5 Simple Steps to Get S.M.A.R.T. About Your Fitness and Wellness Goals

If you’re anything like me there have been countless times where you’ve sat down with a pen and paper to write out goals you want to achieve over the next few weeks or months. Whether it’s for New Year’s or an upcoming special occasion, you’ve meant the goals you set and start out motivated for the first couple of weeks only to fall off track and leave them unfinished. It’s easy when we’re at this low point to think we ourselves are the problem, but in fact a large part of the issue lies in how we plan and set our goals. It wasn’t until I heard about the S.M.A.R.T method that I realized I had been going about goalsetting all wrong.

S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This method can be applied to any objective you wish to set, but it has become essential for nutrition and wellness coaches. In this article, we will go through what each letter means and how to apply them to make your personal wellness goals more effective.

S – Specific

The first thing we often think of when trying to set a fitness goal is, “I need to eat healthier” or “I need to get in shape”. These are great starting points; however, this type of thinking is too broad, and you need to narrow down your objective to get a solid roadmap. Instead of your goal being to eat healthier, you can specify that you want to add a fruit and vegetable to every meal. Not only does this first step help you get a clearer picture, but it makes the following steps much easier.

M – Measurable

Now that you have a specific goal in mind, it’s time to quantify. Creating measurements for your goals helps map out the actions you need to take.; If your goal is to lose weight, you can instead change it to “lose 10 pounds over the next 3 months.” Similarly, for the previous example, you can break down what the measurable serving sizes are for the fruits and vegetables you wish to add to your daily meals. With this clear objective it is much easier to create a roadmap for achieving your goals.

A – Achievable

This is perhaps the most important parameter when setting nutrition and fitness goals. I recently had someone tell me they wanted to lose 15 which is a great objective. However, they then informed me they wanted to accomplish it in a month. Not so great of an objective. While this is a specific, measurable goal, it isn’t realistic or attainable as doing so would have caused this person’s body terrible strain and be extremely unhealthy. When considering our goals that we need to make sure the end goal is achievable within the given time frame.

R - Realistic

This step goes along with achievability in the sense that we need to make sure what we want to achieve can be realistically done. For example, wanting to run a marathon is attainable, but wanting to run a marathon next month without any prior training isn’t. It is important to be honest with ourselves to ensure we have reasonable resources and time to achieve our objectives.

T – Time-bound

When setting our goals, we need to make sure we have a clear timeframe and end date. Doing this gives us an outline and a solid structure to guarantee we can follow through with our goals. This step is especially crucial for fitness goals as depending on the length of the timeframe in which you want to accomplish your objectives will determine the types of workouts and exercises you will need to perform.

By incorporating the S.M.A.R.T. method into your goal setting process, you can help ensure you fitness and wellness goals are not only successful, but effective as well.

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