Setting Goals for Fitness & Health

Before beginning any fitness program, you need to decide what it is you want out of it. Do you want to improve your appearance, your physical skills; build endurance, flexibility or strength; are you trying to lose weight?

Make sure the activities that you pick meet the goals for what you want to get out of it.

Set Yourself up for Success

It's important not to undermine yourself with goals that are too long-term or impossible to attain.

For example; “I want to lose all my extra weight before summer” is too unrealistic; particularly if you have a great deal of weight to lose and summer is 3 months away.

Too often goals are an end result of whatever program we choose, and not a part of it. You have to make goals an active part of your life by creating goals that lead to the next goal works best.

It is just like the backwards technique mentioned in the above section. For instance, setting a goal to lose 10 pounds puts the goal at the end without putting too much pressure on you right away. You can add to this goal once it is achieved and so on.

Setting a goal to join an aerobics class and attend it three times a week makes the weight loss goal a part of the program.

You will have set a goal that is achievable almost immediately. This gives you a sense of accomplishment, which is an incentive to setting and achieving the next goal.

Keep a Record

Write your goals down so you have something to look forward to as well as back on. To begin, map out no more than eight weeks of activities towards your first fitness goal.

Working within your lifestyle, decide on a regular program. It's not necessary to work out every day, especially when beginning a new program as your body is not used to the stress. Our bodies become tired if expected to do hard work seven days a week.

Exercising every other day is a safe and realistic goal. Keep track of how much time you want to spend doing an activity, followed by how much time you will actually spend on it.

Not everyone is looking at fitness and health to lose weight. Perhaps you are just looking to better your health.

In this case you should think of this; we tend to focus most on the area of our health in our lives, when our health is already failing or less than stellar.

Unfortunately, it may sometimes take a life threatening event, illness or some type of physical rehabilitation to give us a wake up call to make tough changes in our current health habits.

We try to follow through on sound health principles such as enough sleep, a healthy diet and plenty of exercise, yet we may not have the time in our busy schedule or have strong enough will power to implement a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

With the pressures of the fast pace world in which we live, stress can set in and can take its toll. These days we are on the road more often.

What that means is that we are eating on the road as well, which doesn’t always offer us the best or healthiest choices.

We are lucky to get six, maybe seven hours of sleep per night while we now work at least six days per week.

The old saying, “At least I have my health” is finally starting to mean something to a great deal of people. You might be wondering what you can do to improve your health.

The first thing to do is to prioritize what is most important to you in your own individual lifestyle.

You can begin by asking yourself these questions:

1. What is my current exercise goal this month or do I even have one?
2. What gets in my way when starting or continuing a balanced health maintenance program?
3. What is my target weight and my plan and timeframe to get there?
4. How can I improve in getting more sleep?
5. What is my ideal overall appearance hopes?
6. Would a personal trainer help me develop and reach my goals more effectively and can I afford one?
7. Of the meals I eat each month, how can I eat healthier, and what can I change in order to eat healthier without getting bored?
8. What books and classes can I take to improve upon my health?
9. Is it time for me to go in for a complete physical and when the last one was that I had
10. How can I reduce or completely eliminate alcohol, chemical dependencies and/or smoking in my body?
11. What ways may I be able to cook in a healthier manner?
12. How can I improve my current heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol count?
    The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter what you fitness/health goals are. If you have read the above sections on setting goals properly, and this section about fitness and health, you are ready to go.

You have to be honest with yourself at all times when it comes to your personal goals. If you are unsure as to what constitutes good and balanced nutrition, visit http://www.foodguidepyramid.com for the correct nutritional information.

You should also consult a doctor before making any changes to your diet or exercise regimen to ensure that you will not harm yourself. That is all there is to it!

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