Your weight is influenced by ‘controllables’ such as your daily decision-making, eating patterns and how much physical activity you do, but also by ‘uncontrollables’ such as genetics, hormones and your age. Both sets of factors together determine your weight at any given moment. The problem with outcome goals is this: The more uncontrollables that are involved, the more the uncertainty, doubt, pressure and fear that you will experience in relation to achieving the outcome. And when you don’t achieve the outcome on any given day, you give into this fear, call yourself a ‘loser’ and make the absolutely crucial mistake of giving up on all the controllable things. For example, your disappointment may trigger a binge, thus perpetuating the spiral of negative self-belief and self-sabotage. There is however an alternative - rather set yourself process goals. These are goals that are totally under your control - what you are going to do, and how you are going to do them. With controllable goals, there is automatically less to fear in the uncertainty and uncontrollables. Examples of process goals include eating in a certain way for a certain period of time, going to gym 3 times a week, planning time to shop, and so on. Immediately I hear some of you saying “but that’s the problem – I can’t stick to those things”. The point is, this has become more of a problem because our entire lives we have been taught to judge ourselves based on outcomes. If you were truly to let go of this outcome obsession, be patient, and be prepared to judge yourself only on the controllables – regardless of what the scale says – it frees you up to genuinely start working on improving your capacity to stick to the controllables. If you are going to judge yourself, it should be on these things, not on what the scale says. That’s what the people who get this thing right are doing – they don’t obsess with what the scale says, but rather focus on consistently doing the controllable behaviours that ultimately lead them in the desired direction. And when something goes wrong, they don’t waste time berating themselves or the circumstances, but rather just re-focus on getting the controllables back on track. As Robert Louise Stevenson once said; “Don’t judge your days by how much you reap, but rather by how much you sow”.