Identifying your priorities - and how nutrition fits into them
If you’ve made it to this page, it’s safe to say you care about your health and wellness.
So when you’re setting new goals - either for a new calendar year, or simply for a new phase of life - you probably add a few health and wellness goals to the mix. Maybe you make a plan to work out 3 times a week, or to drink more water, or to “eat healthier” (bonus points if you actually define what that looks like!).
When life is crazy, health and wellness is often not our only priority. Other commitments, responsibilities, or interests compete for our limited time and resources – we might be working our way through graduate school, taking on new responsibilities at work, or starting a family. What that means: health and wellness, while a priority, isn’t your only one.
And the reality is that we can’t have 5 or more “top” priorities. It’s just not possible to give our all to that many things at once. So how do we make sure our health and wellness don’t suffer, even when we have these competing priorities? Here’s an exercise we often use with our clients to help with exactly that!
Our goal with this exercise is to help you identify and articulate your top priorities and goals (related to fitness, work, family, or anything else) so that we can cater your nutrition plan to support each of those priorities.
Identify your top 5 priorities right now (“big bucket” things like health, family, performance, social life, etc.).
This doesn't mean that other things - the things you don't list - aren't important. We're just identifying what takes priority for you right now, in this phase.
From the 5 you listed above, identify your top 2-3 priorities.
This means that you have to knock out at least two from #1. Again, it doesn't mean they're not important! But it's really hard to execute on 5 priorities all at once, so we're trying to identify the top 2-3.
For each of the 2-3 top priorities identified above, write out 1-3 specific goals that you have that fall within each priority.
These should be really concrete. For example: If you listed "family" as one of your top 2-3 priorities, one of your specific goals could be "Be home from work by 6pm each day."
Finally, answer the following question in one sentence: "What's your why?"
No right or wrong answers here! :)
Once you work through this exercise, you can think about how to layer in your nutrition or other wellness-related goals. For example, if you have a financial goal to save up for a down payment on a house, maybe you set a goal to cook/prepare X number of meals at home each week - which can promote both savings and health! Or perhaps you are working towards a promotion; eating enough food and getting to bed earlier are healthy habits that also help you put your best foot forward at work. The aim here is to set health and wellness goals that are supportive of, rather than at odds with, the other “competing” priorities you have.
If this kind of introspective work interests you, and you want support and accountability in your journey towards health and wellness (regardless of how busy you are!), fuelED’s personal nutrition coaching may be a great fit. Check out the link below for more information.
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