One of the key steps in my journey has been setting goals. Without goals, you're just randomly moving around the gym with no intention in mind. It sets up the possibility of failure if you don't have a set objective in mind.

When I started working with a trainer, as with any trainer, he asked me what my goals were. I couldn't really articulate at the time what my goals really were, as I didn't know what I really wanted. I knew I needed to get into shape. (Well, I was in a shape. A pear shape. Just call me Mr. Bartlett.) I understood body fat, but I didn't accept change, dramatic change, was in the cards for me. So I set a goal that was fairly reasonable to achieve, but didn't really 'stretch' me. I said "I'd like my body fat to be under 30." or something similar. That became my goal.

As I moved forward with my workouts, I worked towards this goal. I viewed it as a long term goal because, after all, things take time. This was a mistake. I should have seen it as something to be conquered, not something to lumber towards. I know this now.

As I began to lose weight, and as I began to lift heavier and heavier I began to think about my goals more frequently. I wondered if the goals I set really made sense, and I wondered if the goals I set were in line with my objectives. What I realized during this time of retrospection is that my perspective began to change. With a trainer pushing me to do things outside my comfort zone, like deadlifting and barbell squatting, I kept thinking back to the initial goal I set and how it really stopped making sense to me and that I needed a new goal.

This took me back to my younger days when I worked out and lost weight the first time. I set a goal of getting under 200 pounds, and I achieved it. Unfortunately, I did it at the cost of lean body tissue, of not doing it in a very healthy way, and at the cost of my overall happiness; I was happy I lost the weight, but never truly happy with my results. I always thought "I'm not what I want to be" when I looked in the mirror. I saw a thinner version of myself, and I thought I looked great, but I had little muscle tone and very much still low self esteem.

Back to current times a decade and a half later, and I'm back to setting goals again. This time I am wiser, have better knowledge, and someone in my corner pushing me. I began to think what I really wanted, and where I wanted to go.

Scholars and business people will tell you your goals should be "SMART". That is, they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Based. While this might work in business, I began to think of a different approach to my workout goals. I began thinking about my "Wanna Be" goals. That is, what do I "wanna be" when I'm at a certain point. These are my overall goals which should be achievable, but perhaps a little bit of a stretch in the goal. 

I thought hard about it, staring at charts hanging at the gym regarding body fat many times. Often when I was alone on a Sunday in the gym I'd study the chart for 5 or 10 minutes, looking at different age groups and accompanying pictures of what those different body fat percentages looked like on different people. 

I made the decision that I wanted a new goal. So I set my goal.

"I want to be 15% body fat," I told the trainer one day. I think I may have hit this one out of left field, because he seemed a little taken aback at my assertiveness at such a specific goal where one did not exist. We began to discuss the "how" of getting to this goal, and the achievability factor both in shortest time and longest time of expectations.

It was at this time I began to make bigger changes in my dietary intake. I began to log my food regularly and I began to "clean up" the food.

At the beginning of April, I weighed 273 pounds with about 8 points higher body fat than I am today at 250 pounds. I attribute this loss of weight and body fat to my workouts, my dietary intake changes, and my goal setting. 

Last week, another goal setting point came up. At the gym there is a wall where you can write your goals and aspirations, the "big whys" of why you are at the gym. The manager asked me if I was going to replace my old goal I wrote up there, and I responded to her that I never wrote a goal up there prior. I thought it over for a couple of days, and then decided to put something up on the wall. 

I kept my 15% body fat goal in place, but then decided to add in some lifting goals. This got me back again to my younger days, when my real goal, the one I never articulated to my trainer back then out of embarrassment, was to be a really strong dude. I wanted to a big, strong dude, but I never said that out loud. 

The difference between then and now is that I have a trainer who has helped me to understand that I am a strong dude, I just had it bottled away where no one could find it. Once I realized this, and saw my lifts continually going up, I realized I had greater potential than I gave myself credit for. This is why I set the goals here, because I want to achieve that potential.

Will I achieve these goals next week, within a month, or even with a few months? Probably not. These goals represent my "wanna be", because this is the person I want to be. I've discovered I'm a strong dude, and I can get stronger, I just have to work towards it. I've discovered I can drop fat, retain muscle, and improve by body composition, I just have to put the effort in to getting it. These are not goals that require loads of performance enhancing drugs or other fads, these are reasonable goals that a normal human being can achieve. I just have to put in the work and perseverance, the sweat and sacrifice, and I can achieve these goals. 

After all, if we don't have goals, we're just roaming around the gym mindlessly not achieving.