5 Health Goals to avoid in 2024
let me save you countless hours of pain and frustration!
January is here which means our goal-setting obsession is in full swing for the new year. While intentions are good and hopes are high, it’s hard not to be realistic and expect fad diets to fade and gym attendance to flop. As a personal trainer, I’ve seen the same cycle year after year. It goes a little something like…
You set high goals, because this year is going to be different.
The first few weeks go great.
Life gets in the way and discipline starts to fade.
You miss multiple days in a row.
You get discouraged and eventually give up.
You feel shame about giving up and slip into even worse habits.
If this sounds all too familiar, don’t be discouraged. I’ve been there myself. Most of us have. This is so common it’s almost as if it’s part of our human condition. While I could go into all of the reasons why we’re comically bad at New Year’s resolutions, I believe it’s important to start by exposing the most overlooked mistake we’re constantly making.
We overestimate how far motivation will take us and underestimate the power of the goal itself.
This is the root of 90% of our issues year after year. Once you recognize this, you’ll have the intuition to detect poor choices and focus on sustainable, life-giving goals. To help make this process as seamless as possible, I want to highlight the most common, crippling mistakes I see many folks make. More specifically, we’ll zoom in on 5 goals that need to go in 2024. The fads and trends that are full of nothing but empty promises, if you will.
I hope that this will allow you to identify avoidable patterns so you don’t waste any more precious time or energy than you have to. If you can learn from these mistakes and commit to a healthier perspective on goal setting, the skies are the limit for this year!
Let’s dive into it.
5 Goals To Avoid for a Happier and Healthier Life
Before getting too deep into things, it’s important to realize that goal setting is a skill that needs to be constantly developed and refined as your lifestyle, health, and priorities change over time. Remember not to take yourself too seriously, and give yourself grace when you have setbacks! Through trial and error, you’ll become more self-aware and in tune with your wants and needs.
Now with that little speech out of the way, let’s get into the good stuff. In no particular order, here are the 5 goals you must be wary of for a healthy, productive 2024. Here’s to breaking the never-ending cycle of disappointment and achieving quality results that last!
1) A Weight Loss-Related Goal
I hate to break it to you, but setting a target based on your appearance in the mirror doesn’t cut it for 90–95% of people. Instead, focus on intrinsic motivators surrounding lifestyle like a certain activity or function you want to achieve (playing with your grandchildren, getting the groceries inside, picking up a new sport or hobby…you get the point).
While wanting to lose weight isn’t a bad thing by any means, I want to encourage you to have more to your goal than a specific number on the scale. The more meaningful and robust your goal is, the less you’ll have to rely on pure motivation to keep you disciplined. When the going gets tough, you’ll be so grateful you did!
If you are hell-bent on setting a number-based goal, start small! Even a 3–5% change in weight can make a huge difference for all-cause mortality and lifespan/healthspan outcomes. If possible, work alongside a doctor or other trained professional to ensure your goal is safe and attainable for your current lifestyle.
2. Any Goal Involving “Should” or “Have To”
A key element to effective goal setting is being aware of the language you’re using. The more you emphasize your good health with both your silent thoughts and public speech, the healthier you’ll feel. I believe a similar theme applies to our goal-setting as well.
If words like “should” or “have to” keep rising to the surface, it’s likely that you’re not bought into your goal quite yet and are still in the early stages of adherence. This is a sign to adjust your target to make it more accessible and enticing. The more you can shape your internal dialogue towards “I will”, and “I get to”, the more you’ll believe in your goal and stay consistent when roadblocks inevitably come your way.
3) A Goal Set by Someone Else
Having autonomy over your health-related goal-setting is paramount. While it’s never a bad idea to work with a health professional or run your ideas by someone who knows you well, you should always have the last say. If you’re blindly following orders without working out what you want or need in the context of your own lived experience, it’s far more likely that relevance, adherence, and overall understanding of the goal will be far lower.
Worst case scenario, you may begin to feel frustrated and resentful at the individual who set you down this path in the first place. Long story short, be in control of your goals from the get-go and you’ll have much more success and satisfaction around the whole process!!
4) A Goal You Don’t Understand or Feel Inspired By
Fun is such an underrated element of health and fitness. While everything doesn’t have to be sunshine and rainbows, incorporate something that interests you and gets you out the door. One flaw I notice is that many people are swayed by big trends, but very few ask themselves if they even enjoy said activity, diet, etc…
Before you commit to an exciting, new health or fitness endeavor, make sure you know why you’re signing up for it. Most importantly, allow yourself the space and flexibility to modify your goals until you feel excited about the whole process and not just the end goal! Life is too short to force yourself into habits and activities that you despise.
5) An Inflexible Goal
The reality is life gets in the way sometimes. Gyms shut down and kids get sick. Unless you’re a superhero, you won’t always be at the top of your game… and that’s okay! When you set a goal, you should always have a B and C goal in the back of your mind so you have a fallback when things out of your control come to the forefront.
This is a common tactic for high-performance athletes, but is also a great exercise to go through for any population. If all hell broke loose, what would the worst-case scenario be? How could you modify your activity to ensure you stay headed in the right direction when everything is going against you? Thinking about these questions ahead of time will save you a huge amount of grief later on.
Having to edit a goal does not mean you failed by any means. Instead, it shows maturity and humility. It shows that you’re developing your habit-creation process which should be celebrated! If you’re proactive about setting B and C goals, those speed bumps that come your way will only slow you down but not stop you entirely!
In Closing,
We overestimate how far motivation will take us and underestimate the power of the goal itself. This realization is enough to get you ahead of most people who blindly set New Year’s resolutions. It’ll guide you towards better goal-setting practices, and most importantly, help you avoid the infamous pits that many of us fall into. Here’s to refining your resolutions and waving goodbye to bad habits once and for all! Let 2024 be your healthiest, most productive year yet…because why not!?
You got this.
-DavidLiira.Kin
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