When you walk into a health club or start a program with a personal trainer, one of the first questions you are asked is “What are your fitness goals?”

I have worked in several health and fitness clubs and the sales people always had a sort of script they would run through with all new potential customers that would take the club tour. This script was largely designed around the greatest potential to make the sale rather than address the customers individual needs, but these questions that come from not only fitness sales people but also from many trainers and instructors is a sure way to failure.

Our brains tend to be wired for a sequence of things when we think about setting a goal. We first define the goal, then we start the activity necessary to reach the goal. And once that goal has been reached, the activity is no longer necessary.

Most people’s fitness goal is “I want to lose X number of pounds” or “I want to fit into a certain article of clothing again”. I’m not saying you shouldn’t set any goals at all. But you should be very careful and specific about the kinds of goals you define for yourself and in what context you set them. Think of it in terms of making a fitness PLAN instead of a fitness goal. The reason a plan is much better is because it’s open ended. It’s like starting a new business. And any new business needs a business plan to get it started. A road map not only for success but for continual sustainable success.

It’s kind of like asking “What are your sleep goals?” or “What are your personal hygiene goals?”. Well I would like to feel well rested and I want to be clean and not smell. When you reach these goals do you stop sleeping or stop bathing? Of course not. Because if you did then you would soon get very tired and start to stink again.

The most effective way to truly achieve permanent healthy body composition is to make weight loss unimportant to you and make health of primary importance. The fat loss will come anyway. If you are going to set any kind of goal right at the start then it should be something to the effect that you are going to partake in a consistent routine of exercise and healthy eating until it becomes automatic and permanently integrated into your lifestyle. In my mind this sounds much less like a goal, and more like a plan.

This line of thinking was what yielded success for me when goal setting did nothing but cause me to fail so many times before. So now when I set fitness goals I only do so within the framework of my overall fitness plan.