Goals

10 Ways to Achieve Your Healthiest Weight Yet

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By Samantha Markovitz

December 26th, 2022

It’s the new year, and as usual, there will be a spike in interest in dieting and weight loss. Unfortunately, these resolutions are often made in ways that definitely do not set up dieters for success. We are better at shifting habits when we can find truly meaningful motivation.

If your goals for healthy living include any aspect of managing your weight, keep the following thoughts in mind for a sustainable approach to achieving your healthiest weight yet.

Don’t Wait to Begin — Do It Now

Looking for benchmarks to start a new way of eating, quit an old habit, or begin an exercise routine is natural, but unnecessary. You can change direction at any time. If you missed the opportunity to start your new routines on January 1st, you don’t have to wait until next year or even next month to make a change. You can do it now!

If you fall off the wagon, you don’t have to wait until next week or even tomorrow to try again. Look at the next possible opportunity you have to make a healthy choice that leads you closer to your goals and make the choice, right then and there.

Make as Many Ideal Food Choices as Possible

Engin Akyurt/Pexels 

It’s easy to get caught up in strict rules around eating when weight is in mind. The odds are good that if you make more ideal food choices than not, you will feel better and the weight goals will follow.

If you have the opportunity to choose your food six times throughout a day (let’s say breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and after-dinner treat/snack), and you make healthy choices that meet the criteria that you have set for yourself at least three times throughout a day, you will be meeting your goal 50% of the time. If you can work up to five out of six, that’s 83%. It’s not a zero-sum game where each day becomes an automatic failure if you don’t meet 100%. Each opportunity to choose is a fresh slate and doesn’t require waiting for the next day to try again.

Choose One Change at a Time

As you set out to make a series of new choices on your journey, you will find that some choices achieve the desired results while others don’t seem to be working for you.

If you’re trying to make a million changes, think about slowing down. Give each change the attention it deserves, one at a time. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself with too many changes at once and feel discouraged if you aren’t able to keep up with a whole slew of modifications. Making more than one change at once may mean not being able to determine what results correlate with each change. Isolating the adjustments helps you to determine which steps are working, and which are not.

Put Your Carb Counting in Context

As people living with diabetes, we are always aware of our carbohydrate consumption. We count carbs, we know the difference between high-quality and low-quality carbs, and we study how different amounts and types of carb consumption affect our diabetes management and overall well-being. And it’s easy to forget that there are other pieces to the puzzle, like fat and protein.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about carb counting that may help you to dig deeper into the relationship between your diabetes management and weight loss goals:

  • How does my fat and protein intake affect the absorption of the carbohydrates I am eating?
  • What foods can I use as building blocks for my meals that will have a minimal impact on my blood glucose levels?
  • When does the timing of my insulin/medications and food work best for achieving my diabetes goals?
  • Where do I have the opportunity to make dietary changes that work for my vision of weight management, diabetes management, and quality of life?

Eat When You Are Hungry

This one seems like it could be a no-brainer, but like many of the behaviors associated with weight management, it isn’t always easy. If you are hungry, eat. Make the healthiest choice possible for your meal or snack, enjoy it slowly, and give yourself the time to sit and feel full before thinking about whether you need to go back for more. If you are not hungry, don’t eat (unless your blood sugar is low, of course!). Try to eliminate situations where you are eating for other reasons, like emotions, boredom, or habit.

While it is important to be flexible for occasions that demand it, creating a daily routine for eating is helpful for both weight and diabetes management.

Listen to Your Body

Our body gives us feedback that can guide us in healthy decision-making. For example, if your body is sluggish and reliant on caffeine to make it through the day, perhaps it is telling you it needs more “clean fuel,” like sleep and whole foods. Every individual is different, so the cues for one person may not be the same for another.

Kelvin Valerio/Pexels

Think about how sensitive you are to blood glucose fluctuations in either direction, and try to apply that kind of responsiveness to your hunger levels. If you can get more in tune with the messages your body is sending, it’ll pay off.

Mentally Prepare Yourself for Success

If you have struggled with managing your weight in the past, you might be dealing with internal messages of self-doubt. That is normal. However, embracing a positive mindset and the spirit of willing experimentation will get you far.

Look in the mirror and repeat the affirmation “I have the tools and knowledge to reach success. I am strong enough to make this journey.” You can come up with your own affirmation that speaks to you. Write it down. Say it aloud. Most importantly, believe that it is true.

Celebrate Your Journey

The road to weight loss is generally not linear. It takes a while to figure out the combination of modifications to see progress. Sometimes circumstances throw us for a loop. Results may come easily, then stagnate or reverse. In the moment, these are frustrating roadblocks. In the big picture, these are small inconveniences.

Celebrate when you make a healthy choice and follow it up with another one, make it one step closer to your goal, and see how the changes you are making are positively affecting your diabetes management. Success is not simply a destination; it can be found throughout the journey. Find joy in each of these moments as you move forward.

Monitor How Your New Habits Are Affecting Your Diabetes

As we know, eating differently or adding physical activity are just two of many factors that can affect our blood glucose levels. Lifestyle modifications may require you or your doctor to consider changes to your insulin or medication, or otherwise alter how you self-manage your diabetes. It helps to make notes of these changes so you can keep track, both for yourself and for your doctor.

Cardio exercise and lower-carbohydrate diets are two popular weightloss strategies that can quickly shift the amount of insulin or other glucose-lowering medication that you need. Be prepared to counteract hypoglycemia with fast-acting carbohydrates, like juice or glucose tabs. Losing weight increases insulin sensitivity and may affect your basal insulin or mealtime doses, making adjustments accordingly.

Remember: Your Weight Management Journey May Vary

You are unique. Your weight management journey is going to be different than that of your neighbor or the person posting about it in your diabetes Facebook group. You can try strategies that are suggested by others, but don’t be discouraged if that advice doesn’t necessarily reap rewards for you. Keep your eye on the prize (your goals!), do what is best for your body, and the rest will follow.

Pathway Project offers three new practices for end-of-life care, goals

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Pathway Project results were presented for the first time at ASN Kidney Week, revealing three new best practices for end-of-life care, specific to the kidney community.

“Although there’s an increasing body of evidence outside of nephrology that says care practices can improve quality of life, confidence in end-of-life decision-making and bereavement, there is a lag in translating these findings into practice,” Manjula Kurella Tamura, MD, MPH, director of the Geriatric Research and Education Clinical Center at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and professor of medicine at Stanford University, said.

nurse with patients in hospice facility

The Pathway Project identified and presented 14 evidence-based best practices that could be incorporated into kidney care to dialysis organizations, then refined the final package to prioritize three best practices. These practices focused on seriously ill patients.

The first best practice of the Pathway Project encourages nephrologists to screen patients by asking themselves the “surprise” question: “Would I be surprised if this patient died in the next 6 or 12 months?” Answering no would mean that the patient is seriously ill. The second best practice is to prioritize goals of care conversations with seriously ill patients. The third best practice is offering palliative care pathways that allow patients to transition to less frequent dialysis, hospice or dialysis discontinuation based on their goals of care.

Ten hemodialysis centers voluntarily adopted and implemented these practices after two learning sessions. The serious illness screening was implemented and sustained, even after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2020 throughout all the centers.

“In terms of the next best practice, conducting goals of care conversations, sites monitored the implementation of this practice by tracking the percent of seriously ill patients who had a goals of care conversation within 30 days of hospital discharge,” Kurella Tamura said. “What they found is that goals of care discussions were implemented, but unevenly, over the course of the implementation.”

She said a few reasons that implementation was challenging were scheduling issues, lack of confident caregivers to have these conversations and some patients felt they could continue putting off the conversation.

The third best practice, the palliative care pathway, was implemented the least, and no centers developed protocols to transition patients to hospice or dialysis withdrawal. A given reason for this was the CMS payment structure and that removing a patient from dialysis could negatively affect paid caregivers.

When interviewed 18 months after implementing the Project Pathway practices, many caregivers involved expressed positive thoughts about the practices.

“We found that all of the sites encountered challenges, but also found this experience incredibly rewarding both for their own individual practice, as well as the practice for their center as a whole,” Kurella Tamura said. “While there were many successes, there were still some hurdles that couldn’t be overcome in the project, particularly the policy and resource barriers that are inherent in our current health care system. So, in some ways, it’s not surprising that a learning collaborative just by itself was not able to overcome these barriers. Maybe one of our takeaways is that the learning collaborative needs to be coupled with changes at the policy and health care structure level to be able to see meaningful changes in health care utilization and patient experience near the end of life.”

Science Says 92 Percent of People Don’t Achieve Their Goals. Here’s How the Other 8 Percent Do It

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Did you know that a staggering 92 percent of people that set New Year’s goals never actually achieve them? That’s according to research by the University of Scranton.

goal-setting

I’ve done it many times, and if you’re like me — a driven, type-A entrepreneur — failing to meet goals can set you back and leave you discouraged and frustrated. (I even felt it as I typed that sentence.)

Here’s the thing: If you want to break the cycle, do what the other 8 percent of goal-setters — the successful ones — do consistently and exceptionally well.

Set goals that are specific and challenging (but not too hard).

Research by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham found that when people followed these two principles — setting specific and challenging goals — it led to higher performance 90 percent of the time.

Basically, the more specific and challenging your goals, the higher your motivation toward hitting them. That explains why easy or vague goals rarely get met.

Here’s an example: If your goal between now and the end of the year is to, say, lose 20 pounds, that  may be challenging, but it’s not specific enough.

Eliminate vagueness and make it more achievable by stating it this way: During the month of August, I will lose five pounds by cutting off refined sugar, breads, and all fast food. I will also walk briskly for twenty minutes every day.

When you have that much clarity around your goal, your chances of hitting the mark increase dramatically.

On the flip side, goals that are too difficult to hit don’t get met either. While it’s important to challenge yourself, nobody completes a goal when he/she is overwhelmed by facing a mountain they can’t climb.

If you find yourself with such a scenario, break down your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) into smaller bites you can actually chew. Use the same process of defining specific and challenging marks to hit when mapping out the smaller goals that will lead you to your final destination.

Questions to ask yourself: How challenging is this goal for me? Am I excited about reaching this goal?  Is it too easy? If so, can I make it harder without it overwhelming me? Is it too complex? If so, how can I break it into smaller parts so I don’t get overwhelmed?

Be passionate about your goals and committed to the end.

Simply put, the 8 percent of goal-setters who succeed want it, and badly. So ask yourself: What is my level of commitment? Are you totally sold out for reaching your goal? When obstacles pop up along the way, will you toss in the towel?

The 8 percent have an internal compass that keeps them locked in until they reach the top of the mountain. It’s a belief system of “do whatever it takes” that is intrinsically motivated at their core.

Take a quick moment and check in with yourself. If at the core of your being you don’t really have the desire or passion to pursue the goal, it doesn’t matter how specific, challenging, or sexy your goal may sound — you’re not going to reach it.

Questions to ask yourself: How badly do I want it? Who’s holding me accountable to the end? Is my heart truly in it from the start? What’s life going to look like once I complete the goal? In the end, will it be worth it?

Use a feedback cycle to track progress.

You’re human — you’re bound to fall back into old habits, procrastinate, or lose motivation. To counter these things, your chances of hitting a specific goal increase greatly if you’re getting frequent feedback that will keep you on track and help you to adjust accordingly.

That’s why the coaching profession is booming. People who are dead serious about meeting their goals benefit tremendously from the feedback and accountability system afforded in a coaching process.

Side note: Managers who are coaches typically have an edge with employees over managers who don’t coach. They get high marks by providing consistent feedback through one-one-one meetings that motivate employees toward completing goals.

Align all your goals.

The 8 percent align their short- and long-term goals toward conquering the top of the mountain. This leads to happier lives, says Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom:

“The psychologists Ken Sheldon and Tim Kasser have found that people who are mentally healthy and happy have a higher degree of ‘vertical coherence’ among their goals — that is, higher-level (long-term) goals and lower-level (immediate) goals all fit together well so that pursuing one’s short-term goals advances the pursuit of long-term goals”.

Lean on trusted advisors.

Seeking out expert guidance and advice makes a big impact on achieving your goals. That’s why successful people are no lone rangers. They surround themselves with mentors and advisors who will support them on their journey.

Think about three or four people you can recruit that are further down the path. Make it a monthly habit to share your goals in the context of a mastermind meeting where you can glean wisdom,  insight, and advice to steer you toward your goals.

Avoid multitasking.

The most successful people are very patient and live by the motto “one step at a time.” They also avoid juggling many things. You think multitasking is still a good strategy for success? Research says it’s a myth and can be damaging to our brains. You end up splitting your focus over many tasks, losing focus, lowering the quality of your work and taking longer to hit your goals.

The 8 percent are smart enough to work on several smaller chunks to complete a big goal. But they do it by knocking one down then moving on to the next one.

As you break the goal down into smaller chunks, each of those chunks should have their own deadlines. Amy Morin in Forbes calls these “now deadlines”:

“Even if your goal is something that will take a long time to reach — like saving enough money for retirement — you’re more likely to take action if you have time limits in the present. Create target dates to reach your objectives. Find something you can do this week to begin taking some type of action now. For example, decide ‘I will create a budget by Thursday,’ or ‘I will lose two pounds in seven days.'”

Bringing it home.

While you may think these successful 8 percenters are born predisposed to these talents, research says that successful people achieve their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

Aristotle nailed it more than 2000 years ago when he said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” By practicing these skills, expect to dramatically improve your rate of finishing strong.