New Year’s Goals, Not Resolutions, For a Healthier You

Happy New Year! It’s a new year, and with the new year comes the mindset of having a new chance to be the person you envision. Typically, this comes in the form of creating New Year’s Resolutions, all-or-nothing statements of change, which are usually forgotten within a month’s time. For example,  many people’s health resolution may be to “Lose weight,” with the idea that they will lose all of the weight they gained in the last 10 years.

However, a goal is something you work towards. Good goals are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. And as we’ve talked about before, a good goal also has smaller goals, or steps, which help you reach the ultimate goal. These keep you motivated by giving you payoffs in a few weeks instead of being burnt out by waiting months for your reward.

Here’s an example of a healthy SMART goal, with smaller goals to get to it:

• Run my first marathon by the end of 2014.
  • Find a marathon and register!
  • Find an appropriate training plan for fitness level and time available.
  • Get up to weekly and long run mileage for start of training plan, if needed.
  • Run a 5K
  • Run a 10K
  • Run a 10 miler.
  • Run a half marathon.
  • Run chosen marathon!

As you can see, each smaller goal serves as a step to get to the main goal and can realistically be achieved in 4-6 week segments. Some goals don’t even take much time or work, but are equally as important and help motivate you along your journey.

So take some time today to create several long term goals for 2014. Then break those down into at least three smaller goals. And then post everything where you will see it on a daily basis and be reminded of what you want to achieve in the next year.

If you want to share any of your goals with us, feel free to comment here, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter. Zee (@ZeeTHD) and Suze (@SuzeTHD) love hearing from you!

We hope you have a healthy and fabulous year! And we’ll be here with challenges and articles to help that dream of a healthier you come true.