GOALS work. Our brains tend to like things ahead of us to aim at, and the closer the better. It’s why often when you're trying to lose weight the goal of a cream cake in the next 30 seconds seems more desirable than fitting into your swimsuit in three months' time.

So it’s important, if the swimsuit is your weight loss goal, to make sure you have plenty of smaller steps along the way – and you’re making the rules, so if you want a goal that gets you from breakfast to lunch, then that’s perfectly ok.

A goal of having a small piece of chocolate at lunch may stop you wolfing a whole bar at elevenses, because if the brain knows the treat is out there in the foreseeable future it stops craving for it.

So break your goals down. Have a large one – ‘I want to drop 10 pounds in 12 weeks.’  Or another way is to say 'I want to drop two dress sizes in 12 weeks.' Note how I’ve been specific, both about quantity and timescale. That works better than just saying ‘I want to lose some weight this year’. Make it achievable and realistic – “I want to lose 10 pounds this week” isn’t either of those.

Then work stepping stone goals backwards towards now. “By eight weeks I will have lost 7 pounds”. “By four weeks I will have lost 4 pounds” etc. Work these all the way back to “What am I going to do today to be on course for my end of week target?”

Make the answer to that specific, achievable and realistic, and include a treat of some kind every day. But remember, goals are only reached when action is taken.

Write your goals down and tick them as you achieve them. With a BIG pen. And post them somewhere public.

We achieve our goals much more often if we commit them to paper and let other people know about them.

This is how your Slimpod will

help bring about a remarkable difference to your life...

You’ll set weight loss goals and achieve them!

A lot of money has been spent on discovering how to influence our unconscious minds – mainly by advertisers wanting you to buy things. Now we’re taking that knowledge, adding it to our own specialist expertise and using it for your benefit. With our method, you’ll be amazed how inevitable weight loss can feel.

Research shows that people who set goals are more likely to achieve than people who don’t. But there’s a knack to what goals to set. Making a certain dress size or waistline your goal can work in the short term - so it’s fine to set that as a target. But we’re interested in helping you change in the long term, and once you’ve got in that dress or those trousers your focus is likely to quickly drift unless your other goals are wider-reaching.

So here’s what we suggest.  You should set three realistic goals. Make at least one a goal that has you doing something that becoming slimmer will help you to enjoy more - learning something new, setting yourself a challenge (especially a physical one) or revisiting something you used to love that you’ve stopped doing. Something that you do, rather than something that you can own.

The more you can link your weight loss or fitness goal with making life more fun and interesting, the more it’s likely to become a long-term part of your lifestyle. Take the work out of weight loss by making it part of the fun you’re having by being you.