Starting Your Health Journey With Smart Goals

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Fea­tured Article

Start­ing Your Health Jour­ney with SMART Goals

There is a state­ment that there is no point in giv­ing some­thing up unless you get some­thing back that is even better–and quickly! For many of us, that is how we look at our health. In terms of mak­ing healthy changes and sus­tain­ing them, the changes made usu­ally need to be joy­ful and fun, and ones that allow for us to feel bet­ter. Where are you on the scale of mak­ing changes and what have you done to start the change process, either in a big way or a small way? Small changes over time can add up to big ben­e­fits, but when you make large changes at once and are able to sus­tain those, you will notice even more suc­cess. Once you make and keep those changes in place, you will be aware of the new way you feel and start to enjoy the ben­e­fits of being healthy.

So, where do you start? The first step to mak­ing changes is to estab­lish what you want to achieve and set a goal that defines that. Be spe­cific with what you want to achieve, as that will allow you to have a much greater chance of suc­cess in get­ting and stay­ing there. As an exam­ple, com­ing up with a goal of “I want to lose some weight” may sound good, but it is not spe­cific enough to really per­mit you to fol­low through on it. How much weight will you lose? When will you lose it? What will you do to get there? None of those ques­tions are addressed in this over-simple state­ment, and if you adopt this as your goal state­ment, you are likely to fall short. Instead, set­ting a goal that is based on SMART prin­ci­ples will give you a much greater chance of success.

What are SMART prin­ci­ples? That is sim­ply an acronym for five tips on how to set a goal. In order, they are S-Specific. Be spe­cific about what you want to achieve. If you don’t know your tar­get, you will likely not hit it. Set a weight goal that is spe­cific and that you will rec­og­nize when you get there-“I will lose ten pounds.” M-Measurable sim­ply means that the goal can be mea­sured. Los­ing ten pounds is easy to mea­sure by using a scale, just like being able to run one mile can be mea­sured by dis­tance. A goal like “I want to feel bet­ter” can­not be mea­sured accu­rately and is not as help­ful as it could be. A-Attainable is the indi­ca­tion that you can reach the goal. Los­ing ten pounds is attain­able and some­thing that you can mea­sure and reach in short order with the right sup­port and coach­ing. Los­ing 150 pounds in a few months or decid­ing today to run a marathon in two weeks with no train­ing or expe­ri­ence are not attain­able goals.

Addi­tion­ally, R-Realistic means that the goal is rel­e­vant and real­is­tic for you. You have to set the goal and do not rely upon oth­ers to tell you what to do or what is right for you. With your coach and allies, come up with a goal that means some­thing to you and that you can achieve. Finally, T-Time bound means that the goal has a time aspect. “I will lose ten pounds” and “I will lose ten pounds in 90 days” have dif­fer­ent mean­ings. When you avoid a time sched­ule, you are likely set­ting your­self up to miss the mark com­pletely and be dis­ap­pointed. You can always make adjust­ments along the way if you need to, but make sure you have a time con­nected to your goal. These are just a few ideas on goal setting–now get out there and start to work!

Guest Author