It’s great fun to lose weight, to see the numbers on the scale moving down, to get into smaller sized clothes and to see muscle definition forming from your toning exercises.

All of this is fun and motivating but there is a danger lurking in your weight loss goals, something I’ve done in the past and something I’ve seen others do, which is making your main goal in life be weight loss.

While I do agree that your health and fitness should take primary importance in your life no matter how busy you may be there is a problem if the only goal you’re working towards is weight loss. Why? Because if you are a goal oriented person what happens after you lose weight and reach your goal?

What Happened to My Goal?

If you’re a goal-oriented person but the main thing you have going on in your life is weight loss then once you get to your goal weight you run the risk of regaining what you’ve lost and being in a perpetual mode of “weight loss” for life. It’s an awesome goal to have and an awesome feeling to feel while you see your body transforming during the weight loss and fitness process; so awesome that if you aren’t careful you might unconsciously do it all over again.

While I doubt that anyone would consciously want to be in a perpetual weight loss mode throughout life the problem is that if you aren’t fully aware of what you’re doing you just might trip yourself up and regain the weight to lose all over again. Sure, there could be many other reasons you would regain the weight you’d already lost, the main one being that the core issue for the weight problem was never healed, but in sticking to this topic it’s just so important to have bigger life goals that go beyond weight loss.

Great Health Is a Foundation for a Great Life

The human body functions best when it is at a healthy weight and when you are living with great health it allows you to live a better life – simple as that. In other words, your health is the foundation for your larger life goals and unless your business is all about health and fitness, there will be larger goals for you to shoot for in life than only weight loss. Now if you don’t have larger goals in life then now may be the time to cultivate some.

This doesn’t mean that you need to shoot for running a country, it simply means that your weight loss goals be put in their proper place, that the basis for losing weight, feeling great, and living a healthy lifestyle be so that you can create a better life for yourself in all areas. Your health and fitness will give you more focus and energy to accomplish whatever else you are working on in your life, whether that be raising a family, running a business, or enjoying retirement. The whole point here is that the main focus or goal in life be about your life and not about food, weight, or the scale.

In my own experience I’ve found that the more excited I am about my life’s goals, the less focused I am on the weight loss process. What this means is that while I still take the necessary actions to lose the weight (I dropped another 1.5 lbs last week and more in the past 2 days – I’m down to 144!), I’m focused on the bigger picture instead of being so focused on food and my weight.

When you grab onto life and go for your passion, that thing that really makes you tick (could be your work, your family, a project, your talents, or something else), you’ll be living your life with joy in the moment and it will be even easier to lose the weight.

What About You?

Have you ever found yourself feeling almost let down once you reached your weight loss goal and later regaining some or all of the weight that you lost? Since then have you created bigger goals in your life above the weight loss? Have you found that by having that excitement for life that it’s even easier for you to lose weight?

Photo by duncan