A Weight Loss Goal or a Weight Loss Deadline?
Weight Loss Goals
Hello and welcome. I am Dr. Craig Primack from Scottsdale Weight Loss Center. Today’s Medical Minute is a interesting one that just kind of came up in the last couple of weeks. We always talk about weight loss goals. My goal is to lose 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 70 pounds, 100 pounds. I had a patient this week that says I don’t have goals. I have a weight loss deadline. So today’s Medical Minute is about goals versus deadlines. When we have a goal, my goal one day is to retire. My goal one day is to have a house on the beach in California. My goal one day is to lose 25 pounds.
Weight Loss Deadline
And you start a weight loss program, it does bring your goal higher up on your priority list, but it may not be at the top of that list. Let’s take the opposite. Let’s make this a weight loss deadline. Many times people come to me with a deadline for weight loss. One of my kids is getting married in three months, or I have a vacation coming up and I want to fit in my swimsuit just a little bit better than I did before, or maybe a lot better. And one of the other common ones is I saw myself in a photo and I unfortunately was unhappy with what I saw. I know I can do better. And that deadline is I want it off as fast as possible. So a deadline has urgency to it.
Why Weight Loss Now?
One of the first questions, if not the first question I ask someone that I see a patient for the first time here in the clinic. I say, why do you want to lose weight now? And if the answer is very, I say, nonspecific, I want to get healthier. I ask what they mean by healthier. How do we know when you’ve gotten there?
Losing even five pounds makes you healthier. Getting off blood pressure medicine? Is that what you mean? Being able to get on and off the floor easier than you are now? Decreasing some of your medicines that you may take for diabetes or you’re having knee pain and we want it to feel better? That’s a much more specific goal that we can put deadlines on. So at the end of the day, weight loss is definitely a goal. It’s a goal for many of us, but there isn’t always urgency attached to that goal. When we make it a weight loss deadline, we know that there is a goal that we want to have by a certain time. Often, that means I want to lose weight fast and structured. And that is where a medical program really excels versus almost any other program out there.
Instead of a goal for weight loss, make a deadline with yourself for weight loss.
I’m Dr. Primack from Scottsdale Weight Loss Center. Thanks for being here today.
