Having goals is a wonderful way to keep making progress especially when working to achieve a healthy lifestyle.  Goals motivate you and give you specific things to strive for.  While goals should always be measurable and have an allotted amount of time in which they should be accomplished, having a “weight goal” should not be one of your goals.

Though you may see it as a check-point, by labeling a weight goal, you will end up making your journey to health solely about the number on the scale, something I have hopefully shown you is not what eating mindfully is all about.  There is nothing more crushing than to feel like you have been doing a great job following your new healthy lifestyle, but then “weighing in” only to see the number hasn’t gone down, or worse has gone up.

Putting so much stress on yourself to get to a certain number by a certain date may hinder your progress towards making healthy choices as opposed to helping it.  In an effort to achieve that number you might find yourself resorting to unhealthy, quick fix methods to achieve fast weight loss to reach that “goal weight,” but then find yourself back to where you started, not having learned the habits that will keep you healthy for life.

Now like I said, goals are a wonderful way to keep you moving in the right direction and feeling accomplished.

Here are some examples of healthy goals you can set for yourself:

• I will aim to eat a combination of 5 fruit and vegetable servings every day for the month of July
• I will pack my own lunch every day this week
• I will exercise six out of seven days every week
• I will only eat out four times this month
• I will write in a journal when I feel like I am struggling with something in my life
• I will take 15 minutes every day to do something for myself

These are all healthy goals that will keep you moving forward on your journey.  They’ll also help keep you away from watching the numbers and potentially falling back into unhealthy habits.

Your turn to take action: What healthy goal will you set for yourself today?