There are so many factors that come into play when trying to achieve your goals. Of course you need to set ones that are attainable, but then you need a realistic plan to help you get there. Once you have that plan, nothing helps you achieve your goals more than staying consistent.

No matter what your goals, it’s important that once you create a plan, you stick to it. Of course not every plan is right for meeting your goals, but you need to give it enough time in order to accurately determine that. Write out daily habits that you need to follow and be consistent with following them.

For me, improving my health and fitness, along with loosing weight were my goals. I tried many plans in the past, but never stuck to anything long enough to see the progress that I wanted. I wasn’t consistent in my plan of action, and my barely there weight loss reflected that. It wasn’t until I found a plan that was not only realistic, but easy to follow, and not time consuming, that I stuck to it long enough to meet my goals. (You can see the plan I follow here.)

It’s important to remember that consistency doesn’t mean that you can’t have a day where you miss your workout or a day where you treat yourself to an ice cream cone, it means that the day after that you go right back to working out and eating right. People tend to get frustrated when a week of eating right and daily exercise doesn’t move the scale in the right direction fast enough. So they go back to old habits, gain more weight, and then try to diet and exercise all over again. You will never get anywhere this way. It will be hard at first, and you will have slip ups, but it’s important that you stick with it. Don’t get discouraged by a slight derailment, if it’s quickly straightened out, it will be like it never happened. Think of it this way, if you don’t stick to your plan, you will keep spiraling down an unwanted direction, whereas, if you do stick to your plan no matter how slow you are making progress, you will be in a much better place three months from now.

Remember, slow and steady wins the race!