We all have different health goals & different ways of achieving them. Eating well, physical activity and being happy are all attainable when you have a good system.
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What are some good health goals?
Eat Well
Often eating healthy is seen as just a diet to lose weight, but eating well means much more. Eating well influences everything – how we sleep, how much energy we have, our physical and mental health and much more.
Having a healthy lifestyle starts with eating well and should be a top priority.
Get Physical
Incorporating more physical activities is essential nowadays, when everything is too easy to reach and we are getting lazier by the minute.
Not everybody has to do a full gym session 7 times a week, but everybody should start moving more during their day. If you work with a computer, consider getting a standing station or at least take a 10 minute break every hour to stretch a bit. You can also walk around the neighborhood with a friend or go for a hike during the weekend. Being physical doesn’t mean boring and difficult gym sessions, it can be a lot of fun and be a time of bonding with friends and family.
Be Happy
Our mental state matters more than we tend to realize. If you’re not happy, you should take actions to change that. There’s plenty of things you can do for self-care. We might not be able to change our whole lives or take a significant source of unhappiness out of our lives easily, but we can work being mindful. Once we realize that we’re not happy, we should strive to change it. The change can be completely from within, it can be a big life change, but it can also be small things we add into our lives.
What are some ways to achieve health goals?
Ask Why
Having a good reason to why we are setting a health goal is incredibly important. Realizing the WHY to what we do, is the beginning to having success and actually achieving our goals. We need a strong why in order to achieve anything. For example, a lot of people want to lose weight but they never achieve that goal. The reason is that they don’t know or don’t have in mind why they want to lose the weight. Is it because they want to be healthier, or to look better? And if you want to be healthier, why is that? Do you have a health condition that good nutrition can help to? Do you want to live longer?
Think good and hard about why you’re trying to change your lifestyle and find the reason or reasons you are going to finally achieve your health goals.
Find Motivation
We all have different ways of getting motivated. I love hearing loud empowering music before workouts. I also love reading about health benefits of whole foods that get me excited to eat a salad. You can do research, create an inspiration board (in real life or in Pinterest), you can look at pictures, you can learn how to cook yummy food that is actually healthy. The point is that you should find motivation every single day. Motivation is something that goes away quickly when temptation presents itself. Find your source of motivation and try to stick to it on a daily base. Even better if you find several things that motivate you.
Set Specific Goals
Saying “I want to lose weight” or “I’m going to eat healthy from now on” is nice, but it’s too general. Creating specific goals will take you a longer way. The more specific you get, the better. For example, I want to eat at least 3 vegetables everyday. So I try to incorporate a vegetable in every meal or snack.
Some good goals you can set for yourself:
- eating a certain amount of vegetables and fruits a day.
- Not drinking soda every other day or only drinking soda for lunch.
- Only eating out once a week.
- Having a walk around the neighborhood 3 times a week.
- Doing a 10-20 minutes workout at home with youtube videos.
Create Challenges
Especially if you’re a competitive person, this one will be amazing for you. Setting challenges for yourself can be very beneficial. For example, every month or so, I try to add a round or weight in the gym. I don’t want to be in a plateau so I challenge myself yo always improve.
Be Realistic
Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. If you imagine you’ll achieve all of your goals in a month, you’ll only harm yourself and your progress. Knowing that eating well is a lifestyle and working out is a long process will help you in actually achieving your health goals. When creating your specific goals and challenges, be realistic to what you can and can’t do. If it’s your current physical state, your schedule or your ability to cook good food, be realistic when you make your plans.
Be consistent
Being consistent is the most important thing in my opinion. You will have days when you won’t be able to find motivation, you’ll be tired, you won’t be on track of your plans and so many more intrusions. But as long as you’re consistent, you’ll achieve your goals.
I found that when I hold myself accountable, I’m more likely to achieve my health goals, so I created a printable planner and tracker.
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How is planing and tracking your habits will make you achieve your goals?
I believe that the more you plan and the more organized you are, you’re more likely to achieve your goals. Write down for a week what you ate and how much physical activity you had. When you have to actually face reality, you’ll be more likely to stick to your goals (or throw the papers to the trash, which I hope you won’t).
How to work with the weekly planner?
Start with writing down what you’re eating during the week. Write what you actually ate, right after eating. You might think you’re eating pretty well, but we tend to forget all the times we cheated. When you’ll see reality, you’ll be more aware and more able to plan the next week more correctly.
I like to plan in advance what I’ll eat during the week and then create my grocery list for the week. I love cooking, and when I go unplanned to the grocery store, I end up with absolutely everything they had and with many ideas of what I’ll be cooking. Planing in advance prevents that.
I think about what I want to cook and eat for me and my guy during the week, I write it down for both of us and then I create my grocery list. It’s fairly easy and it keeps me in check.
If you didn’t plan on eating junk food, you won’t buy it and you won’t have it during a crave! I like to save my cravings to when I eat out (only once a week).
How to work with the monthly tracker?
The monthly tracker I created has 4 main things to fill out:
How much water you drank – Staying hydrated (with the good kind of liquid, not soda) is important no matter your specific goal.
Workout or any kind of physical activity – fill what you did today that wasn’t just sitting\resting. Every activity counts wether it’s a walk around the neighborhood, standing\stretching while working or a session at the gym.
Mood\feeling – was it a good day? were you happy or sad? did you have any headaches, stomachaches or any disturbance or that sorts? It’s important to keep track of how you feel physically and emotionally.
Achieving your goals – fill out if you’re happy about your goals that day. Do you feel like you’ve achieved what you set up?
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I would love to hear what do you do to achieve your health goals? Do you have a system that works?
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These are really useful tips – I will be trying these out as I definitely need to focus more on my health.
Hey Kate, we can all improve our health! Tracking makes it easier.
My husband and I have been looking into ways to adapt our home office to have standing desks. We both work on the computer. When it’s not unbearably hot outside in Houston (basically December through February) I like to go for a walk with my boys to get outside and get exercise in. Those goals sheets look great, I need to track my water intake because I know it’s too low lately.
Hey Stephanie, changing to standing desks is really beneficial. I use my kitchen island-bar to work sometimes.
Walking around is also something simple that most people just don’t do… Thank you for reminding me to drink more water also 😉
The first thing I do every morning = WORK OUT… And working out boosts my endorphins thus… I AM HAPPY!!! 😉
Hey Gigi, I love this attitude!
The idea of creating challenges really works for me. I’m a highly competitive person and creating some sort of challenge would really give me a drive to succeed.
Hey Nicole, I’m the same! I love using competition (with myself lol) in order to accomplish a goal!
Great tips! Setting really specific and achievable goals are so important. You gotta chip away at that big goal little by little.
I love the printable work sheet! I definitely want to write down my goals and be intentional with tracking it.
Hey April, I’m glad you liked it! good luck with tracking 🙂
Love this post! I’m trying to get healthy before my wedding in September so this came at the perfect time!
Hey Tonya, congrats!! I hope this helps you reach your goals 🙂
Think one of the most important ones you listed was to be realistic. So many people want to get fit overnight, and that’s not how it work.s these are all great tips.
Hey Kayla, I’m defiantly one of those people lol. I go to the gym once and shocked when I don’t look completely different lol. We all need to be more realistic about the time that it takes to reach certain goals.
What a great printable. These are some great goals to go by!
Some great points and so handy to print out a simple weekly and monthly food tracker. Thanks for sharing.
A printable work sheet is a great idea. I always find that I achieve my goals much better when they are in writing x
Hey Melanie, I’m the same, writing things down makes me more accountable.
Simple reminders but ones that are often overlooked on. Thanks for the free printable as well! Def helps your fitness goals on track 🙂
Hey Stephanie, I’m glad you like the printables 🙂
I am downloading the sheet now. I have to admit that without the proper planning, goals seem so unrealistic. Your post makes such a detailed planing. Thanks lord!
Hey Hieu, I’m glad you liked the worksheet, It has helped me to be realistic about what I eat. I hope it helps you 🙂