New Years Resolutions Part 2

  • Last week I wrote about starting your fitness goals off by building the habit of fitness. If you missed it you can check it out here
  • If you noticed in the first post, I only recommended building into the habit of exercise. There is no need to start off like a crazy super intense gym guy, especially if you haven’t done any real exercise since grade school.

 

 

Now that you have started slowly, it is time to set some goals you want to achieve.

First you want to think about long term goals. These goals should be something you can achieve in 6 months to a year.

Once you have 2 or three of those written down write down 2 or three short term goals for each of your long term goals. The short term goals should be something you can achieve in a week, up to a month.

With your short term goals, you can make them outcome oriented or process oriented. I usually recommend process orientated at first as to keep with the theme of building the exercise habit first.

For example, an outcome orientated goal is to lose 5 lbs. A process oriented goal is to do 20 minutes of walking 3 times a week.

The reason process oriented goals are better at first is because you have total control over them. To lose poundage there are a lot of factors associated with it. If you don’t achieve that goal that week or month to lose X number of pounds then you many not feel very excited about continuing because you were not able to achieve your goal. If your goal was to go for a walk 3 times a week for 20 minutes, then you have almost 100% control over that being accomplished.

Each week or month you need to revisit your goals and build off of them so you can continuously get closet to your long term goal.

If your goal for the week was to go for a walk 3 times a week for 20 minutes and you achieved it, then you can easily build off of that goal. For the following week or month maybe your goal is to walk 3 times a week for 25 minutes. When setting and resetting goals you don’t need to make crazy big adjustments. Small achievable steps work best for success.

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When setting goals use the SMART principal

Goals should be Specific

Goals should be Measurable 

Goals should be Achievable 

Goals should be Realistic 

Goals should be Time based

Saying ” I am going to get in shape” as a goal does not follow any of the principals mentioned above.

An example of a long term goal that meets the above principles is

” My goal is to lose 30 pounds in 6 months”

That is now my long term goal. for two short term process oriented goals that will help me get to that long term goal are

  1. Go for a 15 minute walk 2-3 times per week for the next 3 weeks
  2. Reduce the amount of fast food I eat from 3 times per week to once per week.

That long term goal and the two short term goals satisfy everything that I mentioned in today’s post.

  • First you need to do some research and make a plan.

 

 

 

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