinical study mentioned in the article. This one, from Dr. Eades, directly addresses the fraudulant reporting of the clinical trial results of the Foster trial of low carb vs low fat, when it was first published years ago.
http://bit.ly/r6UkVy
and this one, from Richard Feinman, just came out. It criticizes, again, the false reporting of the latest 2-year results from the same study which was released later on.
http://bit.ly/pMM7Pa
Bottom line: studies like this Foster study are commissioned by government agencies who have an unfounded interest in promoting low fat diets. So when researchers have tried to prove with clinical trials that low fat diets are better than low carb diets, they come back with very positive results for low carb, both in terms of weight loss and improved health. But the researchers won’t get future funding if they report that, so they use a subterfuge called “intention to treat” to basically hide the positive results of the low carb diets. Hard to believe these guys (in the government) can sleep at night.
…Joe…
Thanks for the links, Joe. The thing is, the government health agencies and the medical establishment have been pushing the low-fat diet for so long, and pushing so hard, they can’t ever go back. It’s too big a mistake. And who would believe them if they tried? As they get more desperate in the face of mounting obesity and related diseases, I expect more falsification and strong-arm tactics. Desperate people do desperate things. Maybe the best thing would be for an austerity movement to get the government out of the business of telling people how to eat.
“And who would believe them if they tried? As they get more desperate in the face of mounting obesity and related diseases, I expect more falsification and strong-arm tactics.”
Perhaps I am just a cock-eyed optimist, but with the ever expanding social network [Twitter, Facebook, etc], and the addition of new low carb blogs and sites that seem to spring up almost everyday, I tend to believe that word is spreading. More and more intelligent people, who actually read and research all these subjects and first hand accounts of actual weight loss and improved health, are coming around to this way of eating, in spite of the fact that we have a former president who has become a vegan and made Ornish his medical expert but now looks, to me, like “death warmed over”.
All we can do is keep plugging away!
I just read an article about not focusing on the scoreboard but instead to focus on those actions you can do to achieve the score you want. In other words instead of the focus on the scale or tape measure focus on those actions that will get you the numbers you want. This was important for me to read because, in the past in attempts to get to a specific number I have done horrible things to my body. So while I am at least 100 pounds overweight (I am down 23 so far) I am noticing that the movement down the scale is easier and faster when I work harder on being good to my body. I now track what I eat, but not how much-so I can’t obsess about percentages of carb, or calories and so I can focus on eating as healthfully as I can each day. ie. no sugar, no grains, no highly processed food (ie. nothing ‘instant’ or quick cook’), and watch sources of oils, meats and veggies. In the process I feel better, I am losing weight, and I am setting up a way of looking at and eating food that I can live with for life.
congrats on your progress.
I’ll bet you feel so much better, congrats on your weight loss achievements! You are doing so well! You must be getting close to your final desirable weight. Isn’t it great to be able to shed pounds without starving all the time? During my adult years, my weight has been as high as 170 lbs and as low as 113. Those weight losses came at a high price however, and incurred much starvation and unhealthy eating. Furthermore, once I went back to more or less “normal” eating, the pounds came back. At 5′, 3″, I guess I should weigh about 115 – 120 lbs, but I doubt that will happen. I am just happy to be healthy and still able to wear my size 10 jeans. I keep the scale in the closet, hate that damn thing!