How To Make Positive Changes In Your Diet: Five Steps to Conquering Your Food Goals

This is a guest post by Rachel.

Many of us set lofty goals of “getting fit,” “losing weight,” or “becoming healthier” after the first of the year that usually only last a few weeks before we get back into our regular eating and exercising regimen.

In fact, most of us have probably already given up on any New Year’s Resolutions that we set out for, whether food or exercise related. It’s not that we don’t want to reach these goals, it’s that we haven’t developed an action plan to get to where we want to be.

Few of us will ever see the results of the end goals we envision, because we don’t make a plan for how we will arrive there. We see the destination, but not the journey involved. We often set ourselves up for failure before we even get started, because we assume if we put our mind to eating better or living better, that it will happen for us.

5 Steps to Convert Your Intentions Into a Plan

It’s true that having intentions for how we want to live can make a huge difference in our lives. However, in order to get from setting the goal to reaching the goal, there is a lot of hard work to make each goal a reality. If you’re ready to make positive changes in your diet once and for all, use these five steps to get yourself on the right track to achieving your success and never look back.

1. List the Things You Desire for Your Health

Use this opportunity to write down everything that you want to change about how you eat or how you want to feel as an end goal. Maybe you know you aren’t getting enough fruit and vegetables each day? Write that down. Maybe you want to lose the five pounds you put on from all that holiday eating? Write that down. Maybe you have high blood pressure and need to adjust your diet to get that under control? Write it all down in one big list.

2. Prioritize Based on Your Current Situation

Now that you’ve listed everything that you want to change in your life regarding your diet or your health, it’s time to get serious about which ones are the most important to you. If you have a health issue, this should likely make it to the top of your list before anything else. Take a few moments to set your priorities and what matters the most to you right now. Now choose one goal you want to focus on.

3. Determine Where You Are Right Now

Set aside a minute to be real with yourself. How are you doing in regards to this goal today? Do you eat zero vegetables each day, so you need to add at least three more servings to be on target? Or do you already eat one or two and the goal is to add just one more to hit your target? Do you eat maybe one more snack or sugar-loaded coffee each day than you should? Be honest with what your lifestyle is now, so that you know how far you need to go in order to achieve the goal that you’ve set out for.

4. Break Down the Goal Into Small Actionable Steps

The next step is to write down how you plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be in precise steps.

For example, maybe for three weeks, your first step is to get at least one extra serving of vegetables or fruit each day. How can you do this? By bringing some cut vegetable strips or a piece of whole fruit in your lunch to snack on at work. Do this repetitively until it becomes a habit.

Next, you’ll want to add on another small goal that you can work on after you’ve mastered this first step. Once you’ve added one more serving of fruit or vegetables, your next goal will be to add another one. This could be something like adding another vegetable to your dinner every night or eating a piece of fruit for dessert. For the following few weeks, your goal will be to add one more serving at dinner. Keep adding small actionable steps in the form of small goals until you reach your larger end goal.

This step is the most important, because it will guarantee if you are successful or not. When you outline the steps that you have to take to get to your end goal, it will be that much easier to actually achieve it.

5. Put the Plan Into Action

Easy enough, right? It should be. This is where telling a friend at work about your goal might be good to keep you accountable, or telling your spouse if they pack your lunch that you’d prefer some fruit or vegetables instead of bringing sugary snacks. It may be helpful to even add the smaller goals into your calendar each day, so that when you look at it, you’re reminded of what you need to do to get to your long-term goal.

The key to your success is actually following through. So put your plan into action and you’ll be set to achieve whatever food goal you have set out for this year.

Making changes can be daunting when all you see is the big picture. By breaking down your big goals into small actionable steps you can take each day, you’ll work your way in to that success instead of having to take a big leap to get there. Use this simple strategy each time you want to make a change in your diet or lifestyle, and you’ll be on your way to making positive changes and never look back on your old habits.

Rachael is the blogger behind KitchenCourses.com and is the author of How to Cook For Yourself: A Complete Beginner’s Guide. She writes about her passion for food, eating well while saving money, and inspires people to get familiar with their kitchens and cook for themselves.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

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