It’s not too late to set goals this year. The New Year has passed, but year-round goal setting can help you immensely to achieve what you want.
Health and Fitness Consistency
One key aspect in health and fitness is consistency. Set a goal to work out a certain amount of times each week for the next month. It doesn’t have to be a hectic schedule. Just figure out what is manageable for you and try to stick with it. After a month, review to see if it’s working in your schedule and if you are getting the results you want.
Life is unpredictable, so it’s important to review. Your schedule might have changed, or you might want to add in another workout if you have the time and want to get better results.
S.M.A.R.T. Goals
A great way to set goals that works with the above is setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.
Smart goals stand for:
Specific
Measurable
Appropriate
Realistic
Time-Bound
SMART Goal Example
Here’s an example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal:
Specific: You want to lose 5 pounds.
Measurable: You should be able to objectively measure your progress. Weigh yourself weekly and also measure yourself. If your weight is staying the same but your measurements are going down, you’re losing fat but gaining muscle. Therefore, you’re healthier and could still be considered achieving your goal.
Appropriate: The goal should be appropriate for you. For example, if you’re considered underweight for your height or your doctor is telling you you’re too thin, then this isn’t an appropriate goal for you. If you’re carrying an extra 5 pounds, then this would be an appropriate goal for you.
Realistic: If you have a health issue that makes losing weight difficult for you or you tend to struggle with losing weight, set your goal longer than the typical goal of losing 1-2 pounds per week. Also, you don’t want to be losing more than 1-2 pounds per week because you’d be losing muscle and not fat. That would be detrimental to your health and not a realistic goal to improve your health.
Time-bound: If you lose 1-2 pounds per week, set your goal for a month or 5 weeks for losing 5 pounds. If you’re 150 pounds, you would write your affirmation or goal as “I am 145 pounds by February 11, 20_ _.” If you’re planning to ultimately lose more than 5 pounds, you could say, “I am 145 pounds or less by February 11, 20_ _” in case you’re one of the lucky ones who loses 2 pounds per week.
Posts on Goal Setting
Here are some other posts on goal setting you’ll find here and at Christina Chitwood Performance:
Go for It with All Your Energy!
Also what makes most people not reach their goal is that it seems unreachable.
So you have to make subgoals of your goals and subsubgoals of your subgoals. That way it doesn’t take much effort to reach the small goals and thus you reach more subsubgoals and you keep getting motivated. 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Linda! Very good point about subgoals. I agree these really help make goals more attainable! Have a great day! 🙂
Whether you are working towards setting goals for the new year or working on it in teams and trying to define your team’s goals, you need to clearly determine the objectives for what you are trying to accomplish. What makes this SMART goals acronym so helpful is because it not only helps you understand the “why” to what you are trying to do but also the “how”. Most people never think through the “how” part of goal setting.
Great post – just what I needed to read today! I have an 11 month old baby boy (2nd child) and have lost all the baby weight PLUS additional weight and inches. I’m smaller than I was in high school, so I look and feel great. However, I’m just at the point where I feel like I’ve plateaued…time to make some more SMART goals for myself! 🙂