Setting Realistic Health Goals

I'm a big fan of having goals.  I find them a bit tricky though. It's another one of those things that takes balance to be completely effective.  I have learned from my past experience that if I set my goals too high I only set myself up for disappointment later.  I have also realized that if I don't set goals at all I find myself floundering with no real place to go and no motivation.

Picture this: You're out with some friends for some fun, drinks and a game of darts.  You are prepared - you even brought your own darts.  After some fun your friends announce that it's time for the big game.  You get your darts and ask your friends where the game is being played.  They look at you with confusion and say, "Well, right here."  You look around you but see no dart board anywhere.

"I don't get it," you reply, "Where's the target?"

"Ah, who needs a target? Let's just play some darts and we'll find the target as we play." says your friend.

This would never happen. You can't possibly throw your darts anywhere near the target if you don't know where it is.  The same thing goes for our health and weight loss goals.  We need a goal if we are going to know what we are shooting for.  Set yourself a goal.  To set a goal I like to think of what would make me feel just a little bit better than I do now. For example, last week I exercised 3 days.  Ideally, I would love to exercise 7 days per week but I don't believe that is a realistic goal for me.  I also know that it would be a drastic change to go from exercising no days to 7 days so I feel okay about exercising just 3 days last week. It was certainly better than the 0 days the week before.  This week, my goal is to exercise 4 days.  I don't care which 4 days.  If I can do it for 4 days I will be making progress.

This brings me to another important part to setting goals: tracking them.  My life is busy and my mind is sometimes scattered. This past weekend someone asked me what grades my kids were in.  I felt like I had been hit with the million dollar question, I had to think so hard.  I teach all of my kids every day, how hard can it be to remember what grades they are all in?  If I can't remember what grades my kids are all in how in the world will I remember how many days I exercised this week?  Today I looked at my calendar to see just how long it had been since I had exercised and how many days I had exercised last week.  I highlighted the day number on the calendar every day I exercised last week. I also wrote the DVD number and number of minutes.  That made it easy today to set a new goal.  It also made it easy for me to remember what disc number I wanted to exercise with today.  I have a 5 disc set and I like to mix it up so I am using different muscle groups and keep things different.

Health goals can be varied in many ways.  You can use numbers, pounds, days, habits, routines, pretty much anything.  Remember that your goals don't all have to be numbers but I highly recommend that you set them and make them realistic, specific and measurable in some way.

Set a goal this week.  I would love to hear what it is in the comment section.

Have a healthy day,
Corinna

"Haughty eyes and a proud heart - the lamp of the wicked - are sin. The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to want. The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death." -Proverbs 21:4-6