Goal Setting and Perfectionism

After a long hiatus of not training anyone whether it be online or in person, I jumped back in early August and have been picking up more and more along the way. I have 2 Online clients right now which I have known quite some time, but due to Navy moves havent seen in a while. Doing things differently now than with FFGF, it is alot more personal and I am enjoying it. We email a few times almost daily and speak by phone some too. They both are super pumped up not only about the changes they see, but the knowledge they are aquiring along the way. They are so appreciative as well which always is so nice.

One of my one on one clients who I cannot wait to start is a man who J knows from work. Dont know him real well, but from what I see it will be enjoyable! For instance he sent back some of his paperwork with my butterfly logo having been replaced with a skull and crossbones and anywhere I had a word girlie or lady/ladies he replaced it with “Dudes”    I LOVE IT!!!! We should be starting this week- I look forward to it- I think he’ll be fun!

But I have all of these great articles from the FFGF Message Board and want to put them to use. So little by little I will post them here for people to read if they choose. Some I know the author, some I dont- if I do know I’ll be sure to give credit where its due. Hope you enjoy!

 

 

Goal-Setting and Perfectionism

There are three phases to a weight loss process: Goal-setting, Planning and Execution. What I’m going to do here is list the perfectionism traps at each stage along the way. See if you recognize yourself.

How does perfectionism sabotage one’s weight loss goals? Let me count the ways….

Perfectionism makes people set unreasonable, unrealistic or downright impossible goals. A very low goal weight is extremely motivating at the beginning of a weight loss project, because it ramps up your will power and makes you able to tolerate deprivations and restrictions that you wouldn’t normally be able to stand–but sheer will power only lasts 3 to 4 weeks. Any weight loss which takes longer than a month needs to be accomplished by means of habit change, not willpower.

If your goal weight is unrealistically low, your subconscious mind knows it. You can distract and temporarily overrule your subconscious with the excitement of a new diet plan or exercise program, but as I said, that only lasts a few weeks. After the honeymoon period, if you do not have a subconscious buy-in to the goal weight (which means that you actually KNOW, not believe but KNOW you are capable of getting there from where you are now with the skills and discipline you CURRENTLY have), you will immediately start having to fight off the awfukits. And awfukit will win, eventually.

Goal weights can always be revised down later, if it becomes desireable to do so. But it is a diet killer to make them too low to start with.

A similar thing happens with time frames. Perfectionists have a tendency to set unreasonably short time-frames for a weight loss. (Sometimes they don’t do it consciously, but the mental expectation is there and it’s usually not hard to elicit it with the right questions.) They envision themselves sticking perfectly to a perfect plan, and the weight coming off in a perfectly linear fashion, and so they build in ZERO “fudge time,” as I like to call it. In the mental world of the perfectionist, there are no slip-ups, no water retention, and certainly never any circumstances beyond your control forcing you to either eat off-plan or go hungry for many hours.

But what happens in the real world of dieting, when you don’t build in any fudge time? Like, you have 8 lbs of water retention–who knows why? Or you get caught up in a wildcat airline strike that sits you in an airport for 26 hours with the choice of Burger King or nothing. Or you have a donut. But your schedule for the weight goal is so tight that you can’t afford for any of these things to happen. Now you’re behind. You’re not going to get there when you said you would. Or worse yet, you’re not going to get there for the trip or the wedding or the thing you just HAVE to lose the weight for, because you were counting on being perfect so you didn’t leave enough time for the unexpected. You are going to fail, again. AWFUKIT!!

Any of this sound familiar to anyone reading?
Planning and Perfectionism

Perfectionism makes people set up eating and exercise strategies that are too rigid and too restrictive. I covered a bit of this before with the time-frames, but it also applies to actually setting up the diet. Perfectionists are attracted to diets with very clear rules and lists of “good” and “bad” foods. That way it is easy to know if you’re doing it perfectly enough, or not. Some perfectionists go way off the deep end with food lists and restrictions and develop a kind of OCD over what they are and are not allowed to eat. It’s “fundamentalist dieting” and it is just as destructive to the thinking process as most other forms of fundamentalism. At its extreme, these are the people who ruin everybody else’s dinner out by obsessing over calories and carb grams, and asking for an ingredient breakdown for everything on the ****ing menu.

With such a rigid plan, and such clear lines of demarcation between right and wrong, it is easy to decide that you are either “on plan” or “off plan.” Combine this thinking pattern with the unhelpful goals I mentioned above, and you get awfukit again, usually with a big dollop of self-hatred: “Why can’t I stay on a SIMPLE CLEAR PLAN?” Why? Because it is not realistic and doesn’t take your human nature into account. But people usually jump to the conclusion that there is something deeply flawed within their psyches, or that they have no resolve or discipline, or even that they have some sort of addiction.
Execution and Perfectionism

One of the critical success strategies for a dieter is knowing what you will do when you break the diet. Notice I said when, not if. Even those of us who are on the Flexible Dieting train have unauthorized, unplanned cheats from time to time. And sometimes people just have a pig-out (or in my case, a good old fashioned night on the tiles). It’s human nature.

Perfectionists don’t plan for what they will do when they fall off the wagon, because they expect themselves to stay on. They are very distrustful of their own bodies and minds, and tend to believe that even mentally allowing for any slips, implying that going off-plan is okay in any way, is getting on the slippery slope. But in real life, it’s the people who have NO plans for “relapse” who relapse the worst, and take the longest time to get back on track.

Tags: goal setting, Perfectionism, Personal Training