It’s easy to focus on workouts, drinking water, and eating food that helps to fuel your body. These are the basic building blocks for being healthy and even losing weight. What’s not so obvious is that other things can undermine your health goals. The biggest obstacles to achieving your goals are not the physical steps to achieving them. Rather, they are mental blocks that can keep you from getting to where you want to go, and you might not even realize they’re there.
Even if you’re putting in the work, there are other things that can stand in the way. What are the biggest obstacles to achieving your goals? Sometimes, without even realizing it, we can stand in our own way. Words people say to us, limits we put on ourselves, and other mental blocks can keep us from ever reaching the goals we truly desire.
Mental work seems impractical and detached from the daily activities that get us to where we want to go. Yet, if we can overcome a mental block that’s holding us back, it can make the hugest difference in achieving our goals! Just recognizing it’s there can be the key to help you get to where you want to go.
Should You Have a Goal Weight in Mind Or Is This One of The Biggest Obstacles to Achieving Your Goals?
We all do this! We try to lose a specific number of pounds or want to reach an ideal weight on the scale. This gives us a definite goal to aim for. If we’re not shooting for a target, we’ll never reach that target. The scale is one of many physical measurements that helps us gage where we’re at and how far we want to go. At the same time, the scale doesn’t account for fat versus muscle weight, and why is that magic number the one you chose as your goal in the first place? Is it really the ideal weight for you in this season of your life?
Achieving a goal weight is cause to celebrate! It means you accomplished something you set out to do. However, “living” healthy is exactly that, a lifelong journey. Just because you reach a certain weight on the scale doesn’t mean your journey has ended. In a lot of ways, it’s just begun. Maintaining can be even more difficult than crushing it until you reach your goal.
It’s also the perfect time to re-evaluate where you’re at. Did you misjudge what weight was best for you? Do you look and feel your best or do you truly have more work to do? Did you lose more than you wanted and you actually would like to gain a few pounds back? Just because you set a “goal weight” doesn’t mean you’ve arrived and there’s no work left to do. It means it’s celebration time, a perfect point to re-evaluate and then get back to work.
Do We Ever Arrive?
Over the years, I’ve set health goals and achieved them. Actually reaching those goals doesn’t necessarily feel like you think it would. Not many people talk about this. Everybody has a goal they’re aiming for, but then what? When you reach it, you have achieved something great. Yes, celebrate; enjoy with a slice of your favorite cake and icecream, but it doesn’t stop there.
In our brains, we have an ideal body physique or goal weight in mind where we would be “our best.” This just isn’t reality. Life is a series of seasons and this doesn’t include reaching an ideal point and pressing pause so we can just stay there forever. In a real world, we will have times of cutting and losing body fat. We’ll also have times of building muscle.
Maybe life gets crazy, and the scale inches up more than we like. The proper response isn’t to cut back on everything we enjoy. If we do that, we might get lower on the scale, but it won’t be in a way we can sustain forever. Just recognizing the seasons that come and go, building muscle and losing body fat, losing and gaining, can be helpful.
Life is Made Up of Seasons
If you were to ask that ideal model or body builder how they do it, they would tell you they haven’t “arrived.” Even they experience seasons of cutting or building just before a contest or photo shoot, and then recovering with a more balanced lifestyle. They’ve learned to use these seasons to their benefit, but they haven’t just reached all their goals and then it stops. It’s an ongoing journey with ever-rising new goals and things to work towards. For you to enjoy life and maintain your goals, learning about those seasons and using them to your benefit can be so helpful!
What Happens When Your “Ideal Weight” is One of the Biggest Obstacles to Achieving Your Goals?
I’m a Mom to 4 beautiful, fun kids. After each one was born, I had a goal weight in mind I wanted to get back down to. I would nurse and cut back and work hard after each child to try to get back to that number. I felt comfortable at that weight, and it was the weight I was before I got pregnant with our first child.
After having baby #4, I got back to that weight several times. However, my goals were different now. I was no longer going thru the ups and downs of pregnancy and having a newborn. I wanted to get more tone in my arms and see my abs. But, at this weight, I wasn’t seeing those goals. In my head, this was my ideal weight. Was I just not meant to achieve those things? I was a mom of 4 now and was running around after kids. Why wasn’t I able to reach my goals?
The Problem Wasn’t Physical, It Was Mental
My mental block that a certain weight was my ideal number was where I settled every single time. It didn’t matter that I had learned so much more about nutrition and health. It didn’t matter that I needed to have a smaller body fat percentage to see the muscle tone I was wanting. What mattered is that a specific number was good enough even when it was no longer relevant to the season of life I was in.
Mental blocks like this can keep us from achieving our goals and hold us back without us even realizing what is happening. Just realizing it was there was so freeing. Now, I don’t limit myself to that number. The scale may show more or less than this number depending on the season I’m in, but it no longer limits where I can go.
What About Other People’s Comments-One of The Biggest Obstacles to Achieving Your Goals
If you start losing or gaining weight, or your body composition changes dramatically, it’s normal for other people to make comments. My husband and I have both been asked if we were sick. I was like “No, I’m in the best shape of my adult life!” Having someone ask this means they care about you and that you’re actually making great positive changes in your life.
I’ve had someone tell me they thought if I lost more weight, I wouldn’t look as sexy. The result was that I didn’t lose another pound for at least 6-12 months after that. I was in a weight loss season after having a baby, but it didn’t matter. Just those words affected my actions and I didn’t even realize it. Another person said I definitely didn’t need to lose any more weight. My friends have been told they’re getting “too skinny” or are “losing too much weight.” These kind of comments can make you second guess everything you’re doing.
It’s not bad to second-guess. Actually, it can reaffirm you’re right where you want to be. Am I really healthy right now? Am I eating good foods and getting stronger?
It can also help to look at the person making those comments. A lot of times, those people are not at a good place in their own health, and they can be taking that out on you with their negative comments. If they don’t have your ideal build and aren’t a role-model for you in health, why should you let their comments pave the road for where you go on your own journey? Ultimately, you’re the only one responsible for your own health; only you can choose where that road leads!
Don’t Just Settle…
I’ve heard friends say that they’re not really where they want to be, even though they’re eating healthy and living an active lifestyle. Just don’t settle. Learning more about nutrition and eating healthy and how to be at your best involves time. There’s a learning curve and staying fit is hard work. However, it’s worth it.
Are you putting in the work and still falling short of where you want to be? If so, keep it up! Keep learning and growing! A lot of the more fit people in the world have been eating healthy and working out for years! If you haven’t achieved everything you want in a year or two, keep moving towards your goals.
Keep in mind that becoming healthy has a snowball-like effect. As you get closer and closer to your goals, you get to enjoy all the benefits you’ve achieved so far. You don’t have to wait until you reach your goals to start feeling and looking better. You get a little bit better each day, and you get to enjoy that throughout your journey!
As I said earlier, it’s not like you magically arrive when you achieve your goals. You’re consistently going to be getting stronger or weaker; eating in a way that makes you feel better or worse. This is life! Life is an ongoing journey. When you’re making good choices, moving things in the right direction, you are at your best! That’s when you see growth, experience things you could’ve missed out on, and achieve your goals on a regular basis. That’s what it means to have a sustainable healthy lifestyle! Don’t let the biggest obstacles to achieving your goals get the best of you. Overcome and learn and grow and enjoy this beautiful life you’ve been given!
