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Motivation is one of the things that make people fail at their diets. If you have a bad few days and put on a pound or two then you feel like all is lost. Similarly if you don’t lose anything and stay the same you feel like all your hard work was for nothing.

Short term goals

These are goals that you plan to achieve within the next week or so. Maybe you want to lose five pounds before your friends wedding in two weeks. This is a goal, as you lose, track it tell your friends about it. When you get to that two week mark see if you’ve reached your goal if you see you are 1lb shy don’t despair, go over why you might not have lost that last pound. Then rejoice in the fact that you’ve lost four lbs! These are important to keep you motivated as they keep your mind on the job at hand as your goal date is always quite close.

Medium term goals

These are ones that run over a couple of months. For example, you might want to lose two stone before your birthday which is three months away. Easily achievable, track when you are losing, your start weight, goal weight and what you are doing. If you are nearing your goal try and think about what you’ve been doing right and make sure you continue to do it for your other goals. Doing these medium term goals is important as it shows you that you can lose substantial amounts of weight. If you have six stone to lose overall then you may find that is seems like such a struggle to get through. With your medium term goal you will see that you’ve lost those two stone that’s only four more to go.

Long term goals

These are the goals that will get you to your ideal weight they could be a year in the future and could be to lose over 100 pounds. Pick something achievable and try and find out what your ideal, healthy weight is. (Just search for “ideal weight calculator” and you’ll find loads of resources to calculate a healthy weight for your height and age.)

Other indicators

You shouldn’t just look at your weight to see how you are getting on, also have goals that pertain to other things. Having short, medium and long term goals in other areas will help you to keep focused, you might find that you’ve lost inches but no weight. It’s the funny way in which our bodies work because when you exercise you turn some fat into lean muscle and it weighs more.

Measurements

Make sure you get some good starting measurements, if you want to be thorough then measure your: neck, chest, waist, hips, thigh, calf, forearm and bicep. Look online for tips on how to measure but generally it’s at the widest part of your body part except the waist which should be measured at the slimmest part. Seeing that you’ve lost inches off your waist can spur you on even if you aren’t any lighter. Maybe you have a goal to eventually get your waist size down to 30 inches, track this, measure once a week and be motivated by the inches lost!

BMI

Although your BMI relates to your weight it is a good indicator of where you should be aiming for. Your body mass index is worked out by your weight and height, a good health BMI to aim for is 25. You can find your BMI out online and it will tell you whether you are in the overweight, obese or morbidly obese category.

Clothing

Another goal might be to get into those jeans you bought two months ago that were too tight. Watching your clothes become baggy and having to buy new tighter ones is a great feeling. A long term goal might be that you want to easily fit into a UK size twelve or even wear a size twelve wedding dress!

Health

When exercising you will find that the exercises get easier and you have to do more to stay as active. If you find push ups really hard and can only manage five, the next day you should aim for six and build it slowly from there. Before you know it you will be doing 50 without even thinking about it. This is a good way to keep yourself doing the proper amount of exercise. As your body gets used to something it stops being as effective. It would take about three weeks of the same exercises before your body stopped feeling the benefit. So try to change about what you are doing every two weeks.

Having various different goals all to be achieved at different times can get quite confusing but if you have the organisational skills, or a diary, then you’ll be able to do it. Stick to the goals and reward yourself because doing all of this will help you keep on track to a healthier life style.