New Year’s resolution? 5 steps to make your new year health goals a reality
Happy New Year! Here we are at the start of 2023, a new year full of new possibilities. The start of the year often brings with it positive energy, an opportunity to move forward and start the new year afresh with ‘resolutions’ about things we’d like to do more or less of, or things we’d like to change. It’s no surprise that these new year’s resolutions are often related to improving our health or letting go of last year’s bad habits.
So, if you are feeling stuck and lacking motivation, now’s your chance to harness these positive new year vibes and step into a new direction! Perhaps you like to lose some weight or get better quality sleep? Improve your fitness or eat better? Maybe you’d like to manage your stress, or increase your energy levels? All these things sound great for your health, and you may start off with the best intentions - but how do you ACTUALLY make these goals a reality?
Here are 5 steps you can take to begin putting these goals into action;
1. Define your goal - ask why you want it and why is it important to you? What’s in it for you? Visualise what it will feel like once you’ve achieved your goal. Once you have defined your goal you need to ensure that it is SMART. SMART goals are defined as specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. They are an important tool in giving you clarity over the goals you want to achieve, provide motivation to stay on track and accountability for the outcome.
You may have an overall goal to lose weight, but to turn this goal into action it is useful to break it down into smaller SMART goals that will help you make this a reality. So how do you make a goal SMART?
- SPECIFIC: Be clear in what your goal actually is. Being vague and too general in your goal is not setting you up for success. If your goal is to exercise more, what type of exercise are you going to do, on what days and time and for how long?
- Measurable: Achieving goals is more fun and motivating if you can measure outcomes and track your progress. Do you have a daily step count that you are working towards? Have a system in place to help you measure and keep track. Take advantage of the numerous apps or fitness trackers that can help you do this.
- Achievable: Be ambitious with your goal setting, but make sure that it is something that you will be able to do. You are more likely to be successful if you start small and build on the wins that you achieve from there. This also serves to further fuel your motivation to achieve bigger, more challenging goals in future.
- Realistic: Be practical. Make sure the goal works for you and your situation. Getting in your daily 5 cups of vegetables is great, but your bank balance may not agree with committing to eating only organic produce.
- Timely: Ok, so when are you going to achieve this goal? Add some urgency and accountability for the outcome, but again, make sure it’s realistic.
2. Make healthy habits- Achieving SMART goals often involves adopting new habits or transforming old ‘bad’ habits into new healthy habits. Repetition and consistency over time are the key to making these good habits stick!
3. Schedule daily activities to help these habits become routine; this usually requires planning ahead, such as committing to a particular activity at a set time, or ensuring you have healthy food options available at home. Perhaps you want to eat less meat and decide to schedule in meat free Mondays? Or commit to having a walk with a friend at a particular day and time?
4. Remove obstacles; what is preventing you from achieving your health goal? Bring awareness to some of these barriers and how you can take steps to minimise their influence in sabotaging your progress.
5. Track your progress: check in with yourself regularly. Are you seeing a measurable change towards your goal? Don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for your achievements and share your success with family and friends. Remember to not beat yourself up if you fall short. Goal setting is a pathway of self-development and learning and sometimes it may take several attempts to achieve what you want. You may need to redefine or abandon some goals along the way, and that’s ok too.
By following these 5 steps you will create a system and some structure to give yourself the best chance for success. How about getting started today?
