by Karen Lirio

New Year Resolutions are so synonymous with failure that most people simply don’t make them anymore. Sadly, the start of a brand new year is in fact a perfect time for fresh starts. The trick is to make your New Year goals, SMART goals. This is particularly true if your goals are health and fitness orientated.

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time bound.

Let me explain:

Specific goals are exactly that, specific. If you are not specific when setting your health & fitness goals, it is going to be very difficult to plan how you are going to achieve those goals.

Fitting into a pair of old jeans is a specific goal, as is losing weight. "I want to be healthy" is not a specific goal. How do you measure overall health? If, to you, being healthy means having "little body fat," then you should make reducing your body fat your goal rather than “to be healthy". It is a much more specific and measurable goal, which means a better chance of success.

The next step is to take your specific goal and turn it into something measurable. Becoming stronger is a specific goal that you can also make measureable by determining how much weight you can currently bench press, for example, and then setting yourself a goal weight to work towards. A goal needs to be measureable if you are ever going to be able to determine whether you have achieved it or not!

The next aspect of good health and fitness goals is that they are action-oriented. An action-orientated goal is one that you can set specific actions against to help you achieve that goal. For a weight loss goal, for example, you may decide that one action will be to reduce the number of calories you eat per day and another to increase the amount of exercise you do per week. Lots of small actions can help you achieve a seemingly impossible goal.

Achievable goals need to be realistic. Losing 30 kilos per month is simply not realistic (not to mention dangerous). Bench pressing 100 kgs may or may not be realistic for you. Take time to really evaluate your goals and determine how realistic they actually are. If your health & fitness goals are not realistic, then you run a huge risk of failure and disappointment.

Sometimes goals don't look realistic on the surface but might look more realistic if broken down into smaller intervals. For example, if your goal is to lose 50 kgs, that may not seem doable at first glance but if you break that goal down into smaller components, such as, 5 kgs per month, then that goal may suddenly seem more reasonable. String together several realistic short term goals to make your longer term goal realistic.

Finally our goals must be time-bound. Give yourself a due date. Be careful how you set your time-bound goals however as an unrealistic time frame may make a realistic goal suddenly unrealistic. Losing 10kilos in 3 months may be realistic but losing 10 kilos in a week certainly isn’t. When setting your health & fitness goals always consider how long it will take you to get there, then set a date and stick to it. Make yourself accountable. One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply write the goal down and place it in a prominent place. When posting your goal in a prominent place, write the due date down as well. It will help to keep you motivated and pressing ahead.

Tip: Once you have set your health & and fitness goals, and placed them in a prominent place, write down your starting measurements and then track your progress. There is nothing more inspiring than watching the numbers that represent your weight drop, or the numbers that represent your best bench press weight increase. Use your progress as a reminder of how far you’ve come and you will stay motivated right to the very end.