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My Health Goal

Making the decision to change your lifestyle can lead to some great and unexpected benefits. These can include improved physical and mental health, increased energy levels, better confidence and self esteem and financial savings.

The importance of setting a health goal

Setting up your own personal health goal is important as it allows you to focus on a specific aspect of your lifestyle. Just making a small change in your behaviour can have a big impact on your health. For example, the best way to prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes is to include regular moderate exercise

Be SMART

To be truly effective, goals should be SMART:

• Specific (e.g. increase your physical activity through brisk walking)
• Measurable (e.g. walk three kilometres - five days per week)
• Achievable (e.g. will take less than 30 minutes per day)
• Realistic (e.g. start with two km, every second day, then increase distance/frequency)
• Time-bound (e.g. aim to achieve the goal within three months)

Record your Goal

Having a tangible reference will help you measure your progress, so remember to record you health goal on paper.

Understanding obstacles

When making the decision to change your lifestyle, whether it be to lose weight or quit smoking etc., it's important that you be able to identify those challenges that may stand in your way.

• Time (e.g. “I’m too busy to exercise”)
• Resources (e.g. “healthy food is too expensive”)
• Support (e.g. “I can’t quit smoking because my partner smokes in the house”)
• Skill (e.g. “I can’t control my asthma because I can’t use the puffer properly”)
• Knowledge (e.g. “I can’t follow a low-salt diet - I don’t know what foods have salt in them”)
• Psychological (e.g. “I can’t drink low alcohol beer - my friends would laugh at me”).

Once you identify those challenges, you can work out how best to overcome them. When reviewing these challenges, think about the importance placed on the lifestyle change and the benefits that can be gained, as this may give you a new perspective on how you want to live your life. For example, if you rated increasing exercise as very important, then it will be much easier for you to make time to include exercise in your daily routine.

Finding rewards

Achieving your health goal can seem a long way off, so it's important that you reward yourself when you reach short term goals to keep you motivated. You can reward yourself when you see a result in weight loss, improved well being or better blood pressure result.

Preventing setbacks

By developing ways to deal with situations that can set you back in acheiving your health goals you will be able to properly prepare yourself so that you reduce the risk of falling back on bad habits.

For example:

• Walk alternate routes instead of the same walk every day
• Place a note on the fridge encouraging yourself to have a drink of water or some fruit instead of sweet or high fat treats
• If you anticipate time being an issue, be sure the duration and time you are choosing to exercise fits in with your social and family commitments.

Most importantly, assess your plan before you begin and be sure you that will be able to maintain it.

Did you know....

• Eating strategically will help you lose weight. Having a healthy meal before you do your grocerie shopping will reduce the chances of you stocking up on unhealthy food.
• Walking keeps the mind young. People who walk regularly are more likely to have better mental function and exprience less memory loss in old age.
• Doing nothing makes you tired. Physical activity raises your energy levels, so the best way to combat fatigue is through excercise.

Getting started

To make a start on improving your health, use your Health Diary. You will need to be an ahm health insurance member and login through the ahm Member Services area.

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