The New Year is an exciting time to start or return to your health goals, but those goals are usually abandoned by February. If you’ve ever felt bad about not being able to stick to your goals or resolutions, I have some good news for you! It’s not that you don’t have the motivation or discipline to follow through. It doesn’t say anything about you as a person.
I promise it’s not you; it’s your approach. Let me explain. So many people take on new health goals with the “go big or go home” attitude. No more takeout! No more sweets! Workout every day! Save $100 a week! Start a 5-step morning routine!
What does creating a routine look like?
Creating this drastic change in your routine is where you set yourself up to fail. So what do you do instead? Start small. Small changes allow you to build a foundation that you can rely on as you continue to progress toward your goal. In my health coaching practice, I call this my Triple S Method: slow, steady, and sustainable. You slowly make changes and steadily build on them to create sustainable changes and habits.
Think about when your kids were learning how to write. Before they write and form letters, they draw. And before they draw, they learn to use their fingers to pick things up, laying the foundation to grip a pencil. Breaking your health goals down in a similar way will make it easy and eliminate the stress and pressure that usually come with making changes.
What does this look like IRL?
A lot of moms have a desire to lose weight, so let’s explore that as an example. Putting that goal into practice often looks like focusing on nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle factors. A typical set of goals that accompany a desire for weight loss are: no takeout, 5 workouts a week, a new morning routine, and going to bed earlier. But the way you were living before January 1st looked like: takeout 3 nights a week, the occasional workout, rolling out of bed at the last minute, and staying up too late to get everything done. Of course, it’s going to be a struggle to do all that in one week, no wonder you feel like you always fail, you’re not setting yourself up for success! Let’s change that.
What does starting these health goals small look like?
The first step is to realize that your health goals are going to be reached over time, ditching the quick-fix mindset you’ve been sold. This is crucial if you want your new habits to last past January. With this mindset, you’ll start with baby steps. Scale back takeout by 1 or 2 nights each week. Schedule two workouts weekly with four possible times you’ll do it. Pick one part of your morning routine and try to implement it two to three times per week to start. Start scaling back your bedtime by 15 minutes. THEN after two weeks, see how you’re doing and see where it’s time to add more and where changes need to be made. Being flexible and experimenting to see what works is essential to your success.
Once you take a step back and realize that nothing is going to change overnight, you give yourself the freedom to find what works for you and what will continue to work for you and your family. Building towards your health goals slowly creates a positive snowball effect and before you know it, you’ll be looking back, impressed, at how far you’ve come and how manageable it felt to implement changes.
I also want to take a moment to remind you that taking time for yourself is NOT selfish and it makes you a better mom. It’s cliché, but you have to put your oxygen mask on before you can help others. Keep that in mind as you enter the new year and select your goals.
