Four Tips for Setting and Managing Fitness Goals

Spring has sprung and summer is around the corner, making it a popular time for setting and checking in on your weight loss and fitness goals. If you’re thinking about shedding the final pounds of your winter weight before summer is in full swing or you’ve signed up for an endurance race to challenge your fitness level, it’s important to make sure that your goals are SMART - specific, measurable, action-based, realistic and timely –- so you can successfully follow through on meeting your expectations.

To help with setting and properly managing your summer health and fitness goals, it’s important to put the following four tips into practice.

Tip 1: Check In with your Closet:  Now is a good time to pull out your swimsuits, sun dresses and shorts from your closet to see how they fit. The way your clothes fit can be a good indication of where you are in meeting your weight loss goals and it can help put everything into a better perspective than stepping on the scale.

Tip 2: Focus on the Experience: The steps you take throughout your journey are what really count as you grow into adopting a healthy and fit lifestyle. When you have a specific outcome in mind, it’s important to look at the whole process and not just focus solely on the results. How you are going to get to your goals is what’s important. If you don’t have a plan that breaks down your long-term goals into attainable tasks along the way, then you may end up spinning your wheels and quickly become overwhelmed.

Tip 3: Don’t Let Distractions Take You Down: Staying on top of your workouts is one of the most important things to maintaining forward progress toward meeting your goals. It’s easy to let life get in the way when work gets busy, kids are off on summer break and summertime happy hours lure you from the gym to backyard barbeques. Keep the driving factors associated with your health and fitness goals at the center of all the decisions you make so you don’t get derailed by summertime distractions.

Tip 4: Assess, Acknowledge, Be Proud of Your Work: As you hit the mid-year point, it can get easy to get discouraged with the goals you set at the beginning of the year if you haven’t realized all of the results you were striving for. Before throwing in the towel, though, it can be more beneficial to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished so far, while re-assessing what else you may need to do to continue working toward the same goals or even making new ones. Even if you haven’t completely met your goals yet, be proud of the journey you’ve started and celebrate important milestones along the way.

Whether your goal is to lose weight, compete in an endurance event or look your best for an upcoming reunion, it’s important to have a clear reason for why you’re working out during the process. Keep your vision at the forefront of everything you do, and make sure you have various short-term goals that support and feed into accomplishing your long-term aspirations.