Short-Term Goals, Long-Term Success

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If you speak to anyone who has overcome a bad habit or addiction – drugs, alcohol, gambling, for example – they’d tell how on Day 1 of walking into their first meeting of a 12-step program they felt they’d NEVER be free of their disease, how they were so deep in it, that they could never ever imagine climbing out of the hole.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, that long-term goal of healthy and sustainable weight loss seems daunting at the present time, overwhelming and unattainable.

I get it.

You can’t imagine it.

For many people, long-term goals do not motivate healthy behavior because they are just too far away from today to inspire them to make the necessary smart choices that must be made dozens of times a day, every day, every week, every month.

Having short-term goals is like driving in the dark with your headlights on: If you can see what’s in front of you, you can continue to drive and safely get to your destination.

Or, looking at it another way: Without reaching dozens of short-term goals (one mile at a time, one day at a time, one pound at a time), you’ll never get to the long-term goal (a healthy sustainable weight, your final destination).

Here’s what 1 pound of fat looks like:

So don’t minimize the tremendous accomplishment of losing an average of “just” 1 pound per week. Time passes very quickly, and before you know it, all those weeks of losing “just 1 pound” will add up.

Think of it: Even if you lost “just” 1/2 pound each week, at the end of a year you’d lose 26 pounds! And that’s something.