Make Your Resolution(s) Tangible
Posted on December 30, 2014
The New Year is a time for re-evaluating and reflecting. We feel renewed after the holidays and ready to scale Everest! Although setting ambitious resolutions can be fun and inspiring, when you experience the first onset of difficulty your excitement often turns into frustration. This year use the SMARTr principle when setting your New Year’s Resolution. The following is an example of how to set SMARTr goals for weight loss:
Specific: instead of setting a goal to lose weight, consider setting a goal to lose 10 pounds.
Measurable: weight is easy to measure, get a scale and take your baseline weight and record it.
You may want to take hip and waist measurements too. Measure your weight once a week on the same scale, the same day and time of day each week. Hip and waist measurements won’t change that quickly, re-measure once a month.
Action Oriented: be specific about what it is you are going to do to lost 10 pounds. For example, you are going to walk for 30 minutes, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 12 noon.
Realistic: Will the action you are taking help you to achieve the goal of the 10 pound weight loss? If not, revisit the actions and determine what else you may need to do. Maybe you will choose to cut out the great whites (bread, sugar, potatoes, rice) and replace them with whole grains, brown rice, sweet potatoes.
Time Based: Be realistic about how long it will take to lose 10 pounds; 3500 calories equals one pound. To burn 3500 calories in one week you would need to either exercise to burn 500 calories each day, cut 500 calories out of your diet each day, or a combination of the two; burn 250 calories each day and cut 250 calories out of your diet each day. Give yourself 10 weeks; you may end up achieving your goal before that – good for you! Keep up the healthy lifestyle. Or if you would like to lose more weight, set another goal and keep going.
reward: All too often we either forget to reward ourselves or we choose a reward that ends up sabotaging our achievement! If you achieve your 10 pound weight loss it is important to celebrate it. Be careful not to celebrate it with food, instead choose to buy yourself a new pair of sneakers or a FitBit, go see or rent a movie you have wanted to see, or go pamper yourself with a massage.
Have some fun and take my quick weekly quiz and claim your reward. Act now before they are all gone!
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