Goal sabotage 52 favorite foods. Instead of enjoyment, the dominant emotion that my overweight clients describe is‘ guilt’. For me this is a disaster. The only thing worse than not eating your favorite food, is not enjoying it when you do. I believe that if you get this goal right, not only will you lose weight but, much more importantly, you will lose it for the long-term. What percentage of you will do this? I’ m not sure. If I could get 40 % of you to achieve this goal, I will have increased typical weight-loss outcomes by 100 %! Do you want to be in the top 20 % of this class? The False Hope Syndrome Having the right goal is critical and this is how most people set themselves up to fail right from the beginning. The research into this has recently helped us to understand how people sabotage themselves through setting the wrong goals from the beginning. In exploring this problem with goals, researchers have named the problem the False Hope Syndrome. From observing lots of people who have tried to lose weight and failed they have to come to see that people start off with one or more of four unrealistic goals or expectations. First, they expect to lose more weight than is realistically possible. Of the group of people who are successful at losing weight the average weight loss is around 8 % of their body weight. The upper range is about 15 % of their initial weight. You will definitely notice your body slimming and simply feeling better and more energetic with weight loss of around 10 % of your starting body weight. Importantly, in terms of the medical benefits, this is very significant and is enough to often reverse or avoid conditions like Type 2 Diabetes and high blood pressure. The research shows that as little as 5 % weight loss will reduce your risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes by a massive 58 %. Second, dieters expect to lose weight too quickly – and many diets promise exactly this. Promising that you will lose lots of weight in a short time is Lesson 1 in Diet Marketing 101. As a guide we want to aim