Revisit, Refresh, and Restart Your Health Goals

When is the last time you thought about your health goals? Whether it was last week, last month,or even last year, now is the time to revisit your goals and restart healthy habits that you may have put on hold.Getting back into a routine after time off can seem overwhelming at first, but you can do it. Start by thinking about how far you’ve already come. Consider the challenges you’ve likely faced and the success you achieved along the way. Both have helped you build up the skills you need to achieve your goals. Instead of thinking about time lost, focus on the future and everything that you’ll be able to accomplish! Being a part of a lifestyle change program from the National Diabetes Prevention Program, now is the time to revisit, refresh, and restart your healthy lifestyle goals by following the steps below.

Revisit: Begin by revisiting your goals. If you are part of a lifestyle change program, your goals may already be written down. If not, try to remember the last time you set goals for yourself and what they were. It might be helpful to write them out. An example of a goal might be to add vegetables to at least two of your meals and snacks during the day or to go for a 30-minute walk 4 days a week.

Refresh: Once you’ve revisited your past goals, it’s time to refresh them! This is a chance to think about where you are currently and what you want to accomplish in the future. This may have changed over time.Read over your past goals and think about the following:

• Do these goals still make sense for me?
• What worked and what didn’t work well for me in the past?
• What issues have caused or may cause me to get off track?
• Are there any changes I want to make to my goals going forward?

You will also want to write down three actions that you can do to achieve each goal. For example, if your goal is to add vegetables to at least two of your meals and snacks during the day, your three actions could be: browsing online recipes for inspiration, planning out your meals before you go to the grocery store, and washing and prepping vegetables so they're ready to eat through out the week. Remember,your actions should be:

• Realistic: Be practical about what you can achieve
• Doable: Plan for small changes that add up over time to bigger changes
• Specific: Plan your action in detail by deciding who, what, where, when, why and how
• Flexible: Review your plan often and make changes if something isn’t working

Restart: You’ve got your goals and your action plan that outlines the steps you need to take for success. Now it’s time to put them to the test and try. If they work, keep going! If you find yourself having difficulties, don’t give up! Pause and re examine. Revisit your goals, refresh, and restart. The most important thing is to set attainable goals and actions that work for you so that you can achieve better health.

As you work toward your refreshed health goals, remember to seek out support from those around you. Support from your family, friends, and coworkers will encourage you and help keep you on track. If you haven’t already, you can also join a lifestyle change program. A trained lifestyle coach works with a group of participants to help them learn how to eat healthier, exercise more, and reduce stress. The class is specifically designed for people who have prediabetes, a condition where a person’s blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough yet for a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. With support from the lifestyle change coach and each other, participants have been shown to cut their risk of developing type 2 diabetes in half.