If you’re trying to step up in your life, then health goals are hopefully your number one priority. Because health goals should incorporate the body and mind, it is a broad subject. Luckily, in a healthy body, there’s a healthy mind.
Make A List
All right, so this is pretty much straightforward. You need to write down your health goals and goals in general. Choose your top 5 or top 10 goals you want to achieve in a certain time frame. DO NOT make it overwhelming. Make goals feel achievable and not impossible. “To look like Jennifer Lopez” is not an achievable goal 😉
Some people recommend you to put up the list in a place where you will see it every morning and every evening. You guessed it, use the mirror in your bathroom to hang the list up.
Why would putting your health goals list in a visible place help? It functions as a daily affirmation tool.
You see, most of us start out strong. We rush through the gate running and then lose our breath. Health goals are not a sprint. They are a marathon.
Start at a pace that you can keep up with it the long run. A word of caution though. If you think that a health goal like to quit smoking can only be achieved by going cold turkey, then yes. By all means, sprint out the gate. It might be more beneficial to you.
Read more about Personal Goals For 2020.
Let’s see what are some of the goals you need/should include in your list.
Top Health Goals
I’ll be including a list of goals that are broad and are on top of the minds of most of the people. There’s no secret here and you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. These health goals are here for a reason. It’s that they are most beneficial to your body and your mind.
Quit Smoking
Still, over 20% of adults in the world smoke and there are five countries where more than 40% of the population smoke. Smoking takes 10 to 15 quality years off your life and every 6 and a half seconds someone in the world dies from smoking – that’s 1.5 million people a year.
These numbers are the reason why you need to finally do it. If you’re smoking, this should be at the top of the list of health goals. I, myself quit and started smoking a couple of times. It is a rollercoaster ride I must say.
Nicotine is one of the most powerful drugs out there. Combine that with additives that tobacco manufacturers put into cigarettes, no wonder it’s so hard to quit.
As much as you might enjoy it and you don’t feel any detriment to your health (I highly doubt that), you owe it to yourself and to your family to quit once and for all.
You can try going cold turkey, meaning, quitting straight away. Or you can try reducing the number of daily cigarettes until it hits zero. If you are a really heavy smoker, try using services of a professional hypnotist.
Because it’s so hard, you might find yourself relapsing a couple of times when you’re under a lot of stress and you’re just looking for an excuse to light a ciggy.
Don’t beat yourself up and always remember your why.
Lose Weight
Overweight is defined as “abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health”. It’s usually a result of an imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended.
In layman’s terms – you eat and drink more calories than you need. If you’re battling with your weight, you should prioritise this as one of your health goals asap.
Read more about Personal Goals For 2020.
From my experience, the easiest way to achieve weight loss is through calorie counting. You wouldn’t believe how much we underestimate the number of kcal in a meal.
By using free calorie counting apps, you can have a clear picture of how much you’re eating and how much you actually need. This website has a list of 10 apps that you can download. I’d be careful with everyone’s number 1 choice – My Fitness Pal as they’ve had a huge data leak in the recent past and all of the user’s info got out on the dark web.
So calorie counting should be your absolute number 1. Next, lose ALL the liquid calories and lastly, start introducing regular exercise into your routine. That’s it.
A simple and effective plan to achieve one of your health goals.
Just stick with it. Once you start seeing results, you won’t go back.
Exercise More
Although the consensus is that diet is more important than exercise for weight loss and I agree, it is still very much vital for your health, maintaining or losing weight and keeping a sound mind.
Most of the successful people out there, people you look up to, are exercising fanatics. They could lie on their couch and count their money all day long. But most of them don’t do that. You see, to enjoy your (insert whatever is important to you, ie. money, family, fame, kids) longer and better you need good health.
You can hear people left and right running marathons or doing triathlons. Why do people go through these gruesome feats?
It gives their lives a purpose. And bragging rights of course. But it also gets them off the couch. You don’t have to run marathons to be healthy. Actually you’re probably better off not running marathons. But, you can run 5k multiple times per week. It gets you out of the apartment, gives you something to focus on outside of work and family and is great for contemplating, finding new ideas and listening to audiobooks.
Doing the couch to 5k or 10k challenge is a great health goal. Use an app that will incentivize you and gamify the challenge. It’s more fun that way and makes it easier to plan and track your activities.
Of course, you don’t have to do running as one of your health goals. Choose an activity or sport that suits you best. Or mix it up and do two or more sports or activities.
Limit Alcohol and Drugs Consumption
There are many benefits to drinking less alcohol. Not only is it good for your general health and appearance but it can improve your work performance and relationships. The same and more so goes for drugs as well.
You don’t have to quit your habit entirely. After all, we’re all human. We need an outlet sometimes. If this is your outlet and you (or others) don’t feel it’s affecting you (or others), it’s fine to indulge yourself from time to time.
Now, if you do have a problem, please include this health goal on your list. Change can seem scary and it’s not always easy but we all can do it.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to drink less alcohol or using fewer drugs (or none at all), it’s important to remain in control and remember why you committed to this in the first place.
Conclusion
These health goals will do the heavy lifting for “smaller” goals in life you want to achieve. By feeling better in your skin, you might finally have the confidence to seek that big promotion or even change your career altogether.
By going for daily runs outside, you will help your mind clear the clutter and stress and you’ll even have time to listen to audiobooks that can help you change your life. Because it’s so hard to set aside half an hour to read a book in today’s ADHD society, here’s a perfect chance to kill two birds with one stone (send me a better analogy to my email, so I can stop using this one).
It’s the Pareo or 80/20 rule all over again in which 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. And that’s the beauty of it.
Always start where you feel you’d have the most impact on your wellbeing. Your subconscious knows which goal is the silver bullet to achieving other health goals and life goals in general.
