Have you ever set yourself a target body weight – and then failed to maintain it?
Have you ever set yourself a body fat goal and then struggled to reach it? Did you feel like you had failed or settled for second best?
Did it put you off setting goals all together?
To keep you motivated and making progress, set performance goals instead.
Performance goals are anything related to your performance or your abilities, as opposed to your body composition or shape. Examples of performance goals would be to aim for a certain weight in the deadlift, or to do 10 push ups, or improve your 400m sprint time.
Performance goals can be quicker to realise than body composition goals for people who are struggling. They are good for you psychologically as they take the focus away from what your body looks like, to what it can do!
Performance goals are also ideal for people who have reached an initial ‘weight loss’ goal and are wondering, what next?
Ability is empowering
The ability to do things seems to be more empowering and confidence-building than just looking good. There are countless of women who look good – models, actresses and so on – who are some of the most insecure people on the planet!
The amazing thing is that if you train for performance, your appearance will change anyway as an effect of the training and the mindset you get into. Plus you’ll have gained new skills and abilities.
Lifting weights helps people to eat better – feeling your body get stronger and fitter makes you more careful about what you put in it. Most people I know end up losing fat when training for strength and performance, not just because of the training (although it helps) but because they get a more athletic mindset and want to fuel properly.
Here is a personal example. I really love my red wine, but I don’t like to have alcohol the night before I train, because it affects my training session. My training session and my performance in it is important to me, so this gives me the motivation to stay off the wine – which I otherwise would find difficult!
Ability to transform
Training, especially with weights, can transform your body in so many ways. Let’s be honest, not everyone is obsessed with being smaller. When I first started going to the gym, I wanted to lose fat and get in better shape, but I didn’t associate that with getting smaller. I was proud, the day my shoulders could no longer fit into my suit jackets! I take up more space, but I look better too.
What’s important is the ability to transform, not what you transform into. The ability to transform means that you have control over your body and you are making choices and making things happen, not being passive and accepting things the way they are.
This is empowering – and it works almost as soon as you start!
It worked for these women too: