When starting on any journey towards your goals, whether they are educational, career-related, or becoming “good” at something, it takes time, patience, and the mindset of knowing it will all pay off in the end. We know this and work hard to get the degrees, promotions, and to become great at something.

However, we don’t often have that mindset with our health and fitness goals, though we should. We tend to have high expectations of our fitness journeys. Results can be broad and different for everyone, but one thing we all have in common is wanting results fast. The reason for wanting things to change fast is due to wanting to get rid of the negative feelings you have and to feel better. It makes sense that you would want to feel better quickly but you can feel better progressively if you understand the process of goal-setting.

If you want to actually reach your goals and enjoy the process, it first starts with not being so hard on yourself if things don’t change immediately or you get off course a bit. If you feel like you are constantly failing or beat yourself up all the time when you aren’t perfect, then you may not be setting realistic goals.

If your only form of cardio right now is running after your kids, how well do you think you would do in a full marathon right now? This doesn’t mean you could never do it; it just means you have to make a plan to learn how to run efficiently, improve your endurance, and make sure your body is prepared to take it on. This could take months and months to do, depending on how well you want to finish.

This example is a great way to point out that when it comes to fitness goals, we tend to base our results on how we look and a number on a scale only. This is where things can get frustrating, boring, tedious — and make it hard to stay on track.

If you did base a goal around running a marathon, your goal would be to be able to complete it and feel good about all the things you need to do to reach that goal. This means you automatically focus on healthier food choices, exercising consistently, and improving lifestyle habits like improving hydration, drinking less alcohol, better managing time and stressors. These become your sub-goals.

With all those sub-goals, you end up not only being able to run a marathon, but also getting some amazing outcomes like weight-loss.

So why is it that our thought process tends to be very different when it comes to our health and fitness goals? Why are our goals so hard to achieve and maintain? Why are our expectations often failed and/or unrealistic?

It starts with constantly being surrounded with social media posts and advertisements promising us quick fixes for our bodies and our health, like “Lose 10 lb in a week!” or “Build the perfect body in a month!” or “Detox your way to better health in a week!”. These quick weight-loss products are typically endorsed by slim and popular celebrities to reel us in. We now live in an instant gratification world. Things we want are now literally at our fingertips and show up at our door hours later. We no longer have to work as hard to get what we want. This unfortunately trickles over into our health.

Then, it’s a mix of how easy it “used to be” or a sudden surge of temporary motivation that makes us believe that this time will be different and the “if they can do it, I can do it” mentality. This has us sitting with these unrealistic expectations that it will be easy and that it won’t be too time-consuming.

The truth is, like any other goal you have set in your life, it isn’t going to happen overnight, and could possibly take months before you actually reach your ultimate goal. Expecting big changes to happen instantly sets us up for disappointment, frustration, and has us quitting before we should.

For most of us, starting and stopping due to impatience hinders our ability to trust ourselves. We no longer believe we are capable of following through or we think our bodies are failing us.

Here are a few tips to help you reach your goals and maintain them:

  1. Having an ultimate goal of weight-loss is common and okay, but it can lead you down a very rocky path. So having smaller sub-goals with a focus on how you want to feel helps you obtain more patience and understanding. Setting sub-goals like being consistent with healthy eating and movement, getting quality sleep, getting to healthy hormone levels, increasing energy, etc., will have you on the right path to your ultimate goal without you getting on the scale every day. Results beyond the scale add up and create more confidence with following through and will have you feeling better. When you feel better, you do better.

  2. If you keep using the same methods and keep falling short, it’s time to try a new way. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again but expect different results.

  3. When you start out with your fitness journey, use tools that can show progress. Writing down the amount of weight that you lift and the number of reps that you can do can help you see how you have improved your strength and endurance. Video tape push-ups and do as many as you can. Then video tape them again in 2–3 weeks. If your form has improved and you can do more, you are improving. The same thing with a static plank. You could use a rowing machine at a certain level and see how long you can go, then try it again in a few weeks. If you can go longer at the same level, you are improving.

  4. If weight-loss is a goal, take pictures and try on clothes. The scale can be misleading. Weight can fluctuate and that will frustrate you to the point where you think there is no point in continuing to reach your goal. With pictures, you can see change in posture, shape, and how your clothes fit. This feels so much better than depending on a scale to show you how well you are doing. The scale won’t show you the things that matter the most.

  5. Understand that no journey will be perfect and striving for perfection will set you back or make you quit before you even really get started. You will have setbacks, you will get off track at times, and you will want to go back to old habits when life gets challenging. It will happen. But when it does, it’s how you recover that makes you stronger and more confident in your ability to follow through. Learning how to course-correct is a goal in itself, one you shouldn’t skip in your plan to become a healthier version of yourself.

  6. Start where you are, not where you want to be. If you start off with six workouts a week but you haven’t been working out in years, you will be completely overwhelmed, and your body will respond negatively. Start off by slowly increasing frequency, intensity, time, and type (FITT) of exercise. This goes for nutrition and lifestyle habits too. Avoid changing everything at once, otherwise it will be extremely hard to keep up with and will lead to overwhelm.

  7. Stop comparing yourself to others, setting goals to please someone else or trying to keep up to someone else and feeling bad if you don’t get the same results. This will only cause you grief and frustration, leading to less confidence and giving up, which is the opposite of what you want. We are all different and that means we will have different approaches and different goals.

Make sure you aren’t placing any unnecessary pressure on yourself. Remember, it’s not a race, it’s a journey that should be enjoyable. Take time to appreciate and acknowledge all the small things along the way. You will discover so much about yourself, your abilities, and how resilient you really are.

If you can set realistic expectations with realistic goals, and patiently allow yourself to move forward towards them, you will be surprised by just how much you can achieve.