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Motivation
What Are Your Goals? Stay the Course
Tips for how to make a health-related goal stick.
Posted January 6, 2022 Reviewed by Kaja Perina
Key points
- New Year's resolutions are often health-related, such as eating better, losing weight, or getting more exercise.
- Strategies for success include setting clear goals by identifying obstacles, and understanding your needs.
- People become healthy via all sorts of lasting methods, so don't limit yourself. Give yourself options.
More than half the population won’t even make a New Year’s resolution this year, but many will, and most of those will revolve around something to do with health – eating better, losing weight, or getting more exercise. Everyone can make the shift they need if they put the right focus on it and make the necessary change happen.
Putting an emphasis on being healthier is essential. The percentage of the population in America and the world continues to grow in the obese category. This is a result of many factors: lack of access to healthy foods, working multiple jobs with little time for exercise, not having the time or money to join a gym or hire a trainer, and so on. The obstacles are many, but the bottom line is, as we’ve learned during the last couple of years, facing COVID, without health, there isn’t much good in life.
If you are putting a New Year’s resolution in place that is health-related, make it stick. There could be nothing more important that you do in 2022.
1. Start by being clear about your goal. Set quantitative (i.e., weight, or the number of cookies or calories you will eat each day) and qualitative (i.e., how you will feel, the type of exercise you will do) goals. The more specific you are, the more your mind can understand exactly what it aims for.
This is why programs like Noom and Weight Watchers help you be successful – they target numbers and goals. You can do this on your own without paying for a program, but take the time to do it and write it down.
Keep your goals somewhere that you can see them regularly. Remind yourself each day where you want to end up. Read the goals when you start the day, in the middle of the day, and at the end of the day before you go to sleep. Don’t set and forget; set and remind constantly.
If you are able to get somewhere with a scale where you can measure your starting point, that’s a good first step. The ones that show your BMI, fat content, and so on can be beneficial as you track your positive changes. Seeing progress helps with motivation and commitment.
2. Identify your obstacles to date, whether it be access to good healthy food, time, finding an exercise you really enjoy, or all of the above. Take the time to list out what has gotten in your way in the past. Obstacles are real, and ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. If you have no time and you decide to go running at 4 a.m. but you hate the dark, don’t like getting up early, and are afraid out all alone, that’s not a good solution.
To find a good solution, you have to identify what gets in your way. Figure out your obstacles and then categorize them – what can you control, what can you influence, and what’s out of your control?
Focus on those things you can control and influence, and forget about the rest. For example, there is no access to good food: Can you influence this by buying online, asking someone else to shop for you, or joining a co-op?
Many obstacles have workarounds, but some don’t. Focus on those you can do something about, and don’t put energy toward those you cannot.
3. Understand your personal needs. If you hate running, but you decide that’s the best way to lose weight, so you force yourself to do it, you are going to stop. If you are a nighttime person, then don’t set a workout plan for first thing in the morning and vice versa. Know thyself. Consider what you enjoy and how you can create a plan that takes you into account.
Don’t do what others tell you; find something that fits who you are, what you enjoy and care about. If all you like to do is sit in front of the television, find floor exercises you can do while watching. If you tend to binge eat while watching television, prepare healthy food in advance so you can snack without adding additional calories.
In addition to general obstacles, figure out what is important to you and do what works only for you, not for others.
4. Consider alternatives. The 4 a.m. running might work fine for you, but you have other options just in case it doesn’t. Before you decide what’s best, create a list of what you could do to meet your goals and overcome your obstacles. Assign criteria in the form of pros and cons to the different options. What works best for your budget? Your lifestyle? Your interests?
If you really want to make a change, you have to have a few different avenues you could try. People lose weight and get in healthy shape via all sorts of lasting methods, so don’t limit yourself to the one you have to do. Stay open and give yourself choices.
5. Develop a plan. It is so much harder to make change without having clear steps you will take differently than what you have been doing to date. The plan should involve chunking, taking one large step, and breaking it down into smaller, easier-to-implement steps. For example, “Find healthy eating options” could be several steps: search online, contact people you know who eat well, or drive around to local small grocery stores.
Part of the reason you haven’t made the change is that the to-dos are large and can seem overwhelming. Break them down into step-by-step approaches and then calendar everything. Put even a 15 to 20-minute activity on your calendar, so you have flagged it. This way, even if you don’t do whatever the step is on that day, at that time, you will note it and then move it to a more convenient time.
This is your year. It can be done – commit to taking the important steps for yourself, and just put one foot in front of the other as you travel toward a healthier you.
