We all want great results. The most competitive of us are goal oriented, and the key to success has always been to fixate on your goals, to post images on your dream board, to remain inspired by never forgetting what we’re striving for. However, we often attempt to accomplish the impossible, by either trying to lose too much weight or thinking we are prepared for an extreme training program. How can you tell if your goals are realistic or if they are reckless and dangerous? How can you give yourself tough goals to strive for without overdoing it?

The first step is to be honest with yourself and ask: how fit am I today? How active have you been over the last six months, how much exercise have you been doing, and what kind? Have you been a couch potato, watching TV, or having you been running three days a week? Have you been going to the gym a little, a lot, have you never been? Has your doctor given you a warning that you need to start losing weight, or are you so skinny you can see your ribs? Depending on where you are you will need to adjust your goals accordingly.

The problem is that people become super enthused and see fitness like a sprint. They believe that if they become radical, if they cut out everything except the essentials from their diet, if they work out twice a day and strive to do everything right, they will look perfect in X amount of time. However, fitness doesn’t work that way. You need to treat fitness like a marathon, not a sprint, and realize that extreme measures usually result in burnout, not success.

That’s why when creating goals you need to set numbers and objectives that you can reach through hard work but that don’t require that you be superman six days a week for five months. You need to adjust, you need to grow, you need to allow your body to become fit over a period of time, not expect it overnight. That’s why you should always strive to have realistic goals, and never try to become superman overnight.