You only have one body – so look after it! Start the new year off healthy by thinking about your own body and how to care for it. That way it will take care of you as you age.
This article is dedicated to ways to set realistic health goals that can transform your life and health. The top areas people seem to be obsessed with achieving year in and year out only to renew the same goal is weight loss, exercise goals, and sleep goals. These are my top secrets and tips to actually getting you to achieve what use to be unachievable.
Step 1: Believe
This sounds very simple but it actually the hardest step. Belief is such an important aspect of any achievement. Often, we self-sabotage our health goals by never believing we could do them in the first place. Writing off that we are not morning people, not disciplined enough, etc.
Start your goal with knowing that you are achieving this goal no matter what.
Step 2: Trick Yourself
Personally, I never believed that I could be a morning person until I realized that in order for me to be consistent with working out I needed a routine before work which meant I had to wake up at 5:20am! In order to get myself out of bed I had to trick myself by having my alarm go off across the house and with my workout clothes set out next to my alarm.
The point of the story is you know what your lazy inner self will say or do to convince you to not achieve your goal be the smarter half by being one step ahead.
Step 3: Set measurable parameters
How many of us have a list of very generic New Year’s resolutions such as “eat better”, “be more social”? These resolutions are destined to fail because you’ll forget about them as soon as you write them down because they are not measurable. Change generic resolutions to “Meet with a nutritionist by Jan 31” or “Go to 3 social events a week”.
Our brains are wired to achieve well-defined goals, not wishy-washy generalizations.
Step 4: Realistic Health Goals for you
Know your starting point so you can find a realistic ending point. What are your current health statistics if you’re looking to improve health statistics such as: weight, body mass index, girth measurements, etc. How do these compare to normal measurements? If you exercise how often and for how long? Do you get enough sleep? What is your fitness level? Can you walk 5 miles without stopping? Can you jog 5 miles and how long does it take? How many squats/push-ups/chin-ups can you do? Do you have bad eating habits? Are you addicted to a type of food? Do you have any bad habits that affect your well being- smoking? Drinking?
If you know wine, for instance, is likely causing your weight loss to stall don’t completely cut yourself off from wine but start with instead of drinking a glass every night go to every other night or just on the weekends.
Sometimes just disrupting your routine can create enough change things enough to get what you are looking for.
Step 5: Get a team
Tell someone about your lofty goal. When you tell your supportive friends and family about your goals you are far more likely to achieve them because now your team will be holding you to your goal. Nobody likes to fail but it is much easier when no one else knows what your goals are.
Telling people makes you more accountable to your health goals and thus makes you far more likely to achieve them.
Also, don’t be afraid to hire a professional, trainer, nutritionist, life coach to really make sure you are successful putting money in the game is just one more factor that makes you more committed.
Those are my top tips for making this year your most successful year yet!
Also, as you might suspect, patients that exercise regularly have great diets and sleep well tend to stay out of our office the longest and recover the fastest so there is some extra motivation. Of course, if an ache or pain is keeping you from exercising or feeling good we’re always here. Happy New Year!
