Struggling to sustain a workout routine? When approached correctly, goal setting can be a powerful tool for change. Photo / 123rf
Struggling to sustain a workout routine? When approached correctly, goal setting can be a powerful tool for change. Photo / 123rf
Personal trainer Samantha Bluemel gives tips on how goal setting can help you prioritise your health and fitness in a way that lasts.
The term “goal-setting” might have some flimsy, frustrating or pointless connotations attached to it for you, based on past experiences. There’s more than one tossed-out attempt in my January history books, or if you’re harking even further back to your school days, the idea of goal-setting might even seem a little, well, young. But with the right approach, setting goals for yourself can be a powerful tool for change.
Let me start with a quick story. This time last year, I was coming out of a period in my life that was unimaginably difficult. My mum had passed away from breast cancer the October before, and I’d spent the two and half years before that dealing with her illness, and then as her primary caregiver. In December of 2022, I had a preventative double mastectomy having been diagnosed with the BRCA gene mutation. It felt like my life was in tatters, and you can bet my stress levels and lifestyle reflected every ounce of that mindset.
I mention this not for sympathy but because once I started to find my feet again, these are the steps I took to get my health back on track. A year later and I feel like my active, younger self again (albeit with some figurative battle wounds that will take longer to heal). I know what it is to feel stuck and unmotivated, yet knowing something has to change. And I know how powerful it is when you start to look at the process of change as a long-term project, not an overnight fix. You’ve got this in you too.
Setting aside goals for now, let’s focus on the habits that make up your daily lifestyle. One of the reasons change can be so difficult is because we repeat our habits like clockwork, day by day. Those habits form neural pathways that are well-worn and well-travelled, comforting in their familiarity. Changing these can feel uncomfortable at first. But a bit of discomfort can be a very positive indicator that you are on your way to creating new habits that better support your health.
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Our habits are formed by the systems and processes that drive our actions. By focusing on these smaller aspects of day-to-day life, it’s possible to change our actions bit by bit, resulting in new habits over time. If we commit to systematic sustainable changes for a very long time, the end goal virtually takes care of itself. You’ll find your very identity starts to shift and align itself with what you’re trying to achieve. Our goal, therefore, is to implement better systems that result in healthier habits, creating the vision of yourself you have for 2024.
Working backwards, start by visualising that reality.
Join Samantha Bluemel in 2024 as she guides you to prioritise health, transform habits and achieve lasting lifestyle changes.
Step 1: Defining your identity
Instead of setting a broad goal, start by thinking about the person you’d like to identify as by the end of this year. This might be related to any part of your health or wellbeing. By changing our language from goal to identity, the intention to change takes on a whole new meaning. It’s the difference between “my goal is to run a marathon” and “I identify as someone who likes to run regularly, who could willingly train for a marathon.”
It could be something as simple as “I identify as someone who prioritises their health and fitness.” Looking at it conversely, would someone who prioritises their health and fitness eat mainly processed food and never visit the gym? No, that person would make time for home-cooked meals and schedule weekly workouts. Striving to inhabit this new identity gives you a north star from which your daily decisions can follow.
Step 2: Assessing habits
Last week, we took some time to think about the habits currently making up your lifestyle. You might therefore have a good idea already of the blind spots you’d like to focus on this year, and the parts of your daily routine that don’t support a healthy body and mind. Now it’s time to write out some new habits that will help create the identity you defined above.
For example, as someone who prioritises health and fitness, I would be in the habit of exercising four to five times a week.
I would also be in the habit of preparing meals that support my energy and recovery needs, and keep me feeling full during a busy day.
These are just two quick examples of the infinite number of habits that could make up your unique lifestyle.
Step 3: Assessing systems
Here is the opportunity to redefine what your lifestyle looks like and how it serves you by making small, stackable adjustments to your daily actions. It’s a truly impactful way to implement change on a micro-level without doing too much at once. It then slowly results in a lifestyle shift that takes you in a new direction.
For example, I am working on developing the habit of exercising 4-5 times a week. If this were you, and you were currently doing no exercise at all, we could start with a new process of:
I am going to put this in my work diary and make sure anyone relevant knows it’s a priority
I am going to prepare myself a healthy snack for directly after my workout
I am going to pack my exercise gear and snack the night before and put it by the door ready to go (or even in the car)
Already that’s four small systems that are easily actionable, and lead to your intended outcome of making it to your gym on Wednesday. The following week, you’d add in a second workout for the week. The third week, you’d add a walk on the weekends. And so on, until you’ve built up your desired schedule.
If it were something like, “I am working on eating home-cooked meals for 80 per cent of my week’” your systems might look like the following:
Writing a meal plan on Sunday for the week
Grocery shopping on the same day for everything that meal plan needs
Prepping your week’s lunches and snacks ahead of time to have them ready to go
Grabbing your lunch and snacks out of the fridge in the morning as you walk out the door
Coming home from work and starting your dinner prep straight away, before you can opt for something like takeaways
Depending on your start point, this might begin at a 40/60 per cent ratio of home-cooked vs bought meals and slowly increase, or whatever is relevant to you.
You can apply this logic to smaller things too. For instance - I am building a habit of drinking two litres of water a day. My new system is to keep a bottle of water on my desk, and to knock back a healthy glug every time I complete a task (like finishing an email).
Get started by choosing one habit to focus on, and commit to a new system for a few weeks until you feel it becomes a natural part of your day. Then, move on to the next one.
Take it slowly. This is a marathon that eventually turns into The Rest of Your Life. Any change that you’re trying to implement should be something you can realistically see yourself adopting forever (with allowance for life’s upheavals, of course), and therefore has no need to change drastically overnight.
Samantha Bluemel is a personal trainer and the founder of new Ponsonby fitness studio Mode
