Why Goals?

I know I said I was going to write a post about cooling down after a workout, but this post on the importance of setting goals has been on my mind all day today.  

Many of us set a broad goal at the beginning of our journey.  That goal usually sounds like "I want to loose ____ pounds".  Fill that blank in with whatever number I know you have in your head.  My magic number is 40.  

Step off the scale!

This goal has been haunting me for so long.  If this was the only goal I had, I wouldn't have anything to celebrate.  It's literally been my goal for over a year now.  It's a fine long term goal, even though it's better to say "I want to loose ____ pounds of fat and gain _____ pounds of muscle."  Muscle weighs more than fat, so your weight may not go down as much as you would like since you will be gaining muscle throughout your journey.  This is so important and will be a topic of another post.  Any way...back to goals!

Another goal that I've had for quite a while now is to do a military style (on your toes) pushup.  I've worked so hard on this goal the past month or so and I was getting so close.  I secretly have hoped to say I can do at least 5 pushups!  I was so excited to get on the scale Sunday morning after a fantastic week of both eating and working out.  I had slipped up some over the past several weeks and I was so proud to be back on track.  My short term goal for this week was to loose 2 pounds.  I knew I could do it since I worked so hard!  I got on that scale and it was the exact same as last week.  How could that be?  I'm not kidding when I say that my week was fantastic and it hadn't been great for so long, that it shouldn't have been that hard to loose those 2 pounds.  I started to get upset (like I do so often when I don't reach my pound lost goals) and then I thought about my push up goal and how I hadn't tried to actually do a "real" pushup all weekend.  I got down on the floor of the bathroom and gave it a whirl...and guess what?  I did 5!!!!!  I had accomplished a goal after all that Sunday.  It wasn't the goal that I had hoped to meet that Sunday morning, but it was another goal that was just as important too me!

I can't believe I finally did this!!! :)

If I wouldn't have had that other short term goal, who knows what would have happened.  That goal really saved my Sunday!  I've been showing off my pushups ever since!  It feels great to finally reach that goal.  Now I need to set another exercise goal.  I'll continue to try and get my number of pushups higher, but I'm also going to set a pull up goal.  I'm going to start with being able to hold myself up in the high position for about 5 seconds.  Once I accomplish that, I will tweak the goal until I'm doing a complete pull up!  I'm excited to get started on reaching this goal!

Write them down!!

I want everyone reading this to think of at least 3-4 specific goals they want to accomplish.  I would choose 2 short term and 1-2 long term.  They can be related to exercise, nutrition, body composition, or even commitment.  I would love to see your goals (post them in the comment section for all to see) or I can help you set some if you just aren't sure how to start.  Good luck on writing and I know once you have them set in stone you will reach your goals!