How to set health and fitness goals - that make you feel good!

Goal setting is a key component in your health and fitness journey - it helps to keep you motivated, on track and increases your sense of meaning and purpose.

For a moment, I want you to think outside the box though and set a goal for yourself with your training and movement that is not related to how you look and weight loss! 

The reason this is important is because it starts to bring the focus away from exercise being a form of ‘punishment’ or that you need to change your body.

When you are regularly focusing on the physical changes that you are working towards it can lead to setting high expectations on yourself and also a thinking pattern called Discounting The Positive comes in and you overlook all of the amazing work you are already putting in. It takes away from the fact that whilst yes, is can be empowering to see your body changing and also losing weight if that is a goal of yours, you are actually so much more than what you look like or what you weigh. 

Setting a goal for yourself brings in 2 aspects from Positive Psychology which are ‘Accomplishment and Achievement’ as well as ‘Meaning and Purpose’. This goal that you set is going to start off as giving a sense of purpose to your movement and then will continue to move into the accomplishment and achievement mind frame as you start to see your improvements over the coming weeks. 

Maybe there’s a certain exercise you would like to improve in, a weight you would like to add in or increase in your exercises, a time you would like to beat, maybe you enjoy a challenge and want to get 15K steps in each day. Whatever it is, set yourself a goal and work at it over the next 7 weeks. Then test it out in the last week and see how much you have improved! 

This podcast episode is perfect to listen to to learn how to set empowering body goals for yourself. And keep reading below for your formula to easily set and take action on your goal.

The acronym to use for your goal setting is VKARP. What does this actually stand for? Vision, Knowledge, Action, Reflection and Pivot.

Vision

What is it that you actually want to achieve? What is your goal? What DO you want, not what don't you want. Eg. 'I want to be able to do 3 pushups on my toes by the end of this Transform round' rather than 'I don't want to be unfit anymore'

Knowledge

Is there anything you don't know? Any knowledge that you feel you are lacking or skills you want to improve on? Of course, using the Transform app for your movement and nutrition knowledge will be a go-to here!

Action

Breaking your goal down into small, achievable steps. What is something you can easily take action on in the next 24 hours?

Reflection

After a week or 2 of taking your action steps, reflect. How are you feeling? Is this goal still something that you want to achieve? If yes, what are you enjoying and is there anything more you could be doing? If no, what is it specifically that are aren't enjoying?

Pivot

Based on your reflection, is there anything you want to change or do differently moving forward?

Have fun setting a goal for yourself and thinking about something you want to achieve!

* I originally wrote this post for the Fitaz Transform program. If you want to know more about how you can get involved in the 8 week Transform programs, including exercise, nutrition and mindset plans, click here.