Starting today, achieve SMART goals for a better year

IT’S NOT too late to refresh your New Year’s goals, Lancers. It’s been two months since the tradition of setting goals at the start of the new year, and while a large group of people may have failed at keeping them, it’s not too late. There is still time to make new goals to help some you through the last part of the school year. Pushing through for the last little bit of school is a good idea, but many don’t know how to set smart goals. Consider this article as a “how to” for making smarter goals.

The first step to making a smart goal is by picking something to improve upon. Many people at the beginning of the new year may have decided to lose weight and get fit, but many may have failed to keep that weight off. It’s hard to blame them as losing weight is a very hard process. Regular exercise is a big part of why some people can’t lose weight.

Many people have trouble losing weight but there are many things a person can do to lose weight. Instead of riding an escalator at the mall, take the stairs. Don’t get on the bus, walk instead. Changing the small things can help one live a healthier life. There are other activities a person might do to lose weight.

Take Jeremiah Snow (10) for example. “I’m planning on working out over the summer,” Snow said. Weight lifting, swimming, walking with friends or playing sports are just some the activities that can keep students active and healthy. After acknowledging what needs to be changed, it’s time to move to the next step.

The second step to making a smart goal is making sure it’s mesurable. Some people that set goals that are weight related might start thinking that it’s a good idea to work out until they get abs or something of the sort. But the problem with this is that it isn’t measurable. One should ask themself how long it will take and what the process will be to achieve their goal. Some people don’t even think about these questions when deciding what to reach for.

Instead, a smarter goal would be ‘I’m going to workout for an hour every day for a month.’ This is the first step to making the goal measurable. The next step is evaluating what they’re going to do to achieve the goal. ‘I’m going to do different ab workouts like crunches, swimming and sit-ups,’ may be a good place to start. This is a better goal, because each time a person works out, they have something planned. There is one issue with this, however. It’s measurable, but finding time to do the activity may be hard, which leads into the next step.

The third step to making goals is making sure they’re realistic. A person might think ‘I’m going to get a rock hard body in the span of a month.’ Although it follows the first two steps, it doesn’t follow the third step. This goal isn’t realistic for some people. People can’t go from being big to skinny in just a month.

A fairly old TV show by the name of The Biggest Loser took people that had a desire to lose weight and put them through extreme diets and weight loss. Many people decide to do the same and go to the gym everyday, but many fell short of their goals. 80% of the contestants that went on that show gained back most of the weight they lost on the show.

One might think that those people did not have enough willpower, but the answer isn’t about temptations. The real reason why these weight losers put on pounds after the show was because of basic human biology. When a person eats very little and exercises everywhere they go, their body will adjust to the extreme change and it will slow down their metabolism.

Since a slow metabolism likes to hold onto calories, after the diet their body will store most the food they eat into fats. Losing weight over a short period of time won’t help, so making sure that the goal is realistic is very important. The next two steps are easy if the first three steps are applied.

The next steps are checking the goal to see if it’s relevant and time limited. If the goal doesn’t apply to the person they won’t achieve it. It also helps if it’s time oriented. If a person knows how much time they have at any moment, it allows them to manage their time wisely.