When I set goals for this way of eating, it is not how many pounds I will lose. It is how many carbs per day I will eat, or how much exercise I will get. A goal should be something that you can achieve by controlling what you do. We can't truly control how much weight we lose in a day or a week or a month. But we can control other things.

I take the perspective that if I control the carbs, then the weight loss and smaller size clothing are my rewards. It's really a change in perspective and can make all the difference in the world in whether you perceive yourself as successful or not.

Also goals should be based on facts. If you've been eating low carb for a while, then you should be able to look at how many carbs you've been eating and set yourself some realistic goals. If you are new to this way of eating, you should review what others are doing and combine that with what you know about yourself and what you've read in the low carb books to set your goals.

When I first started eating lower carbs (note that I'm not following Atkins, per se, but am just doing my own low carb plan), I first tracked how many carbs a day I was eating. I did that for only 2 days and said WHOA! I was way over 200 carbs per day and I hadn't even pigged out on those 2 days like I had normally done. So rather than track them for the week as I had planned, I decided right then and there to lower my carbs per day to 150. (I didn't know much about this WOE at that time or I would have gone even lower!)

Lowering them to 150 was good and I followed that for 3-4 weeks. I lost weight, but still ate some of those "no-no" foods. There were a few days when I ate less than 150 and I saw that I lost faster then, so I dropped my goal to 100 carbs per day. It worked even better, so after about a month, I dropped my goal to 70 carbs per day. Then I noticed that when I was below 70, I easily lost weight. When I was higher than 70 I didn't lose weight quite so easily. So 70 was the most carbs I could eat. These days, though, I eat anywhere from 25-50 carbs per day (rarely higher), but I still keep 70 as my upper limit.

And the only reason I was able to learn this about myself was by setting my goals and tracking them. I think a lot of people forget about the tracking part. If you don't track, then you won't know if you've met your goal. I used Fitday.com to track my food intake each and every day for 3 months. It was well worth all the time I spent on it!

Do I dream of losing 100 lbs in a year? You betcha! I suspect we all do! But I won't be setting that as a goal!