3 Fitness Goals That Don’t Include Weight Loss

Stop setting unrealistic weight loss goals. Let's learn from our mistakes and instead of setting crazy weight loss goals, let's shift the focus to practices that will help catapult your fitness journey. Here are three ways you can better approach your goals list this year. 

SET PERFORMANCE GOALS

One of my favorite types of goals to set is performance goals. Often these get overlooked when we are so hyper focused on shedding the pounds but can open our eyes to all the progress we're making. There are many performance goals you can choose from endurance to strength base goals. The point is to choose something you can measure and track your progress. Start with something you find challenging (for example; pull ups and planks)

SET HEALTH GOALS

Beyond feeling confident and strong, fitness and exercise provide many more health benefits than you can imagine. You can decrease the risk of disease, improve heart health, and maintain bone mineral density are just a few of the things that will play a role in your health as you age. Before you put all the pressure on yourself to lose a certain amount of weight, consider the improvements you can make in your health simply by moving more. Increase your daily activity with a midday walk and slowly increase your movement. Track your activity and look back and see the improvements over time. Rather than put all your efforts into looking a certain way, make it a goal to improve those health factors you may be lacking. 

SET A FREQUENCY GOAL

To establish a healthy habit, you need to start with the lowest-hanging fruit. Rather than switching from no exercise to a seven-day program, examine your schedule and choose a consistency you can stick to for a few weeks. Take a good look at your schedule and determine a training frequency that you know you can adhere to for a couple of weeks. Once you've been able to stick to that consistency, consider adding a day. Give yourself a cushion, life happens, and training needs to work with your lifestyle not take away time from work and family. 

Creating a new habit isn't easy, but having the goals and plan set makes it easy to make it to. We've proven to ourselves that obsessing over our weight never yields long-term results. Instead of setting goals based on numbers, try goals that will help you appreciate yourself and what your body can do.