How I Overachieved My 2020 Fitness Goals

Last year was the first time that I ever set any fitness goals. Every year I had a simple goal to lose weight, but that’s it. Nothing too detailed or planned out. Just eat healthy food and workout out was my strategy.

Isn’t that good enough to reach my goal? Because that’s what all books, podcasts, blog posts, and memes say — 80% diet and 20% exercise is the key to good health.

I’ve had a healthy lifestyle for 6 years now, so working out and eating healthy came easy to me.

Yet, I didn’t have my desired body. My ‘problematic area’ was my tummy,and it never seemed to go no matter what I did.

So I did something differently in 2020, I penned down my goals. There was a step-by-step method, of course.

This method helped me

• get muscle definition

• lower by body fat by 7%

• lose lots of inches

• become happier!

Step 1: Write your primary goal + few fun goals

Your primary goal is the ultimate achievement you want. For me, it was attaining a body fat percentage of 22% from 29%.

Fun goals are the new skills you want to attain (e.g. pull-ups) or things you want to do (e.g.hiking).

My fun goal was learning push-ups and improving my burpees.

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Step 2: Create Rough Timelines

It’s ideal to achieve your primary goal before year-end, but fun goals a little earlier. That’s because these fun goals are also components which help you get there.

Draft a timeline. By what month do you want to attain a smaller goal?

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Step 3: Create monthly goals that align with your primary goal

What does it take to achieve your primary goal?

Apart from the fun goals, is there a particular way of eating or workout which will help you get there? Write that down.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to think of the smaller goals for all months. Just one at a time is alright.

I planned to do yoga in May because I felt my body needed it, and today its changed me completely physically and mentally. So it’s good to go with the flow!

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Step 4: Set small milestones

Here, we create small actionables which help us get closer to where we want to be.

For e.g. to reduce my body fat percentage, I needed to change my workout style. I was overdoing my workouts and eating out too often, both of which hampered my body.

Hence, my actionables were:

• to reduce eating out from 5 times a week to twice a week

• eat more vegetables

• try to eat dinner 3 hours before sleeping

Similarly, my goal to become better at burpees required me to

• practice burpees after a workout for 10 minutes

• do 5 burpees every minute for 10 minutes as a routine

• increase it to 6 when I do the previous step well

• do a 30 second maximum burpees challenge every month

With this, I reduced my burpee time from 7 seconds/burpee to 3.5 seconds/burpee.

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Step 5: Edit monthly goals each month

Life happens, and it’s okay to not go as per your set timelines. So while you have a rough timeline, tweak your goals every month depending on your progress.

Reflect each month on

• what went well

• what can improve

• results tracking (info in next step)

And set an actionable accordingly. You can also do this weekly!

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Step 6: Track your progress

Measuring our progress helps us become more efficient.

Measuring your progress weekly, in whatever way you want, will help you strategise for the following month.

For me, this measurement was inches as my primary goal was to reduce body fat.

Your measure of progress can be anything!

From how many reps of an exercise you can do to how much you’ve run — it can be anything that aligns to your objectives.

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Step 7: Enjoy the process

This entire journey is a lot of fun, all it requires is a change in attitude. The most important mindset shift which helped me was to lose weight because you love your body, not because you hate it.

There will be ups and lows, but that's a part of life, isn’t it? Oh, where’s the fun if it was a straight line!

Choose to be healthy because you deserve it, choose to nourish your body with nutritious food, and choose to eat that donut when you really want it.

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To Summarise

1. Write your primary goal + few fun goals

2. Create rough timelines

3. Create monthly goals that align with your primary goal

4. Set small milestones

5. Edit monthly goals each month

6. Track your progress

7. Enjoy the process

All the best!

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