Goals

Skinny people will tell you that you have to set a goal before starting a diet. You have to know where you're going in order to get there, they say.

A lot of people have asked me what my goal is on the Rehab Diet. Interestingly, I never really thought of one. I'm a big fan of making lists and writing down goals and keeping track of progress. I do it in my business and other areas of my personal life, and to be honest, I've done it in the past at the start of diets. But setting up weight loss goals does two things to the fat person:

1) It sets up the potential for failure, and 2) It creates the notion that once the goal weight is met, the job is finished.

I'll explain:

The fat mind is a fragile mechanism that needs to be cajoled, manipulated and even lied to at times, in order to keep the train on the tracks. Determining a weight loss goal at the beginning of this process - say 10% of my body weight - would have made me get out the calculator and determine what I needed to lose each week. In order for me to lose 30 pounds in twelve weeks I would need to lose, on average, 2.5 pounds a week. Certainly doable and not too far from the range skinny people claim is "healthy."

If you've followed my weigh-ins, you know I lost 2 pounds a week in my first three weeks. Given my propensity to lose large amounts of weight very quickly (albeit by starving myself), I can't tell you how discouraged I'd be if I felt like those measly two pounds a week fell short of some pre-determined goal - even if it were just by half a pound.

On the contrary, I lost 2 pounds that first week by doing nothing but cutting Coke out of my diet. Frankly, I wasn't expecting to lose a thing - I figured I was just making a healthier choice that would pay dividends further down the road. Imagine how giddy I was to see actual weight loss and how motivated that made me to continue?

A simple goal of weighing less than I did the week before I weighed in is about all I'm willing to commit to. Over the course of twelve weeks, I figure at the very least, I'll be 12 pounds lighter and better off than I was when I started.

The second issue with creating a goal weight is this notion that once you reach it, you're done. Nothing could be further from the truth. The number should not be the goal - the bad habits that are broken and the healthy habits that are developed are what I'm hoping will sustain my prolonged weight control (damn, I'm starting to sound like one of them). Slowly but steadily, over the course of twelve weeks, I'm changing the way I live, and that's the ultimate goal.