5 SMART Goals for Better Health

Let’s take a look at what SMART Goals are and how they can help you improve your health. I’ll also share 5 SMART Goals for better health plus more examples.

What are SMART Goals?

SMART Goals are…

• SPECIFIC – A very clear target to achieve – Vague goals achieve vague results – Specific goals achieve specific results
• MEASURABLE – So that you know exactly when you’ve achieved the goal and you can measure your progress
• ACHIEVABLE – Is it actually an achievable goal? Is it possible?
• REALISTIC – Is it a realistic goal for you?
• TIME-BASED – Give yourself time to achieve the goal by.

5 SMART Goal Examples For Better Health

I share these SMART goals to give you examples of how to effectively use this type of goal setting to help you improve your health. You can use my goal examples or create your own specific to your own health goals.

1. SMART Goal For Better Sleep

SMART GOAL – I will be in bed with the lights off and be ready to sleep 8 hours before I need to get up for the next 7 days.

• SPECIFIC – This is a very clear and specific goal
• MEASURABLE – This is a measurable goal. You know if you’ve done this and you can track how many nights you manage to achieve this goal.
• ACHIEVABLE – Yes it is achievable (unless you have a newborn baby or other real reason – not watching TV)
• REALISTIC – Yes, it is realistic for me for 7 days. It may not always be realistic every night but I can do this for 7 days with effort
• TIME-BASED – It’s for 7 days. So you know that if you manage to get yourself into bed, ready for sleep 8 hours before you need to get up for the next 7 days, then you’ve achieved your goal in the set time.

Here’s a great blog post if you want to work on a sleep goal – GET ENOUGH SLEEP CHALLENGE

2. SMART Goal For Eating Healthier

SMART Goal: I will make sure that I eat at least 5 portions of vegetables a day for 30 days

• SPECIFIC – Yes, this is a very specific goal
• MEASURABLE – Yes, you can track how many portions you eat each day
• ACHIEVABLE – Yes, it is achievable
• REALISTIC – Yes, with some planning and a little extra effort, this is realistic for me
• TIME-BASED – The goal is for 30 days, so you can track each day and you’ll know if you’ve achieved the goal after 30 days

Be careful not to make your goal too broad. For example, don’t say I will eat healthier meals for 7 days. It’s okay but it’s still quite vague.

Here’s a great post with HEALTHY EATING MINDSET TIPS and you might want to check out my Intuitive Eating Blog posts.

3. SMART Goal To Exercise More

SMART Goal: I will walk 15 minutes every day this week

• SPECIFIC – Yes, this is a specific goal
• MEASURABLE – Yes, it’s measurable, you know exactly when you’ve achieved the daily goal and the goal for the week
• ACHIEVABLE – Yes, it is achievable
• REALISTIC – And it’s realistic for me personally.
• TIME-BASED – I know exactly how long I have to achieve this goal

Here are some great challenges if you want to exercise more – FITNESS CHALLENGES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T NORMALLY LIKE EXERCISING

4. SMART Goal To Drink More Water

SMART Goal: I will drink a full glass of water every morning as soon as I go downstairs – For 30 days

• SPECIFIC – Yes, it’s a specific goal. You may want to state which glass you’ll use too. Is it a small glass or a big glass?
• MEASURABLE – You can track your progress each day and you’ll know exactly when you’ve achieved the daily goal and the 30-day goal
• ACHIEVABLE – Yes
• REALISTIC – Yes
• TIME-BASED – You know that each day you will need to achieve your daily goal in order to achieve the 30-day goal

Here are some useful challenges to try – Water and Walking Challenge and Drink 2 Litres of Water A Day Challenge.

5. SMART Goal To Improve Your Mindset For Better Health

SMART Goal: I will listen to my Healthy Hypnosis Download Every night for 14 days

• SPECIFIC – Yes, it’s very clear, you know exactly what you need to do each day to achieve your goal
• MEASURABLE – Yes, you can track your nightly listening each night
• ACHIEVABLE – Yes, and super relaxing too
• REALISTIC – Yes
• TIME-BASED – You know you have to do this thing daily for 14 days to achieve this goal.

Check out my HEALTHY LIVING EFT SCRIPTS download to build a positive mindset that supports you in improving your health. Available on my ETSY Shop.

The WRONG WAY to Do Healthy Living Goals

• SPECIFIC – Exercise more – NOPE, this is not specific!
• MEASURABLE – Sleep more – NOPE, if you sleep 1 second more, you’ll have achieved your goal.
• ACHIEVABLE – Lose 3 stone in 1 month – NOPE. This is not achievable. At least it’s not achievable in a healthy way
• REALISTIC – Walk for 2 hours every day – NOPE. Well, for some people this would be very realistic, for me, it’s not realistic every day
• TIME-BASED – I will run a marathon! – When will you achieve this goal by?

More SMART Goals For Better Health

• I will do 3 Lucy Wyndham-Read Workouts this week
• I will drink a glass of water with every meal today
• I will complete my first half-marathon by this time next year
• I will do an EFT Session for healthy living every morning after breakfast for the next 7 days
• I will walk 10,000 daily steps for 30 days (check out this steps challenge)
• I will read 1 blog post about INTUITIVE EATING this week
• I will read through my healthy affirmations every evening

Use SMART Goals to help you build healthy habits and if you have some big health goals you can create your own goals.

A real-life example of using SMART Goals for better health

This was one of my big health goals a few years ago (when I first started this blog) – I’d been for my regular health check and was told I was pre-diabetic. This scared me so much. I knew I’d let my health slip and I’d put on a lot of weight over the years.

My goal was to have a normal, healthy reading when I returned. If I remember correctly it was 4 weeks later.

I set small SMART Goals to help me build healthy habits, such as…

• I will walk to the end of my drive every single day – I gradually built this up to walking 10,000 daily steps
• I will drink 1.5 litres of water daily – I built this goal up over about a week
• I will not eat sugary sweets – I don’t typically like using negatives (NOT) in my goals but I knew sugary sweets were a huge contributor to the problem. I swapped them for good-quality dark chocolate.

The time for each of these goals was the date for my next health check. My ultimate goal was… I will be at a healthy level when I return for my next health check.

I did achieve this big and very important health goal and all of those smaller SMART goals helped me achieve this.

Happy Weight – Healthier Living

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You may also want to check out SMART Goals For Weight Loss.

4-Week IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH Challenge

If you’ve found this post helpful, I’d love you to check out my 4-week Improve Your Health Challenge. You can combine this with setting your own SMART goals to improve your health.

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Coach Wendy – Wendy Tomlinson Coaching
Lincolnshire, UK

Mindset Coach
Life Skills Coach
EFT Master Practitioner
Law of Attraction Practitioner