Setting SMART Goals

As the New Year begins, it’s important to think about your short and long term fitness goals for the year. Even if you’ve been on a regular workout routine for years, it can help to reevaluate exactly what you’re looking to achieve in terms of your body’s health and your desired fitness level.

When setting health and fitness goals for the year, it’s important to be ambitious, but it’s also important to avoid setting goals that will be impossible to achieve. At Medicine Shoppe Crowfoot, we recognize the need for assistance when it comes to setting realistic health and fitness goals.

If you want to set goals that you’ll be able to achieve, there is a simple acronym that you can follow. You must learn how to set SMART goals:

Specific

It helps to make your goals very precise and stated in terms of performance, weight loss desired, or any other criteria important to you. If your goal is to lose weight, create a specific goal that includes how much weight you want to lose and the time period in which you want to shed those pounds. For example, “I want to lose 20 pounds in the next 12 weeks.” 

Measurable

Making sure your goals are measurable means asking yourself how easy it will be to determine if you’ve accomplished them. Measuring your weight loss goals should be relatively simple. Twelve weeks from now, you’ll step on the scale and know very clearly how close you’ve come to your target weight. 

Achievable

When you’re looking ahead to the New Year and thinking about your health and fitness goals, it can be easy to dream big. Of course you must set your goals high, but you must be careful not to set goals that are ultimately unattainable. Taking the example from above, it would simply be unrealistic to shorten that timeline for losing 20 pounds to just three weeks. While it might be possible, it will ultimately be unrealistic and, most importantly, unhealthy. 

Relevant

It’s imperative that your goals pertain to something that is truly important to you. You shouldn’t be setting goals based what you’re hearing from friends, family, or workout buddies. You must set goals that actually mean something to you because, if you fail to do so, you’ll most likely find that you lack the motivation to do what’s necessary to achieve your goal. 

Time-Bound

Having concrete deadlines for you goals will be one of the most important motivators to help you accomplish the goals you’ve set for yourself in the New Year. All of your goals must have a specific time frame in which you’ll complete them. When your brain knows that the clock is ticking, you’ll have that extra push you need to realize your health and fitness goals this year.

While utilizing the SMART technique will certainly help you create goals that will be healthy, realistic, and important to you, it can never hurt to reach out for assistance in creating health and fitness goals that you’ll be able to attain. At Medicine Shoppe Crowfoot, we’re here to help you set goals that you’ll surely realize in the New Year. Give us a call at 1-403-455-9939 today!