You have probably heard that diets don’t work. You set a diet goal, apply willpower, lose a few pounds, and then something happens. Your willpower fails, and you gain back all the weight you lost… plus a few pounds. Go on enough diets and you might actually gain 20 or 30 pounds.
That has certainly been my experience.
Diets don’t work because they focus on things you can’t eat.
You can’t have
- donuts
- brownies
- ice cream
- cake
- certainly not cheesecake.
So you set a simple goal not to eat them.
All day long your mind is thinking about what it can’t have.
Pictures of brownies and cheesecake slices fill your mind’s eye.
It’s only a matter of time until your willpower drops and you give in.
BAM! All the weight comes back.
So… what can you do?
If you can find a basic routine that you go through each day that’s become a habit, you can change the routine and experience a different outcome.
Here are a couple of common examples.
Let’s say you have a large soda with lunch and dinner. That’s two large sodas per day. Each soda is 250 calories, so you are having 500 empty calories per day.
If you change the routine, and replace the sodas with iced tea or other non calorie drink, you instantly have a 500 calorie a day deficit. Over time you’ll lose weight.
You can apply this simple process to your morning Starbuck’s Latte. Replace that with a Green Tea or Coffee and you’ve just saved another 500 calories per day.
No diet, no hassle. No thinking about the brownies you can’t have all day.
A simple habit change can work wonders.
You can lose weight without dieting.
That’s the premise of my new book, Goals for Life.
We take goal setting and combine it with the latest research into habit change and willpower. The result is a new goal setting technique called SMARTER Goals.
This technique can give you a real breakthrough.
My book outlines a simple plan of action and includes downloadable worksheets to get you started. Just create a simple plan, find an existing routine, and replace it with something better.
Here are some common examples…
- Replace an hour of TV with writing. Get your book written in 6 months.
- Replace your large dinner plates with smaller ones. Save 100 to 200 calories on each meal.
- Replace listening to music while you drive with insightful audio books. Learn an amazing amount effortlessly while you commute.
- Set your morning alarm an hour earlier. Use this time to start a business, write a book, or start a blog. ( An incremental approach works well here)
- Replace the morning news with a running program. Train for a 5k and accomplish it in just a couple of months.
As you can see, you can do some amazing things with this habit replacement program. It’s just a matter of writing down your goal, identifying the existing routine, and then replacing it with an action that fulfills your plan.
Why not set some SMARTER Goals today?
My book is a quick read, and the enclosed worksheets will have your goals set in no time, with a specific plan of action to accomplish them.
Goals for Life. Set Smarter Goals that Stick
Question: What goals will you set?
