Health Goals: Setting & Succeeding

Are you where you want to be in your healthy lifestyle or your families’? Well if you want to make changes this is a great time to start. Let’s start out by talking about some of your health goals and then we will cover the basics of setting goals.

Ok, good let’s get started! First look at what your diet and health has been life for the last 12 months. Before you can make any changes you need to find out where you are and answer some tough questions. Get out some paper and pen or just download these questions, in a few months you can look back at your answers to see the changes.

10 Questions to Help You with Your Health Goals

1. Do you feel healthy? Rate your overall healthy level on a scale from 1-10. How is your energy level, are you tired most of the time?

2. Do you like the way you look in your clothes? Want to lose some weight?

3. Is your skin an even tone or blotchy? Do you have breakouts often?

4. Do you take vitamins? Do you take more drugs than you’d like (prescription or over the counter)?

5. Where do you or your family eat most meals? Home or Out. Are your meals whole, fresh foods or fast food, boxed instant?

6. Do you understand food and make wise food choices? Do you wish healthy eating was easier to understand?

7. When you eat do you feel that you don’t get full, even though you have eaten enough? Or you hungry again after just a short period of time?

8. Do you crave sweets often? Do you feel meals would not be good without bread?

9. How active are you? Would you like to accomplish more in your day?

10. Do you have a goal you want to achieve, but your health has kept you from reaching it?

I know some of these questions maybe hard to answer, but do the best you can. Decide what you really want to achieve for your health over the next month and also over the course of the year. Goals can’t be reached if you don’t have them recorded.

Pick three of the questions above and make them into goals. Let’s take question 5 as an example. Where do you eat most of your meals, (home or out)? Are your meals whole, fresh foods or fast food, boxed instant?

A good goal if you found you eat many processed or boxed foods would be to resolve to make 2 main meals from scratch each week as a start. Or if you eat out too often, make it a goal to eat at home more. Remember, you did not start eating the way you are yesterday, so it is not going to get all straightened out overnight. But if you make one change today and keep with it, you are closer to your goal than you were.

Setting SMART Goals

Take one of the goals you have chosen and lets work on it. SMART is an acronym used to explain goal setting. In our case we will define S.M.A.R.T. as goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Framed.

Specific: Goals need to be specific. Many times we set goals that are not well defined. How can we know if we have reached our goal? For example, if I say “I want to start eating better” this is too vague a statement. How will you know if you are eating better or not? Saying, “I will eat 3 meals this week using healthy recipes from Cooking God’s Way” is more specific. At the end of the week you can look and see if you met your goal.

Measurable: Goals need to be measurable. For example, we all want to eat better. But “eating better” is an ambiguous statement. Using the statement above would be better, “I will eat 3 meals this week using healthy recipes from Cooking God’s Way.” This is a clear statement and easily measurable, not to mention will be some great food. 🙂

Achievable: Goals need to be reasonable and achievable. Often their success or failure depends on setting practical goals. Many of us have tried to eat more home cooked meals with healthy ingredients. So to say I will by the end of the week be eating all my meals cooked at home completely health based is unrealistic. Eating 3 meals made at home with healthy ingredients is reasonable. Keep your goals real things that you can do.

Realistic: Goals need to be realistic. When we were young we though we knew it all. Now we know better. Be honest when setting goals. If you need help, get it. You may want your family to eat only healthy meals by the end of the month. Can they make that drastic of a change in such a short time? Or does it need a little adjustment? Say a few months or a year even.

Time Framed: Goals need to have a time frame. If you don’t set a date to complete something by then there is no accountability. Many of us want to eat healthy sometime. So set a start and end date. “We are going to start eating more healthy meals next week and by the end of the month half of our meals will be health based.” Using specific time frames will give you the push to get started and monitor your progress.

So there you have it, keep your goals SMART and you will do a much better job of reaching them.

Lesson Assignment: Print out the goal questions and try to answer them all (truthfully). Pick 3 to focus on and work through; create a plan using the SMART goals.

Share one of your goals with the group by posting a comment below. We could have suggestions. See you in the Food Log lesson.

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