How to Set Your Body Composition Goals

You need to set your body composition goals right now.

Why did you come to this website? What do you really want?

What do you really want to look like? What's your dream body look like?

If you've got a mental picture of what you want to look like, I want you to engrave this image into your head.

Continuously bring this image back throughout the days, weeks, and months.

Save the image as a file in your mind. Open the file whenever you need it.

“Aim for the top. There is plenty of room there. There are so few at the top it is almost lonely there.” — Samuel Insull

If you want to look like a celebrity, bodybuilder, weight lifter, athlete, or anyone else, get yourself a picture of the person you want to look like. Just find the picture on the Internet and save it to your hard drive. Aim high here — no holding back. Set your goals high.

“Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars…” — Les Brown

Why Do You Want to Reach Your Body Composition Goals

Now, you need to know why you want this so bad. Give me a reason here. I want a good reason. I want an emotional reason for you wanting to get the body of your dreams. Let's take a look at some good reasons…

• Get in shape and lose fat because my doctor told me I was overweight and at high risk for heart disease. I want to be healthy for my family. I want to be there for them and take care of them.
• Get bigger by building slabs of muscle. I want to impress people and show them that I have the willpower it takes to build muscle. Too many people have joked about me being too skinny. I'm tired of it. I will be one of the few people around that have the willpower and dedication to build muscle.
• I want to look great. I want my girlfriend/boyfriend wife/husband to be proud of me. I want him/her to always be sexually attracted to me.
• I am going to the beach next year for vacation, and I want to look great. I want heads to turn when I walk past. I want to look amazing in my swim suit.
• I am not scared to take my shirt off any more. When it's time to take my shirt off I get nervous because I don't want anyone seeing how fat I am. It's time to change this! I will not be scared to take my shirt off any more.
• I want to look good for the Summer months next year. I want to lose all the fat around my midsection, and build some muscle. I want everyone to ask me what happened and how I got so muscular.
• When I see everyone at Christmas next year, I want them to be in absolute awe at the changes I've made. I want to look like a new person!
• I want to get bigger and stronger so no one even thinks about messing with me. I want people to respect me because of my size and strength.
• I want to be healthy and pain free for my older years. I want to be able to move around and not have all that extra body fat to carry around. I understand that I am simply killing myself if I don't do this now. I will lose body fat and build muscle to make my life easier.

It doesn't matter what your reason is as long as it's important to you. It may seem silly to you or others, but that doesn't matter. If it's important to you, it will work.

Make Sure Your Goals Are Important to You

I hope you understand what I mean — you need your goals to be important to you. I want you to know why you are starting this program, and I want you to remember that. I want you to tie your goals to things that are very important to you.

I don't care what the reason may be as long as it's important to you.

You may want to prove someone wrong, impress someone you know, prove to yourself that you can succeed, look better for your spouse, and anything else that's important to you. You want to set goals that you will be motivated to achieve.

Set your mind to achieve this goal. Very soon, you will be doing an in depth goal setting exercise. You will put your goals on paper. Be sure you downloaded the goal setting worksheets in the previous section of this course.

After reading through this course, you will develop your own plan to achieve all of your goals. Your plan will work, and you will meet your goals.

Now, let's learn how to organize your goals and set goals that lead you to bigger goals…

Setting Your Goals from the Little Things to the BIG Things

You are going to develop several goals in this section of the website.

This part of the WLC System is not optional. I consider this to be one of the most important parts of the program. Pay attention here and ensure you go through the goal setting section of this website.

I want you to get yourself a notebook or something to write on as we go through this section. Take notes. Practice writing goals following the guidelines presented here.

This is very important to your success.

Keep the notebook in a safe place. It's now a prized possession of yours — this is only practice but very important.

I always keep my notebook handy so I can write new goals. It keeps me on the right track and gives my life purpose by continuously setting new goals.

“By recording your goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you want to be.” — Mark Victor Hansen

You will be setting several types of goals:

• Final Overall Goals
• 1 Year Goals
• 6 Month Goals
• Program Cycle Goals
• Weekly Goals
• Daily Goals

Your daily goals and weekly goals are the goals that will eventually get you to your overall final goals. In a sense, these are the most important goals.

Tackling those goals will lead you to the promise land.

You will hear me refer to cycles or program cycles throughout this website and course. Program cycles are organized around the weight lifting cycle. A weight lifting cycle will usually last anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks or so.

Some workouts will have a set length for a program cycle, but you are not required to continue for a longer period if you are on the verge of overtraining. Likewise, you are not required to stop if your progress is going great.

When setting goals, you will set time limits for your goals. Setting time limits will give you a sense of desperation to get things done. I don't want you thinking you can skip workouts because you have time to catch up. I want you to get things done now! Not later.

Once you have your overall final goals set, you will set shorter term goals that will ensure you reach your final goals.

Before we go on, I want you to know that writing your goals down on paper is very important. If you do not, you will forget them. When you forget them, you will blindly be working out, eating, and doing cardio with no set goals. You will have no direction. You will not have your map. And your results will be slower.

Written goals serve as your map — your direction. If you want to get to your destination, you will write your goals down. Do not forget this.

Now, let's start setting these goals…

Setting Your Final Overall Goals…

You should already have a good idea of what you want to look like from the exercise in the previous section. Do you have your picture in your head, or did you print a picture of the person you want to look like? I want you to set this goal high.

“You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential.” — Steve Garvey

See the quote above. Read that again. Are you ready to set your goals high? Good.

A picture or image of the person you want to be is very important. If you are skipping this part of the program, you will be sorry — please take the time to do this.

I want you to have this image so you have something for motivational purposes. When you're feeling down, it's great to take a look at that picture and get yourself back on track.

Visualizing your final overall goal and going over this goal in your mind really helps to get your brain on your side. Visualization is a very strong technique, and you should not ignore this step.

When you engrave an image of your final overall goal in your head, your brain will start working with you to achieve that body. Find that hilarious? You shouldn't. It works and it works well. I used to be skeptical too.

Now go get that picture. Take your time if you need, but don't continue until you have it. Got your picture? Good!

Now, let's add to that picture. This is going to be a guess, and that's going to be fine for these purposes. The purpose of this guess is to get you in the ballpark body weight and body fat percentage that you'd like to be.

I want you to set your ideal body weight and body fat percentage right now. I will give you some guidelines to follow in just a second if you have no idea what you'd like to be. I'd like to give my example, though.

My final overall goal at this time is a body weight of 240 pounds and a body fat percentage of 10 percent:

Body Weight = 240 pounds
Body Fat Percentage = 10%
Lean Body Mass = 240 x (1 – 0.10) = 216 pounds
Fat Mass = 240 x 0.10 = 24 pounds

Setting your own body weight and body fat percentage goals is important because this will give you actual lean body mass and fat mass numbers to strive for.

Continuing with my example, if I currently weigh 220 pounds at 12 percent body fat, I know exactly how much muscle I need to gain and fat I need to lose…

Body Weight = 220 pounds
Body Fat Percentage = 12%
Lean Body Mass = 220 x (1 – 0.12) = 193.6 pounds
Fat Mass = 220 x 0.12 = 26.4 pounds

With my overall goal numbers and my current numbers, I can easily calculate how many pounds of muscle I need to gain and how many pounds of fat I need to lose:

Muscle I need to Gain: 216 – 193.6 = 22.4 pounds

Fat I need to Lose: 24 – 26.4 = -2.4 pounds

Now I have some concrete goals to build a plan. I need to lose 2.4 pounds of fat and gain 22.4 pounds of muscle. Building a plan to get there is now easy.

First, let me give you some help on choosing your ideal body weight and body fat percentage…

 
You would be surprised at the HUGE percentage of the population that's obese and very unhealthy… their lives are on the line due to excess body fat.

If the table above doesn't help you get a better idea here's a table with typical body fat percentages for different groups of athletes — this may help more…

For example, do you want to look like a long distance marathon runner, a pro basketball player, a baseball player, or a huge football player? Defining the average body fat percentage of these athletes may give you a better idea of what you'd like to look like. See the table below…

 
Most men reading this will be very happy with 10 percent body fat while most women reading will be extremely happy with 15 percent body fat.

If you are a fan of any of the sports above, you should be able to come up with a very good guess for your ideal body fat percentage.

Do you now have your ideal body weight and body fat percentage? Good.

You will soon know how much muscle you need to gain and fat you need to lose once you take your first body measurements for the this program. You can use the measuring results section of this course to learn how to measure your body weight and body fat percentage accurately.

Once you have your current body weight and body fat percentage, you can calculate the amounts of muscle and fat you need to gain and lose, respectively. Simply follow the example above.

Keep reading throughout this website, and you will soon learn how long it will take you to reach your overall goal.

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