How to Reach Your Health Goals
Most people know what they need to do in order to reach their health goals, like exercise more, eat better, sleep more and stress less. However, from what I’ve witnessed and experienced, the most challenging part is taking consistent action on those aspects in order to achieve the health goal!
So the question is: how do we stay motivated to make the necessary changes and take the necessary actions to take our health to the next level? I recommend the following tips to keep you motivated and inspired to achieve your health goals.
Get Clear On Your “Why”: It is important to tune into your deepest emotional reasons for why you want to achieve your health goal. It’s not enough to say you want to lose weight, why do you want to lose weight? What does your life look like when you’ve lost your weight? How do you feel? How is your life different? It’s important to get clear on your reason for making these changes and use it to continue to motivate you.
Shift Your Mindset: Focus on what you’re adding to your life instead of what you’re taking away. If your goal is to eat a healthier diet, focus on the nourishing fuel you are giving your body, and the vitamins and minerals you are receiving to feel your best, instead of thinking about the sugar and carbs you are taking away.
Also, imagine every action you do is an act of self-love and care. Going to bed early and reaching for an apple instead of a brownie are actions of love and self-care, feel gratitude for yourself for making healthy choices.
Use Visual Reminders - Make a poster of your “Why” from suggestion #1 and put that up in a place you will see every day. Or create a symbol, like a piece of jewelry, to remind you as you reach for a sweet that you’re goal is to cut out sugar for 1 month
Overcome Obstacles - It can be helpful to foresee obstacles to achieving your goal, and take action on reducing as many obstacles as possible. For example, remove all the sugar and processed food from your kitchen before starting a cleanse. Or create more time for exercise by making a “NOT to do list” with items that you can substitute out for healthy activities, like watching TV or netflix, scrolling on social media, repeatedly checking email or texts, etc.
Set The Right Goals: Make sure your goals follow the SMART format:
Specific - Be specific about what you want to achieve. Instead of saying you want to exercise more, create a more specific goal of running 5km three times per week.
Measurable - Make sure you are able to rack your progress. If you want to do the SunRun, track the km’s you are able to run each week.
Achievable - This is a big one! Often we choose goals that are not realistic or achievable and lead us to feel discouraged and give up. Make sure you are able to achieve your goal in a realistic time-frame.
Relevant - Make sure the goals you are making are relevant to your life. For example, if you are learning a new language, you would be more motivated to learn it if you will be visiting that country.
Time-bound - Make sure you give yourself a time-frame to complete your goal, otherwise it is too tempting to keep putting off the actions needed to get there! This will also need to be achievable and realistic - wanting to run a marathon in 1 month when you haven’t started training yet will not work.
If you would like support in setting the right health goals to achieve your optimal levels of health, you can book a private consultation with Dr. Fiona Smulders here