Setting Good Weight Loss Goals For 2020

With only two weeks of the year and decade remaining, we are about to entire the prime season for setting new years resolutions.

Among the resolutions for many people is weight loss — losing a few, or more, kilograms to get their body weight down.

While weight loss is a popular new years resolution, many people find themselves failing and making the same resolution year after year.

The reason most people fail is that they bite off more than they can chew.

They try to lose 12kg in the first three months of the year, but the program they are trying to follow is too different from what they were doing before and it gets too hard.

This makes sense — they have often gone from zero to one-hundred in terms of exercise, all the while cutting down their food intake. Should we really be surprised that this is not maintained?

Setting the right timeframe for your goals is vital, as it determines the rate of change that is required to achieve them.

The required change then dictates how challenging your adherence will be — small changes are easier to adhere to, while larger changes become more difficult.

Consider the goal of losing 10 kg to achieve your target weight and right now you are eating 3000 kcal per day, without doing any exercise.

If you try to achieve the goal in six weeks, you will need to do an hour of hard exercise every single day alongside reducing calories by almost 50%

If you try to do it in twelve weeks, you could do an hour of hard exercise five days per week and cut your food intake by roughly 15%

If you try to do it over 12-months, you could achieve this goal by exercising 3–4 times per week and making some small changes to your diet across the week (not necessarily every day).

It is normal to want to try and achieve your goals before the end of the year, and most people think they can adhere to any weight loss strategy if they set their mind to it (hint: they don’t).

If you decide to make some big changes in early 2020 and it becomes too hard to stick to, remember that you can always switch across to a 12-month goal and then see how the strategy goes.

You may well find it is easy, so you choose to shorten up the time frame and make things a bit more challenging.

This is much better than starting off too hard and giving up because that is what has people setting the same weight loss goals year after year.

When it comes to setting a weight loss goal for 2020, take the time to consider the time frame and its impact on what will be required to get there.

It is just like saving money — if you want to save $5k in 12 weeks, you are really going to have to change your lifestyle.

But if you save a little bit over a longer period of time, maybe you can still afford to have some smashed avo on toast and still hit your goals for the year.