I’m never a huge New Years Resolution fan, mainly because the challenge people set themselves are crazily unrealistic and as a result are never achieved, leading to de-motivation.

If you want to make changes this year, that get your real results that, most importantly last, then it’s imperative that you get the goal setting process right.

Step One

Decide when will you achieve your goal. In my experience a 4-6 week goal is great. It’s not so far away that you can take your foot off the gas but not so close that you put yourself under too much pressure.

Step Two

Decide what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Your chosen target needs to be something YOU feel passionately about…sharing your friend’s goal or picking something that you’ve read in a magazine simply won’t cut it…it has to be something that is important to YOU. In order to measure it, it needs to include a numerical value, for example a clothes size or number of inches you’d like to lose.

Step Three

Ask yourself what the biggest cost of achieving this goal will be. Now, I don’t mean financial cost, I mean want is the biggest change you need to make. For example, not reaching for your morning chocolate bar or making time to exercise. The desire to achieve the goal should out weigh the cost, otherwise you need to go back to the drawing board with what you want to achieve.

Step Four

Ask yourself how you will feel WHEN you achieve your goal…this should provoke a positive emotion.

Step Five

Ask yourself how you will feel IF you don’t achieve your goal…this should provoke a negative emotion.

Step Six

Whenever you find yourself faced with a decision to make regarding your nutrition or exercise programme, ask yourself…’will doing this take me closer to my goal or further away?’ in other words ‘will doing this take me closer to my positive feeling (from step 4) or closer to my negative feeling (from step 5)?’

Asking yourself this consistently will help you stay goal focused and on track.

Here’s to a year of happiness and health.