Yesterday, we talked about how important it is to set proper expectations and maintain the right mindset when it comes to changing your health and fitness. Once you’ve started to pay more attention to your thoughts and beliefs around fitness, including what your own path should look like, that will help get more clarity on how to chart a course to your goal. Since we know that you first have to start with realistic expectations (which differ from person to person), the next step is translating all that into tangible action steps. In Part 1, we briefly touched on an important concept which differentiates Process from Product Goals. Let me explain…  

• Focus only on the final destination.
• Are often built around deadlines. 
• Can help provide vision and motivation for Process Goals. 
• “Where you want to go.”  

• Are built around actionable steps. 
• Can be translated into habits. 
• Focus on improving skills and abilities to achieve the end goal. 
• “How you’re going to get there.”  

If the Product Goal is the summit of the mountain, the Process Goals are your map and climbing gear to get you to the top. You need both, but far too often people head for the peak without much of a plan other than looking up. So, what does setting Process Goal actually look like? Let’s take an example. Let’s say your Product Goal is to lose 25lbs. If that was where you stopped planning, then you’d be left winging it and trying whatever diet and exercise tips and tricks land in front of you, hoping they’ll start to shed some of that unwanted weight. But if you create Process Goals to get you there, you can think ahead and decide what an effective set of behaviors would help you consistently (and more enjoyably!) get where you’re going. So, what Process Goals - actions and behaviors - will help you get to your goal of losing 25lbs? Well, first you might decide that improving your diet is going to be key. You know that you eat probably a bit more junk food than you should and maybe should cut back a little bit on the wine at night. In this case, you might set your first Process Goal, “I’m going to eat 3 servings of vegetables each day. One with each meal.” Now, you might be thinking, “Well what did that have to do with the wine? Don’t you also need a Process Goal to cut the wine down?” It may seem a bit strange, but I’d actually say no.  

The reason for that is because the easiest way to get started with healthy habits is to focus on adding positive things in rather than removing “bad” things. I put “bad” in quotes because as you know, basically everything in moderation is fine, and trying to cut things out can make fitness feel more about depriving yourself of things you like rather than including new things that also make you feel good. And the research backs this up. When people start adding new healthy habits into their lives and seeing how much better they feel, in fact, they naturally start reducing their unhealthier habits. You’ve probably noticed yourself do this before. You might have gotten up early for a run or a workout, felt great, came home and made a healthy breakfast and then went off to work. Once you got to work, someone had a box of doughnuts sitting out. Very likely, even if you felt tempted, you may have thought to yourself, “I’m already off to a great start today with my exercise and healthy breakfast, I’m not going to blow it now on some doughnuts.” That is exactly why I suggest beginning your health and fitness habits by including rather than excluding things. The positive momentum it builds up will help make it so much more sustainable and effective in the long-term and will lead you to naturally make better choices. Tomorrow, we’ll jump into Part 3 where we’ll talk about how to overcome common obstacles and set strategies for when things go off the rails. P.S. If you’ve struggled to stay consistent with your health habits in the past, this one is a must read.