TGIM: Perfect Plan

Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday!
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tl;dr Fail to plan, plan to fail. You’ve heard it, you know it, and you still do it. Scheduling setbacks is essential for achieving your goals.
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This is one of those sayings that is about as jaded as they come, but for good reason. We all are guilty of not allotting ourselves enough time to complete tasks, overscheduling our days, and falling short of our expectations. But we do it again and again.

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This applies to having an extensive to-do list that is impossible to accomplish in a day, as well as to longer-term projects that we struggle to grasp the breadth of when planning.
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For example, everyone starts worrying about losing weight right before summer is in full swing. They want to lose 10 pounds in four weeks. And then summer comes, the goal is not met, and frustration ensues. So, how can we better plan for goals like losing weight?

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First, collect the information you need. It might be helpful to know for weight loss that one pound per week is a reasonable goal, and two pounds per week is a more aggressive goal. The more aggressive the goal, the more stringent you have to be with sticking to the habits that will get you there. Which all sounds fine and dandy until you get home after a bad day of work and still have to get to the gym and cook some food you don’t want to eat.

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Once you have the information collected, you have to establish the plan. And this is where things go awry. You decide you’re willing to be semi-strict and want to lose about one pound per week for your weight loss goal. You give yourself eight weeks to lose eight pounds, which will require you to be in about a 500-calorie deficit per day for eight weeks. You plan to stick to this by decreasing your caloric intake and increasing your movement.
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But in all of your information collection and scheduling, you forgot about your cousin’s wedding in two weeks, the pizza party at work in four weeks, and your best friend’s birthday brunch in six weeks. So now you have to account for your calorie deficit, reasonably expecting that those days will make it more difficult for you to adhere to.

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This doesn’t even take into account the day your car breaks down, so you spend all afternoon taking care of that, and you don’t get your steps in. Or the day you have terrible cramps or an injury and you’re not sure if you can even stand upright, nevertheless, make it to the gym. In eight weeks, you’re bound to hit some speed bumps.

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These represent the foreseen and unforeseen circumstances that people don’t account for when they’re planning out these long-term goals. Even with the best of intentions and a perfect plan, life is going to get in the way.​
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Not planning for life getting in the way is only doing yourself an injustice.
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So, how can you better plan for these life circumstances when some of them are simply random?
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Give yourself extra time when planning for these big goals. You want to lose eight pounds at about a pound per week? Give yourself ten weeks as a buffer. Look for those events where you know you will have a harder time sticking to your meal prep at the outset and factor them in. That has a two-fold effect of planning around these events you might normally see as a “setback” and also keeps you motivated around the time of the events to stick to your goals, because you will get to enjoy yourself soon.
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Furthermore, work on decreasing your “turnaround time.” Turnaround time refers to the time it takes for you to get “back on track” after one of these events where you overindulge. If you have a wedding to attend and would like to have a couple of drinks and maybe some mini hot dogs at cocktail hour, does that lead into days and maybe weeks of setback? No wonder you can’t reach your goals when one night turns into seven-day benders. Minimize this time by giving yourself a reasonable expectation to get back to your habits.
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Failing to plan for these “setbacks” is hopelessly optimistic at best, and ignorant at worst. We know there will be bumps in the road. So plan for them.
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If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM.

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This week, my podcast recommendation is new from Hidden Brain, “Ouch! That Feels Great.”
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With that, make it a great week!

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Until next time,

Shannon