Goal Setting: The Biggest Secret of Successful Weight Loss

It does not matter if you want to lose 10, 20 40 or 100 pounds, it makes no difference, the following tips will be the biggest factor in how successful you will eventually be and if adhered to will practically guarantee you weight loss success on their own.

Goal setting is undeniably the most important and first step to successful weight loss. Goals are measuring sticks, the equivalent to milestones on the highway; they tell you how far down the road you are. Without setting goals you would have no idea where you are, or where you are going and more importantly how much more you need to do to reach the objective, which is, in this situation, excess weight!

Primarily, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1. How much weight do you want to lose?
2. When do you want to lose this weight by?

Jot down your answers on a sheet of paper. The reason why writing your goals is so important is so you never forget them! Make lots of copies on lots of small pieces of paper, Post--it's are a good idea, and stick them every conceivable place you can around your home.

Don't forget to stick papers onto your refrigerator and kitchen, and don't forget the cookie jar as it is these places that temptation lies in wait for you and will attempt to, at every opportunity, ruin your weight loss efforts!

Don't just be random with your goal setting; your goals have to be achievable; so setting REALISTIC goals is of paramount importance. If you set incredibly difficult or impossible weight loss goals all your efforts at goal setting will be wasted as this will nullify the effect that goal setting is meant to have.

The whole purpose of goal setting during your weight loss is to continually build upon small success after small success, failure, due to unrealistic goal setting, results in disappointment, disappointment results in frustration, frustration results in negativity and negativity results in giving up.

When setting your goals don't go over the top, a realistic weekly weight loss goal of 2 pounds doesn't sound much, but is an ideal goal as it can be achieved relatively easily and if you are targeting say  a fifty or sixty pound weight loss you are only talking six to seven months to achieve it. So can you now see the benefit in setting small, achievable goals for yourself that are a whole lot easier to manage, you will certainly feel more confident about succeeding moving forward.

And this, my friend, is the simplest, yet biggest, secret to successfully losing weight!