Uncrappify Your Resolutions

It's that time of year again.  As the New Year approaches tonight, I can't stop thinking about resolutions.  I'm sure many of us have decided it's a good time to start getting healthier.  Here's some random info to help make sure you stick to your guns:

SMART Goal Setting

You may be wondering why the word "SMART" is in all capital letters.  If you haven't guessed already, this is actually an acronym (a witty one at that).  I can't take credit for it, but I often use it in class to make sure my students are setting realistic goals for themselves.   You can apply it to any sort of goal, but in this instance, we're going to apply it to getting healthier.  The letters stand for:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

When all components are used, we are more likely to set a goal that gets achieved.  For instance, many times we say "I'm going to get healthy".  What the heck does that actually mean???  Vague goals almost never get reached.  Narrow it down to an activity or behavior that you would like to change like exercising more, drinking less soda drinking, quitting smoking, eating more fruits, veggies, whole grains, etc.

When we put a number to our goal, it can give us something to work towards, too.  Like if you want to drink less soda, you could set your goal to allowing one per day.  You can measure how many cokes you drink in a day.  If you want to eat more fruit, you could set your goal for how many pieces of fruit you eat in a day and literally count how much fruit you eat. 

I think the most important take-home message is to make sure your resolution is realistic/attainable.  Say you set a goal to lose 60 pounds in one month (which BTW is completely unrealistic).  Not only are you going to hate yourself when you don't reach your goal, but you also don't appreciate any sort of progress you've made since it wasn't as high as you had hoped. 

Let's make sure we keep in mind that we are human and mistakes happen.  We need to set resolutions that take into account human nature.  On paper, it may look good to lose 5 pound in a month, but maybe there were a few birthday parties that you went overboard with or maybe you got sick and didn't feel like working out for a week. 

Lastly, we need to put a time frame on our resolution.  When are we starting?  When are we measuring it?  How often?  For how long?  If you want to exercise more, set an amount of time per day with a number of times per week.   It also may be a good idea when being realistic to make baby steps with time frames in mind.  Like maybe set a goal for exercising one time per week for 20 minutes for one month.  Then you could increase it once you've gotten used to the routine.

I hope this provides a little insight into proper goal setting, and hopefully, we'll actually set some resolutions that don't have to be repeated next year.