Your Fitness Journey. Creating a Map for Success!

One month into working on your New Year's fitness resolutions , it's time to make an assessment of your progress. Don't be hard on yourself but use this time to take an honest look at where you've come from and where you're headed. Oh, you say you really didn't set any goals except that you know you wanted to shed a few pounds. Oh, you say you didn't really have a plan to get to the gym. Eating plan? What eating plan?

I worked at Costco and we had a saying: Plan the work and work the plan. But a plan is just a car running on empty unless you put a goal in the tank, a motivator. Your goal needs to be specific. The more specific a goal the greater chances of success. Don't just say you want to lose a few pounds, put the number in writing.

Is your goal measurable? That is, how do you plan to measure your activity? A scale? Tape measure? Amount of weight lifted? Many of my clients would never consent to body measurements, let alone get on a scale while I was standing there. They preferred something more subjective and for them, less intimidating. The most common was how they looked or felt in their clothes. Fair enough!

Can you attain this goal? Maybe it's not a case of wanting but needing. If you've just come from your doctor and been informed that your cholesterol and blood pressure are elevated and that you need to lose weight, that changes the dynamic. In fact, it becomes more urgent and hopefully more motivating than simply wanting to lose weight.

How relevant or connected is your goal to you? Your desire to try powerlifting may not fit with an overall goal to lose weight. In fact, the reverse may happen and you'll find yourself buying larger clothes.

And finally, when is this all going to happen? Adding the element of time to goal-setting is a powerful motivator. It can be any arbitrary date in the future: Perhaps a calendar holiday or vacation getaway (yes, fitting into a square-cut swim suit is a good motivator).

Goals: Specific. Measurable. Attain-able. Relevant. Time-bound - SMART. Set yourself up for success and enjoy the journey!