4 Steps to reaching your health goals

Reaching your health goals is 95% mindset and 5% action. By maintaining the mental conviction required to stay focused and consistent, the actual steps to achieve your health goals become easier to carry out. This article discusses the four steps it takes to reach your health goals—more specifically, we discuss the mindset needed to make these goals manageable.

1. Balancing Your Nutrition

Some weeks, sticking to a healthy diet can feel like a breeze. You feel healthy and able and think that your drive to continue on this path is strong. Then, the day comes when you need a break. Perhaps stress at work is getting you down, and indulging in your favorite treat is far too tempting to resist.

When we aren’t eating great, we can lean on vitamins multivitamin and sleep to make up for these lacks in our self-care. Balance healthy eating with indulging in occasional cravings. You can still reach your goals even if you treat yourself once in a while.

We all go through cycles of progress and failure. Acknowledge that reaching a place of balance with your nutrition is the goal. No one is eating healthy 100% of the time.

Everyone takes days off or indulges in the occasional treat. We are human, and we need to reward the pleasure centers of our brain with food.

2. Do What Works for You

It does not matter how compelling or convincing a coach or expert sounds. The fitness routines, diet plans, and other kinds of health plans you follow should be done because they work for you and not because someone else recommends them. We are all unique and need to fuel our bodies with different diets to feel our best.

Don’t try to make something work that doesn’t. We all have our own dispositions and genetics that make the food we eat and the daily habits we take on for our health different. Embrace these differences and take up the healthy habits that are best for you.

3. Have Patience With Yourself

If we slack off on our goals or indulge a little too much, we can fall into the habit of beating ourselves up. Once we get mad at ourselves, we engage in more unhealthy behaviors like overindulging as stress relief.

Instead of getting angry with yourself for being human, have patience and understand that reaching your health goals will take time.

Success is not a straight line, and you shouldn’t expect your progress to be either. Take time balancing working towards your goals and letting go of the outcomes. We need both structure and relaxation in our lives to stay healthy. Honor these truths!

4. See Exercise as Stress Relief

You really cannot outrun a bad diet. No matter how well you exercise, the food you eat will influence your body weight, mood, and digestion. Knowing that diet is the key to many aspects of health, choose to see exercise as a form of stress relief rather than as a bandage for unhealthy eating. Working out should feel challenging, but not so difficult that it becomes something you dread.

Take up activities that you genuinely enjoy doing or that make you feel good after you’ve finished exercising. Instead of punishing yourself for consuming extra calories, reward yourself with the feelings of relief that come from just moving your body.

The Bottom Line

To reach your health goals, balance your nutrition, see exercise as a form of stress relief, take up health habits that work for you, and most importantly, be patient with yourself and the process. You can do it!