If you’re like many YMCA members, you have goals you want to achieve in 2022. If your goal is to be healthier this year, you may want to improve your fitness, nutrition and learning habits. After all, learning new things is vital for your mental and cognitive health. To succeed with your resolutions, you’ll need to set strong goals. Here are some tips to help you set strong nutrition, learning and fitness goals in 2022.
How to Set Strong Nutrition, Learning and Fitness Goals in 2022
Be Specific, Clear and Personal
When setting your goals, be clear, specific and personal. Set goals that are realistic for you. Choose goals that you want to achieve.
Every day, you are bombarded with images of what you think fitness should look like on social media platforms. But their routines and goals may not be right for you. So, what is it that you want to personally achieve?
When setting your goals, make sure that you are:
- Clear: Avoid vague statements like “lose weight.” Be clear about what you want to achieve.
- Specific: If you want to lose weight, how much do you want to lose? When do you want to achieve this? For example, maybe your goal is to lose 10 pounds in three months or complete a 5K in May.
Take the SMART approach to setting your goals:
- Specific: Again, be clear and specific about what you want to achieve.
- Measurable: Make sure that you can track your progress and end results. If your goal is to run more this year, you can make your goal measurable by saying you want to “run XX miles this year.”
- Attainable: Make sure that your goal is attainable. If you have a larger goal that will take longer to achieve, try breaking it down into smaller, more attainable goals. For example, you may have a goal to lose 30 lbs. for the year, but to make it more attainable, you can set three mini goals of losing 10 lbs. every three months.
- Relevant: What is your motivation? How can you make your goal relevant to your life? For example, let’s use a 10-lb. weight loss goal. To make this goal relevant, you can say, “I want to lose 10 pounds in three months to be ready for my wedding.”
- Timely: Set deadlines for your goals and be strict about them. Don’t give yourself too much time, but don’t be unrealistic either. If you want to lose 10 pounds, giving yourself five months to achieve that goal may make it harder to stay on track.
The SMART approach can be applied to any goal that you set. We used fitness to simplify the examples, but you can use this approach when setting goals for nutrition or learning new things.
Take a Gradual Approach
There’s a good chance that you have multiple things you want to achieve this year. For example, if you have fitness, nutrition and learning goals for the year, you may feel overwhelmed if you try to do everything at once.
To succeed, try taking a gradual approach. Let’s say that you have goals of exercising three times per week, reading one book per month, and eating seven healthy meals per week.
That’s a lot to achieve at once. But you can take a more gradual approach by:
- Start with just one of these goals. Let’s choose the fitness goal. This week, set a goal to exercise three times.
- Stay focused on just your fitness goal for the next month or two.
- After one to two months, your weekly exercise routine should be a habit.
- Now, add in your reading challenge. Set a goal to read X number of chapters so that you can reach your goal of completing it by the end of the month.
- Continue with this goal for a month or two while continuing with your fitness journey.
- Repeat with the nutrition goal.
Over time, you’re gradually working on building and adding new healthy habits to reach your overall goal for the year.
To find your spark in 2022, set strong goals for fitness, nutrition and learning new things. These goals will help you feel better physically, emotionally and cognitively. Use these tips to set yourself up for success when creating your goals.