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How to Stick to Your Health Goals

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What drives you to achieve your health and fitness goals?

Do you set health goals each year only to find that by spring time they are long gone and instead you’re feeling the kilo creep of winter?

Goal setting is an art and you really need to dig a little deeper into your personal desires about what you’d actually like to achieve. Achieving goals requires a combination of realism, practical plans, motivation and a reason to make the change in the first place.

Here are five tips that I’ve discovered over many years of improving my own health and fitness and that of my clients on how to stick to your goals:

1. Read your goals regularly

Don’t write them on a piece of paper, fold them up, put them in your draw and hope for the best. Keep the list on your bed side table and read them before going to bed each night. Stick them to your bathroom mirror or on your fridge.

Seeing and reading them regularly will keep them in the front of your mind. This will mean that when the time comes to make choices about certain behaviours, your more likely to choose the behaviour that brings you closer to your goal rather than away from it.

If your goal is to fit into a favourite item of clothing, get that dress or pants out and hang them where you can see them everyday.

When you’re alarm goes off at 6am to exercise you’ll roll over and see your favourite pair of jeans hanging on the door. Seeing them will make you get up and choose to move your body because that brings you closer to the reality of actually putting those jeans on and totally rocking them!

2. Tell someone your goals 

Be accountable to someone. Tell your partner, best friend or family member what you’re working towards. If you don’t tell anyone your plans then it’s much easier to change your mind or give up when the going gets tough. If you’re accountable to someone, you’ll think twice before choosing an unhelpful behaviour or quitting.

Start a blog. Back when I ran my first half-marathon I told my two hundred plus readers (at the time) that I was training to run 21km on a particular date. When that day came, I was so nervous about running that far, that the only thing pushing me out that door and finishing the run was the fact that I’d told hundreds of people my plan and I couldn’t bear to face the embarrassment of not going through with it.

I’ve always believed that if you say you’re going to do something, do it. When I first started the run I was cursing the fact that I’d ‘had such a big mouth’ and told everyone about this crazy goal. Once I finished I was so ecstatic that I’d achieved such a huge goal that I was so thankful for the accountability that my little blog had given me.

It had been a huge motivating force that kept me going right to the end.

3. Make a flexible plan

People who help other people with goal setting will usually make a point about making a plan. Its the ‘how’ behind the ‘what’. How are you going to reach your goals? What things about your lifestyle need to change? What do you need to start doing and what do you need to stop doing?

I’m a big believer in planning and I do it A LOT! I plan my meals (very good habit), plan my workouts, plan what my kids activities will be for the day, plan what I’m going to write about… plan, plan, plan.

The thing about planning though is, if you’re like me, when you can’t follow the plan exactly you can be tempted to give up. Do you forfeit a goal just because you didn’t following the plan perfectly to get there?

If this is you, you must remember to not let the plan rule you. In the end, it’s the goal that is the ultimate prize, not following the plan. Who cares (in the end) how you get there, the plan is just a means to an end. If it changes a little along the way be flexible enough in your expectations that you don’t let imperfection hijack your goals. Sometimes we try to be so perfect (NO sugar, NO junk food, NO coffee – EVER!) that when we have a slip up (because it’s impossible to be perfect) we end up sabotaging ourselves and giving up.

Being flexible in your expectations of yourself and in your external environment is really important. You can’t control everything and things NEVER go 100% according to plan. We must be adaptable enough to change course when we need to whilst still heading toward our desired destination.

4. Reward yourself along the way

Motivation is fostered by tangible reward. This means that if a particular behaviour results in a good outcome, you will continue to repeat this behaviour. This is one of the reasons why chocolate is so hard to resist. When you eat it, you are hit with an overload of incredible sensory stimulation. Taste, texture, smell, sight… it’s all good. Its a tangible reward that makes you put another piece in your mouth. And another. And another…

For health and fitness goals, behaviours such as eating wholesome, nourishing food and moving your body need to be repeated regularly for your goal to become a reality. What is the tangible reward of these behaviours? Find out what they are for you, because it’s different for everyone, and focus on the reasons why you want to keep doing these things.

For me, eating well makes my body feel good and it helps keeps my mood stable. I love the endorphin rush after a big workout and I love writing my PBs in my training diary each week when I beat myself in a training session. If I focused on exercise being inconvenient or how changing my eating habits meant I was missing out on my favourite foods, I wouldn’t stay motivated at all.

Focusing on the reasons why I do what I want to do is the thing that fuels my motivation to keep going.

I also like other tangible rewards like manicures, massages, long showers, new workout gear, new stationery, a night out at my favourite restaurant or relaxing with one of my many hobbies (photography, blogging, cooking, etc).

5. Set yourself up for success

This is probably the most important.

You have got to put routines, strategies and solutions in place that overcome your obstacles and propel you towards success.

If one of your goals is to eat more fresh food and less packaged and pre-prepared food, yet you work in a busy office environment with little time to prepare fresh food, you need to devise a strategy to make that goal possible.

You’ll need to write yourself a meal plan, do food preparation on the weekends or source out fresh, healthy takeaway that you can pick up on the go.

If waking early to exercise is your new habit, get your workout gear out the night before, go to bed earlier, arrange to exercise with a friend or co-worker.

Make it as easy as possible for yourself to reach your goals:

  • Make an appointment to see a nutritionist or dietitian at The Healthy Eating Hub who can help you meal plan, educate you on healthy food choices and find the right balance for your individual needs.
  • Hire a personal trainer who can push you during an exercise session and follow you up if you don’t show up.
  • Throw any sort of unhelpful food in the bin – it’s either wasted in the bin or it’s wasted on your bottom, where would you rather it be?
  • Have a pantry clean out so you know whats in there. Re-stock it with wholesome, healthy food.
  • Have fruit and vegetables delivered each week so you’ve always stocked with nutritious food. If you’re a Canberra local try Vegies to Your Door. They also deliver dairy, meat, bread and coffee.
  • Keep your kitchen clean and organised, you are more likely to feel motivated to prepare healthy food, if you’re not in a mess.

You really can achieve all the goals that you’ve set for yourself. Find out what drives you and let it spur you on. Go! Fight! Win!

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