Stay motivated by using Behavioural Goals
While goal setting on the face of it seems simple, choosing goals that will actual help you through the process is actually more difficult than it seems.
It’s easy to think up of a few outcome goals you would like to achieve… lose a few pounds, how much weight you want to squat, what dress size you would like to be.
While these are good long term goals, they aren’t really going to help motivate you on a daily or weekly basis. The best way to set your goals if to focus on the process and set yourself some behavioural goals.
Behavioural goals focus on the aspects of our life that we can control on a day to day basis, they should focus on the actions and behaviours you intend to do consistently daily and weekly.
Here is a comparison of some traditional goals vs some behavioural goals to get you going:
| Traditional Goal | Behavioural Goal |
| Lose 1 stone | Eat 3 home cooked meals each day |
| Use MyFitnessPal 5 days a week | |
| Eat a portion of protein with each meal | |
| Weigh myself every Monday and Thursday morning top assess progress | |
| Improve my overall strength & fitness | Train 4 times a week at pre-arranged times (e.g. PT on Mondays and Thursdays, Circuits class on Tuesday evenings and run on Saturday morning) |
| Squat 1.5x my own body weight | Squat 3 times per week using varying rep schemes |
| Improve my sleep quality | Turn my phone off 30 mins before I go to bed |
| Create a bed time routine to help me relax and limit distractions | |
| Improve my strength & muscle mass | Follow a strength training program on Monday, Wednesday and Friday |
| Do a body composition assessment including weight, circumferences and body fat every 2 weeks |
These behavioural goals should help give you a plan of action to stick to, help you stay accountable for your results and give you much more motivation than simply trying to lose weight or getting ripped, while still keeping you moving toward that underlying goal.
And remember when setting behavioural goal to always use actions rather than trying to remove behaviours. For example, if your goal is to stop snacking on chocolate and fizzy drinks at work, your action goal would be to have one snack per day of an apple at 2pm.
Good luck people!
Joe
