in like 1,2,3lbs a week?

even of you dont meet it? i havent been but think i will start really want to get to goal for the summer so i can go wedding dress shopping and then idelly be maintaining for a year before i get wed. I know its all pie in the sky.

But do weekly aims drive you more? and do you find you succeed more if you try to meet it.............im talking in terms of motivation rather than actual loss

In 40 years of dieting, deadline-based weight goals nearly always backfired on me. If my aim was for 5 lbs a week, I would feel like a failure if I lost "only 4.75" or if I missed the deadline, coming in even only a pound or two short, I'd obsess on the failure rather then celebrate the success.

Avoiding those kinds of goals has been even more important "this time," because I can do "everything right" and still not see a loss, which starts me on the failure obsessions.

I also think that most of us have a very poor understanding of what we realistically can expect regarding weight loss, so we tend to set goals that aren't realistic. We base it on our best weeks (or worse, what we think other people are able to lose).

Not long ago, I started paying attention at my tops meetings (taking off pounds sensibly). In tops groups, the total losses, gains, and net gain or loss are read every week - and I never really gave them much thought, until I started dividing that net number by the number of members and realized that I was not doing poorly, I was doing phenomenally - because the "average loss" is usually 1/4 to 1/2 lb per person (and there are often net gains, especially around holidays - meaning if I have any loss at all, or even gain less than the average I'm doing better than average).

When I complained to my doctor much earlier in my journey, when I was losing only 1 lb a month, that my weight loss was unexcuseably slow at my weight - my doctor pointed out that even one pound per month was far greater than the national average, because most people lose nothing, or lose and then regain. The "average" weight loss is not 2 lbs a week - that's entirely fiction. Even at 400 lbs, one pound a month was far faster than the average weight loss of all 400 lb women who wanted to lose weight, and even of those "trying" because most people fall short - convince themselves that they're failing, and as a result give up.

It's as if we have taken a job that we're told pays on average $90,000 a year, and we discover that our paychecks are only going to add up to $10,000 a year. Of course, we must be failing (or our employer lied).

But with weight loss, we tend not to question the truth of the information we've been given - we assume we're failing.

If you can set goals without setting yourself up for failure, have at it. But if you find that you're not meeting your expectations, consider changing your expectations, because quitting in the face of repeated failure isn't illogical. It's entirely logical. How long would you work at a job that didn't provide consistent paychecks? You have to be getting rewarded more often than you're getting punished, or quitting will seem like the only sensible option (remember that changing the goal may make more sense).

yeah i defo hear what your saying and i agree it can back fire, but think ill try it for 2weeks and see how i go just as a bit of a kick start really as im having a bit of a stand still with my weightloss

"If my aim was for 5 lbs a week, I would feel like a failure if I lost "only 4.75" or if I missed the deadline, coming in even only a pound or two short, I'd obsess on the failure rather then celebrate the success."

I have SO been there. And I agree, those types of goals never work out well for me either.

I go more for a monthly goal. I really enjoy participating in the monthly challenges here. They keep me motivated.

I don't set a specific goal every week, but I do have a goal of losing something every week. I also participate in longer challenges - either a month at a time or for longer periods of several weeks/months. I don't worry about losing a specific amount each week for those either, but I do try to see if I can stay on track to make the final goal I set for myself. (which I try to make realistic enough that this will be the first month I haven't made my goal).

In the past, I have experienced the disappointment of not quite making a goal. But now I am happy as long as I know I stayed on plan and I've made some progress towards that goal. At this point, every new pound lost is so exciting for me - I can't believe I am this close to Onederland now! So even though I am not going to get there by Halloween, which was a goal I set at the beginning of the month, I am working on being closer than I am right now, and that's enough to make me feel happy.

I think it really comes down to what motivates YOU. If you are going to be disappointed at not meeting a specific weekly goal and get upset and use it as an excuse to go off plan, then don't do it. If you are motivated by trying to get to a particular number but feel ok knowing that you really and truly tried your best, and you keep going so that you can get to that number, then I think it can be ok. But you have to be really honest with yourself about which of those categories you fall into.

Absolutely not. I'm already staying on plan, and I don't want to be chopping and changing my plan based on some arbitrary goal. Failure to meet a self-imposed, unnecessary goal is probably why so many people get upset with their week's progress and are tempted to give up.

I have a target line on my weight loss graph because they invite you to do that when you set it up, but it's more that it's fun to see how my progress relates to it, and I hadn't thought about all of this when I was first setting up my weight loss graph since I'm a first-time dieter. In retrospect, I'm actually really lucky that I guessed my future rate of weight loss correctly back then, it could have been off-putting otherwise. If my weight loss ends up slowing, as it does for so many people near the end, then if need be I will revise or get rid of the target line. I've already revised it to change my target weight, and I've left myself some extra space in case my weight loss does slow.

I haven't really lost anything this week, the numbers have been going up and down in the same place. This has happened many times before, and it's always followed by a nice drop which gets me back to my average of 1lb/week. So I'm not at all worried about it.

No. It doesn't make sense for me to hold myself accountable for when I lose weight.. a process that is largely out of my hands.

I- and many people here- lose in whooshes (1-3 lbs over the course of 1-3 days) once every now and then, and otherwise bounce around between a number.

Our bodies don't work on a 24-hour cycle or a 7-day-cycle like we do. It would be arbitrary for me to try to impose that logic on my body

What I do think works better for me is setting behavior-based goals, like staying on plan for 7 days, or exercising for 7 days, etc.

Good luck

Not weekly for me either - more monthly. But I try to keep it reasonable - like 5 pounds, although it doesn't stop me from trying to participate in 10 pound challenges for the heck of it!

I don't get discouraged though if I don't meet it, I just think "I'm xx closer to me goal than I was one month ago... good for me!"

I have a lifetime of diet attempts where I mentally set a weekly goal. All failed, all given up on. Then 2.5 years ago I set my goals to be behaviours that would result in weight loss. I could control the behaviours, can't really control seeing a specific number on the scale. Lost 100 lbs and have kept it off for more than 1 year.

So my recommendation is no, don't set yourself a weekly weight goal, but do set weekly goals such as what your calorie deficit will be for the week.

Couldn't agree more - Carey is spot on here. Setting a weekly numeric weight loss goal is practically setting yourself up for failure - it's like setting a goal of having sunshine every day. It's simply not within your control.

Your body most likely will not show a loss every single week like a clockwork machine, even if you are perfectly on plan. Weight loss just doesn't work like that, for most of us. What matters, then, is not whether you weigh less than you did a week ago, but whether you weigh less than you did a month or two ago.

So take a longer-term view with respect to the numbers, and in the meantime, base the goals on stuff you can control - eating withing your calorie limits for 7 days, keeping your hands out of the Halloween candy, getting to the gym 5 times, whatever behaviors you need to focus on. Achieve your behavior-based goals, and the numbers will follow in good time.

I'm another one who doesn't set a weekly goal. I've never dieted before, so I didn't really know what I was doing when I started, but I figured that eating less & moving more would eventually sort me out as I don't have any underlying health issues, so that's what I concentrated on, and have gotten better at as the months have gone by.

I just think that as I'm doing all the right things, even if my body doesn't want to give up any weight for a week or two because it's being ornery, then it will eventually sort itself out and the weight will come off.

Nope. There have been weeks where I've gained. If I set a goal to lose and end up gaining I'd feel like a huge failure.

I set goals like "I am going to resist that caramel apple sitting on my kitchen counter until Friday" and when Friday rolls around, eating it is that much more satisfying because I "won" the right to eat it. (yes, it's still sitting there, and yes, I will be enjoying sweet victory tomorrow )

No goals here either. There's too much pressure associated with "I must lose x pounds in x amount of time". Even if I'm perfectly on plan there's still the very big chance that my body will just react the way it's going to regardless of my efforts. So it's pointless to set a goal I have no control over reaching.

Instead I've made lifestyle changes - these changes have led to weight loss. That works for me.

I've actually set my goal to 2lbs per week. I think it is a good motivator for me because if I lose more than 2lbs then I want to lose even more and if I don't lose, or if I gain, then it's a challenge for me which then motivates me.