Here’s some much-needed positive news: improving heart health does not have to be as complex or intimidating as many people believe. By taking simple steps each day, you can lower your risk of heart disease and chronic illness considerably.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to set SMART goals. Unlike a typical goal of “I’d like to lose weight,” SMART goals give you an action plan in marking out the key goal posts of your heart health journey.
What are smart goals?
SMART is a system for breaking down goals and objectives into manageable and measurable steps. This allows you to eliminate the difficulties that can arise from setting vague goals or trying to achieve too much at once.
Take a second to think about New Year’s resolutions and how people usually set them: “I want to join the gym,” “I want to lose weight” or “I want to read more books.”
While these are all commendable goals, the problem is that they’re not specific. What do you want to do in the gym? How much weight do you want to lose, by when? How many books would you like to read by the end of the year?
By contrast, a SMART goal is:
- Specific: “I want to lose weight and fit into my old clothes”
- Measurable: “I need to drop 6 inches from my waist”
- Achievable: Losing 6 inches is more achievable than trying to drop 100lbs
- Relevant: The goal needs to be in accordance with your larger values, which losing weight to improve heart health does
- Time based: “I want to lose the 6 inches within 3 months”
This level of specificity is the difference between success and failure, so the SMART approach can prove incredibly useful for heart disease prevention, as although the lifestyle changes one must make to increase cardiovascular health are easy, it can feel intimidating to start.
And as a benefit, your journey to better heart health will ultimately have you address many of the risk factors for heart disease:
- High-blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Inflammation
- Consuming tobacco, alcohol and caffeine
- Sedentary lifestyle
Anyone working for heart disease prevention will need to address all of these factors, but it’s very daunting to set out to reverse diabetes, or stop being obese, or change your lifestyle drastically. SMART goals allow you to make gradual changes and track your progress, making this a far easier, and more successful, route to improved heart health.
How to set SMART health goals
Now that we’ve discussed how SMART goals work, let’s look at some examples of SMART goal setting.
You could set yourself the goal of losing weight, but this alone may prove difficult to stick to as you have set no specific markers or time frame for this goal.
Using the SMART technique, you could aim to lose 5lbs a month until you reach a target of either a specific weight or waist size. This version of the goal gives you a time scale as well as regular goal posts to check that you’re on track.
There are many smaller goals that you can break your journey to improved heart health into
- Lose weight
- Lower blood pressure
- Exercise for 30 minutes a day
These goals are all far easier to measure and stick to than wide, unspecific goals. And by using the SMART method, you can easily track your progress to better heart health.
Achieving SMART goals
Now that you understand how SMART goals work, you can look to implement them to achieve success.
It all starts with making small tweaks to your daily routine that will help you to achieve the goal you have set for yourself.
Let’s take the goal of exercising for 30 minutes a day as an example. Instead of trying to find a solid 30-minute gap in your busy schedule, you could break it down into a number of small sessions each day that can easily fit around your current routine:
- A 10 minute walk after breakfast
- 10 minutes of HIIT (high intensity interval training).
- A 10 minute walk after dinner
Or even two 15-minute sessions, if that’s easier for you. Ultimately you can break your goals down into whatever format suits you, but what’s important is to create a routine so that you can maintain motivation and make progress toward your heart health goals.
Also remember that SMART goals help to prevent overwhelm. You’re no longer trying to overcome obesity, or avoid eating junk food. Instead, you’re simply adding a little walking to your day, or replacing chocolate bars with a healthier alternative. In other words, you’re focusing on the system instead of fixating on the desired results.
The importance of heart disease prevention
Perhaps the biggest issue with healthcare in the modern world is that more focus is put on the treatment, rather than prevention, of chronic illness.
You can see the damage this approach has had in the fact that heart disease accounts for 1 in 4 deaths in the US. The truth is, improving your heart health is up to you, but the conflicting advice we hear every day can make it difficult to know what steps to take.
If you want to remove all the confusion and doubt, and learn my simple 7-step system for becoming truly healthy, my book Stay Off my Operating Table® is for you.