LAST week I kicked off the Autumn Success Drive and I asked you to set a goal to achieve. I got a lot of feedback about some of your negative feelings towards goals and we’re going to do more on the subject this week.

Goals are all very good when you can stay focussed, aren’t they?!

The thing is, so many people struggle to consistently focus on achieving their goals and that’s why they come unstuck and fall off the weight loss wagon.

Then they brand themselves a failure and give up. They end up in the diet – fail – diet – fail vicious cycle.

But this doesn’t have to happen!

This week I’m giving you some advice and brain re-training strategies for success.

The key to consistency is to accept there will be blips along the way and plan for them.  This means you set the big goals and then break your goals into mini-goals.

Think about blips not as failures so much as learning results, which then help you to move forward and try something a different way.

So to kick you off, for the next four weeks I’m running a goals challenge.  This is a masterclass on goal planning and consistency.

Are you in? If so, then take part under this blog or in Slimpod Club. Would love to have you on board!

Write down the big goals you’d like to achieve. It’s best to only have two or three goals and they need to be meaningful and achievable.  You should continue with the goals after this challenge is over too so don’t stop at the end of the four weeks!

Here’s some examples:

One could be a meaningful weight loss goal – eg: drop a size in eight weeks

One could be a “happiness goal”.  These are fundamentally important because most people want to lose weight to feel better about themselves.  A goal like this will enable you to track your confidence and how much better you’re feeling about yourself

One could be a health goal.

Next important step is the mini goals, the weekly tasks that help you get there.  The goal is the ultimate dream and the mini goals are the daily or weekly things/tasks that will help you get there.

If you’re the proud owner of a Slimpod then of course achieving your goals is so much easier because you’ll be eating less, have more control over your choices and it will be nudging you to move more.

It will also be helping you to regain some control over things that drive you to eat.  Some people are happy to allow the Slimpod to influence their unconscious mind and trust it to do all the work for them, while others need some extra help because they don’t trust themselves to make good choices.

They also might have had emotional triggers driving them to eat for so long, they feel totally out of control.

So here you go – write your goals down in your success journal that I mentioned last week:

Your goals could look like this:

Goal 1: Fit into my size 14 dress .

Mini goals:  Week one – Listen to my Slimpod each day and look at the balance of my food.  Ensure I’m eating protein with each meal

Week two:  Ensure my shopping basket contains limited sugary stuff.

Week three:  Listen for my full signal during meals.

Goal 2: Feel positive and happy

Mini goals: Week one – Write my three positives every day

Week two:  Recite a daily affirmation at the start of the day

Week three: Learn how to meditate/mindfulness

We can all learn how to set goals, but most people don’t see them through.  So here’s a goals checklist and you can use this as a daily or weekly reminder:

I’ve already mentioned that you need to plan for the blips and sabotage and this really helps with working out where the weaknesses are so you can deal with them and move forward to success.

Goals checklist

1. What did you do today to reach your goal?
2. What got in the way?
3. How did you deal with that?
4. If you messed up what were your thoughts, feelings and actions?
5. What is your learning from this?
6. What could you say to yourself that could help you to avoid sabotaging next time?

The goals checklist is about planning for the times you might “fall off the wagon” so that your brain is prepared for them and they become part of the journey rather than the reason for failure.

We all have vulnerable moments – it’s part of life!  Even “normal” eaters have times when they have chocolate or cake.  The difference is it doesn’t mean they think they’ve failed with their healthy eating and they just get on with life afterwards.

This little checklist also acts as a daily/weekly reminder about your mini goals, because we all know how life can take over and make us forget about our goals!

So this week’s tasks:

1. Set your big goal
2. Add mini goals
3. Plan the blips/vulnerable moments/birthdays/celebrations/
4. Keep reminders of your goals visible

So there you go!  Plenty to keep you busy!  Do share your goals beneath the blog or in Slimpod Club – you’re at least 30 per cent more likely to achieve them if you make them public!