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ByAnn
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Setting Realistic Goals and Keeping Your Expectations Realistic

Once you feel ready to make changes to your lifestyle, the next step is setting what your goals will be. They can be anything you want: weight loss, building strength at the gym, eliminating medications, or all of the above! However, many set goals based on what they think they SHOULD be verses what’s realistic. Setting goals that don’t make sense will just set you up for frustration and not being able to achieve them. If you don’t achieve what you set out to do, it’s easy to just stop and give up! Of course, this is what we want to avoid. Work with your dietitian to achieve attainable, reasonable, and time appropriate goals. Change takes time, so allow yourself the time and practice. For example, if you gained 20 pounds over a period of 3 years, you won’t be able to lose all 20 pounds in 1 month!

Set SMART Goals

A good goal-setting strategy is the SMART goal checklist. Be sure that your weight-loss goals meet the following criteria:

  • Specific: A good goal includes details, such as what you will do, how long you will do it, and when you will do it. For example: A goal to walk 30 minutes after work every day.
  • Measurable: If you can measure a goal, then you can determine how successful you are at meeting your goal. For example: A goal of incorporating more vegetables into lunches and dinners.
  • Attainable: An attainable goal is one that you have enough time and resources to achieve. This can help you to set goals that are achievable and sustainable. For example: You don’t have time to go to the gym 1 hour per day, so a more realistic goal would be 3 days per week for 30 minutes each time.
  • Relevant: Don’t set goals that someone else wants you to achieve. Ask yourself what’s most important to you and then determine your goals. For example: If weight loss is a priority, then your dietitian can help you come up with realistic goals and a reasonable plan on how to achieve them.
  • Time-limited: Giving yourself a time limit can motivate you to get started and stay on course.

Long-term vs. Short-term Goals

Short-term goals will help you to start making changes and stay motivated, which will then lead to long-term success. Long-term goals help you to focus on the big picture. You will hear us dietitians talk ALL the time about lifestyle changes, not diets! Shifting your thought process will help tremendously.

Allow For Setbacks

Setbacks are a natural part of behavior change. Life happens! If you have had a challenging period of time, don’t waste time being so hard on yourself. Just take steps to move forward day by day. This could also become a time for you to re-evaluate your goals and adjust them as needed.

ByAnn
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Exercising Through the Winter Season

As the weather gets colder, it’s challenging to feel motivated to go outside for a walk or run when you can just stay cozy inside of your home. Sure, we may rather go outside when it’s warm or stay in bed when it’s dark and cold outside, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are lots of exercise options that we can do during this time instead of giving excuses every single time. A very good first step is to get up and start moving, but what type of exercises can you do after that? Here’s some options that you can be consistent with AND actually enjoy:

For those who love cold weather (be sure to bundle up and grab the proper gear first):

  • Hiking
  • Walking
  • Jogging or Running
  • Bike riding
  • Snow shoe-ing
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Walking the dog
  • Ice skating
  • Raking the leaves
  • Splitting wood

For those who want to stay warm indoors:

  • Exercising at a gym (if you’re comfortable)
  • Fitness apps (I LOVE the Peloton app – you don’t need their bike to use this)
  • Yoga
  • Strength training (weights, resistance bands, etc.)
  • Jump rope
  • Indoor swimming pool
  • YouTube workout videos
  • Barre
  • Dancing
  • Walking up and down stairs
  • Qubii (foot pedaling
  • Home equipment (treadmill, elliptical, stationary bike, total gym, etc.)
  • Build your own workout (lunges, squats, push ups, sit-ups)

It’s recommended to stretch both before and after workouts. If you haven’t exercised much before, it’s okay to start small and work your way up to longer exercise periods. Do only what you can tolerate since you could injure yourself if you don’t. Start with five minutes and then go from there. Don’t compare your abilities to others, but start somewhere: something is better than nothing! If you aren’t sure if a certain exercise is okay for you, be sure to contact your doctor and get clearance before trying it.

ByAnn
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Stop The Excuses, Just Start!

A few weeks ago, I participated in my first ever Aquabike event. It was a 1-mile swim and then a 25-mile bike ride. I have done a few triathlons before but I don’t enjoy running, so I was excited to try out this option. I was also nervous and wasn’t sure if I was prepared enough. However, I was as prepared as I was going to be as the day approached. I swam a few mornings each week, rode my stationary bike at home, and completed some outdoor rides here and there.

As we all know, it is so easy to think negatively and talk ourselves out of things. The morning of, my brain started: “I think it’s going to rain. This is too early, I’m tired. I hope the water isn’t cold. Should I cancel?” Were any of these good reasons? Nope. In order to calm my nerves, I had to switch my thinking: “Ann, you are fine. You love to swim. Even if it rains, you are in the water anyway. Take your time. The water will be warm, it’s summer. It’s a great day for this.” As I kept repeating these types of thoughts in my head, I felt myself calm down and couldn’t wait to just do this.

In the end, I finished feeling great and got 3rd place in my age group! I was so excited and happy that I did it. Moral of the story: you CAN do this! Just because something is hard doesn’t mean you aren’t capable. If we weren’t so hard on ourselves with everything we do, we’d be able to move forward faster and keep going. Expecting perfection is not a realistic goal. Don’t give up on yourself and when it comes to making changes to your health and lifestyle, it is worth it to STOP the excuses and just START.

BySara
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Show Up For Yourself!

It can be a challenge to get up and stay motivated to work out at 5:00 a.m. every day, but there are plenty of people who do it. They get up for themselves. They get up because they want to feel good. They get up because they know that if they don’t, they will feel guilty and that terrible feeling of self-loathing and regret will haunt them all day long.

When my alarm goes off, I think of that extra hour or two of sleep, but then I remind myself that I am so grateful for how I feel when I am done. The excitement of being ready to take on the world and do anything is the conversation you want to have with yourself every time you want to bail. Say, “Stop! I want to feel good and this makes me feel good, so get up and just do it.”

Stop making excuses and blaming the job, the kids, or the schedule. Stop saying “Tomorrow”, “I wish I could”, or “If only I had the time” because guess what? You can and you do have the time. Show up for yourself.

How do we get to this point?
– Set small, realistic goals
– Be honest with yourself and set realistic expectations
– Reward yourself when you hit your goals
– Find a buddy to keep you accountable
– Take it one day at a time and allow it to become a part of your routine

Once an action becomes a part of your routine, it’s hard to break away from it. It takes time, but don’t give up on yourself.

A few years ago, I bought a Groupon to a hot yoga studio and it took months for me to redeem it. I finally got myself there at 5:30 a.m. because my husband remarked “Oh, you are not going to get up.”

“Don’t tell me I am not going to do something – I’ll show you,” were the thoughts that went through my mind as I got ready for bed that night.

When I got up in the morning and got ready, he rolled over and said, “You’re welcome.” Now clearly, he knew how to motivate me to get up in the morning, but that was all it took for me to get started. Before the pandemic, I got up every Tuesday and Thursday morning to take a hot yoga class. I relied on my teacher at the time to become a part of my accountability. Her knowing that I committed to being there twice a week made me not want to disappoint her. Whether she cared or not didn’t matter. I committed and I stay true to my commitments.

Unfortunately, things changed once everything locked down for the pandemic and I could not get to class. I found that my energy and body did not feel the same. Thankfully, I connected with a friend (funny enough her name is also Sara) who told me about a Zoom yoga class taught by a local teacher, Jessica. In the past, I wouldn’t have stepped foot in Jessica’s class because she was too intense, but I was desperate to get back to it, so I reached out to her and signed up for the first class.

Sara and I decided to do a 7-day challenge. Could we do yoga for 7 straight days? It seemed like a bit much, but we gave it a try and accomplished our first goal. Our goals kept growing until we decided to do 30 days of yoga. That’s right, I said 30 days of yoga! We kept a calendar going and marked the days so we could reflect on our success. The excitement of marking another day done was so rewarding. 30 days turned into 60 days, and before we knew it, we did 90 days of straight yoga. I had multiple sources of accountability at this point – my husband because of his remarks (ha!), Sara because she was doing it with me, Jessica because she knew we made this commitment, and our little virtual yoga family because we all expected each other to be there in the morning.

Realistically, we could not keep doing yoga 7 days a week, so Sara and I reassessed our goals and decided to take the weekends off and commit to Monday to Friday for yoga at 5:30 a.m. Now it’s been almost 1 year since we started. This morning, I was able to get up without my alarm because my body is just used to it. It has become a habit and part of my routine that my body and mind yearn for daily. You have to give things time to become a habit and don’t give up when it seems too hard. Just keep reminding yourself that you will feel better when you are done and no matter the length of time you do it for. Whether it’s for 15 minutes or 1 hour, your will be grateful that you did. You just have to do it.

(c) SHS Nutrition, LLC (2021)