It takes a tremendous amount of work each and every day to set and achieve our health goals. When setting goals for our health, it is important that we are first honest with ourselves with regards to our strengths, weaknesses and preferences. We also need to be honest with ourselves about where we are presently, where we want to be, and the steps we need to take to reach our goals. Start setting healthy goals for the new year with the help of an app like CareClinic to set, track and manage your goals.
Setting healthy goals and sticking to them
Using the SMART approach can help you set healthy goals and stick to them. SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
What is the SMART approach for setting healthy goals?
The goals that you set should be specific. Clearly define what your goal is and how you will accomplish this goal over a particular time period. You should also identify why this goal is important to you. For example, if your goal is to improve your physical activity this new year, your goal needs to specify which area of physical activity you would like to improve (eg. cardio, strength, muscular endurance). You can also identify why you want to improve your physical activity. Your reason may be to improve your quality of life or you may find that daily physical activity improves your mental health. You should also think about how you are going to improve your physical activity and the steps you will need to take in order to achieve your goal.
Your goal should be measurable. It is important to keep track of your progress. Track specific measures in a journal or app like CareClinic so that you can monitor how you are doing and be more accountable of your actions.
Setting healthy goals involves making sure that they are attainable. Setting healthy goals involves ensuring that they are achievable and within your current ability.
The goals that you set should also be realistic. If you set the bar too high, it will only discourage you if you do not progress at a rate that you expected you would. It is important to slowly work up to your goals.
The goals that you set should be time-bound. Set a target date for when you want to reach your goal and further break it down into smaller chunks. For example, if your goal is to be able to run a certain distance by the end of January, you may choose to track the distance that you run on a weekly basis until you work up to your target distance at the end of the month.
Tips for setting healthy goals this new year
Identify what your specific motivation is for reaching and setting heathy goals. Why do you want to reach this specific goal? How will achieving this goal benefit you and your health? It takes a lot of commitment to achieve a goal. Therefore, understanding why you do something will help you stay resilient and strong when times become tough and there are obstacles.
Give yourself some time to reach your health goals. It takes about a month to form and stick to a habit. If you need to wake up an hour earlier each day to go for a jog, the first month will likely be the most difficult. However, if you can stick to your new health habit for at least one month, it will become much easier after that.
Do not wait for something to happen to set your goals and just do it! The longer you delay, the longer it will take to reach your goals.
It is easier to start with one small change at a time. Build your first habit. Once you are comfortable with it, you have the confidence to build on your next habit. If you try to make too many changes at once, you may feel overwhelmed, and it will be easier to give up.
Setting healthy goals with supportive people
Write your goals down and keep them up to date with real achievements and milestones that you reach. You can start with setting healthy goals in your journal or an app like CareClinic.
Do not feel too bad if you do not get it right or reach your goal the first time. We are all human, and reaching goals is not always easy. Give yourself time and be kind to yourself.
Negativity can quickly break your spirits. Surround yourself with positive people that support you and your goals. Build a support system of like-minded people or tackle your journey with a friend who wants to reach the same goal.
Why should you track your goals?
In order to develop habits and reach our goals, we must repeat them and practice them. For this reason, it is important to track your health goals and progress so that it can provide you with more insight and self-awareness of your actions. We can become more self-aware of our actions by tracking each goal with the CareClinic app.
You can use the app’s various features to record the time that you perform specific actions, any surrounding cues in the environment that help you to reach your goals, and to check in with yourself on your daily progress. When you track your goals using the app, you can see if there are any correlations between any of the details you input.
For instance, if a person makes note of the times they run every day or eat a certain healthy food and make a diary entry of what they are feeling at that moment, and what is happening in their surroundings, they might be able to see why they want to continue to reach that particular goal.
What should you track in order to reach your goals?
You can use the CareClinic app to track your current behaviors and to track your progress for reaching and setting healthy goals. With the CareClinic app you can create your own care plan and you can create multiple care plans if you want to monitor other areas of your health. You can use the various features in the app to suit your needs. Within each care plan you can also create your own care team.
Your care team may include a healthcare practitioner of your choice, such as a doctor, therapist, nurse or at-home caregiver. You can even include a family member, or friend. You can share progress with your team and they can give you feedback, provide support, and keep you accountable with your health goals. Depending on the goal you are trying to reach you can create your own plan to suit you. There are also many plans readily available for you to select from.
Using CareClinic for setting healthy goals
With the app’s diary entry feature, you can make entries throughout the day about how you are feeling with regards to your goals for the new year. You can note how your day is going, any noticeable cues that help you reach your goals or what your surroundings are. The diary feature also allows you to add pictures to your entry. This is a great feature if you are making dietary changes in order to reach goals pertaining to weight management.
Tracking symptoms
The symptom tracker feature in the app allows you to input any symptoms you are experiencing. You can use this to track the symptoms before, during, and after any treatments you are using. You can also track symptoms according to the goal or habit you are trying to develop or break. For example, if you want to quit drinking, you might track any side effects that occur while you drink alcohol. You can then compare it to how you feel as you reduce the number of drinks you have per day. This will allow you to become more aware of the positive changes you feel associated with the progress you are making to reach your goals.
Setting healthy goals relating to nutrition
Another great feature is the nutrition tracker, which has built-in food selections. You can log your daily meals and snacks throughout the day. This is beneficial when someone is looking to make changes to their diet and reach healthy goals related to their nutrition. Examples can include to eat more fruit daily, or for goals relating to weight management.
Tracking your goals using the Reports feature
The reports feature is a great feature in the CareClinic app that can provide a lot of insight into your behavior change and the progress that you are making towards reaching your health goals. It takes information you have logged into your care plan features (i.e. diary, nutrition, symptoms etc.) and generates a report that you can review daily, weekly or monthly. This report will show any correlation between the details you logged. For example, if you experience a symptom related to food, you can view these correlations in your reports. You can also share these reports with your care team or family members.
Set Reminders in the app to reach your health goals
As repetition is one of the key components to building a new habit or reaching a health goal, the reminders feature part of the CareClinic app can assist with this. You can create multiple reminders throughout the day and have them repeat on multiple days if you choose. If the right cues are in place, these reminders can help you with the repetition needed with your behavior change. For example, you can set reminders for going on your daily jog or when to drink water throughout the day. This will keep you on track with reaching and setting healthy goals.
CareClinic, your all-in-one healthcare management app
CareClinic is your all in one wellness tracker and is useful for tracking and setting goals relating to your health and wellness. The app can be used to help one maintain a healthier diet by ensuring that one keeps track of their daily nutrient intake. The app provides a Nutrition Plan so that users can keep track of what they are eating and the number of calories their meal is. Users can also record how much protein, fat and carbs each meal contains.
Reminders can also be sent through the app to ensure that users are eating a set amount of calories. Users can also set reminders to ensure that they are eating appropriate amounts from each food group. Aside from helping to improve eating habits, CareClinic can help one stick to a daily fitness routine. It allows users to maintain healthy levels of physical activity and normal sleeping habits.
You also set reminders for taking your medications. The pill reminder feature allows you to set up reminders for different drugs. You can adds information regarding the dosage, frequency, dosage form (pill, tablet, and capsule) and possible side effects.
The application can even act as an interaction tracker, outlining any potential drug-to-drug interactions. Once drug reminders have been created, the application will send push notifications to remind patients to take their specific medications. A medication calendar is setup automatically on the reminders screen of the App for the user to easily scroll through and monitor adherence and next reminders. If patients do not confirm having taken the medication by clicking on this notification, the app will continue to send reminders (snooze feature).
Using a wellness tracker and journal to reach your goals
A health diary app like CareClinic can be used to track anything related to your health quickly and to set any health goals. CareClinic helps track health measurements that are important to you, your family or your doctor with ease. One of the main benefits of using a digital health and wellness diary is the generation of detailed and easy-to-read reports. Reports help you quickly learn about your progress so you can optimize your current lifestyle goals quickly.
CareClinic is your all in one wellness tracker, perfect for parents, patients, seniors or kids. Apps such as CareClinic also allow us to examine emotional patterns, as well as the associated triggers. As we learn more about situations and events that lead to various emotions, we will also feel more prepared to make a change.
The app can be used to help one maintain a healthier diet by ensuring that one keeps track of their daily nutrient intake. The app provides a Nutrition Plan so that users can keep track of what they are eating and the number of calories their meal is. Users can also record how much protein, fat and carbs each meal contains.
Reminders can also be sent through the app to ensure that users are eating a set amount of calories. Users can also set reminders to ensure that they are eating appropriate amounts from each food group. Aside from helping to improve eating habits, CareClinic can help one stick to a daily fitness routine. It allows users to maintain healthy levels of physical activity and normal sleeping habits.
