PPZ3C
Unit 1: Factors That Determine Good Health
Activity 6: S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting for Wellness
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
As you watch...
What questions come to mind about personal wellness?
This YouTube video shows the day to day life of a young man who helps others in his community.
It is a very emotional look at how he helps in financial, emotional, physical and spiritual matters.
His attitude inspires others and as he gives to others, he seems to receive more and more joy for himself.
Assignment: The Wellness of Others
Think about all of the people in your own life. How have you had the opportunity or how might you have the opportunity to contribute to their wellness by your own words or actions? How did this help you with your own wellness?
A personal wellness plan is about more than staying fit and healthy. It involves creating a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being connecting your mind, body, and spirit. It is also important to remember that wellness doesn’t just happen: it’s a lifelong journey and we don’t travel alone.
We all have our own strengths and interests that guide and motivate us to be healthy. We have people who may help us along the way and inspire us; we have hopes and dreams for our futures. These can be referred to as the assets we have in our lives.
It is important to recognize who and what our assets are - and to think about how they can support us when creating and following through with our personal wellness plan.
Assignment: What and Who Are My Assets?
Reflecting on and answering these questions will help you determine some of the assets to support you with your own wellness. Read through all of the questions. Then select the five questions that are most interesting for you to answer.
- What do I feel are my greatest strengths and talents?
- How can I build on my strengths and talents to support my personal wellness?
- What is it about my life that I like?
- What is something I have accomplished in my life? What are some ways of thinking that produced this result?
- How would I like my life to be better? Who can support me with this goal?
- How can I reduce my unhealthy habits; what strategies can I use to reduce them?
- Who has made a positive difference in my life? What qualities does that person have that I would like to develop?
- Ten things I love to do are...
- One thing I hope for my future is...because...
- Look in the mirror and ask, "Would I want to be friends with someone like me? What qualities do I have that are friendship qualities? What qualities do I want to have more of that are friendship qualities?"
- What do I do to help others in my family, school, or community and how does that make me feel when I am helpful?
Save these questions and your responses for later. This will help you to recall when you think about the support you have around you to keep you on track with your personal wellness goals.
SMART Goal Setting
At the end of Activity 5, you decided to focus on the components of wellness that are most important for you. So far in this activity, you have reflected on the assets you have to support your personal wellness. The next step of your wellness journey is to set personal wellness goals. Setting goals helps you to focus on what you specifically want to change and provides you with direction to make those changes.
What does SMART goal or S.M.A.R.T goal mean?
S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym meaning:
A well planned goal that will keep you on track will have each of these five SMART components. Hover your cursor over each letter to learn what each component means.
Assignment: SMART or Not SMART
You be the Judge:
Meet Joanne. Joanne wants to be physically active because she knows it will help her reduce her stress and feel better but has not been able to make it a priority in her life. She does not have any medical issues that prevent her from starting an activity program. She works 40 hours a week and has access to the local community centre.
Joanne’s Goal: To help her reduce her stress, Joanne wants to be physically active for 30 minutes a day. She hopes to accomplish this by going to a fitness class at the community fitness centre with her best friend, three times each week for the next four weeks.
Is Joanne’s goal a SMART goal? Why or why not?
You be the Coach:
Joanne also wants to be more focused about her future career after school. She likes most subjects in school and has decent marks, but she really doesn’t know what she wants to do when she finishes school. She lacks the motivation to get assignments done because she is not sure what they have to do with her future.
Help Joanne set a SMART goal that will help her to develop a career pathway.
Need help in creating SMART goals? The following resource from sparkpeople.com will help to guide you through the steps to offer career goal advice to Joanne.
Assignment: Time To Get SMART With Your Own Wellness
It is time to set your SMART goals. You will need create three SMART goals:
- a physical activity goal;
- a healthy eating or hydration goal; and
- one goal related to any of the other components of wellness you identified as important in the Assignment of Activity 5.
For each of the three goals that you create, indicate how each one follows the S.M.A.R.T. principle. In other words, indicate how each of the three goals is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
Helpful Hints to Better Health
As you read...
Consider what tips or strategies you would find useful to implement your personal wellness plan. You will use these in the consolidation of this activity.
Now that you have created your SMART goals, let’s look at some strategies and hints that may help you in developing your action plan to meet your goals.
There are many different ideas about how to eat well and how to achieve better health.
Some of these ideas can have a dramatic impact on whether or not you achieve the goals that you have set out for yourself. Different people are motivated by and interested in different aspects of health and wellness, so determine which aspects you will focus on in order to improve and maintain health and wellness.
After breaking his leg, undergraduate student Luke Durward used his time to return home and mentor his little brother on healthy eating.
Watch his story here:
Dr. Freedhoff is a Canadian medical doctor who is considered an expert in nutritional counselling. He appears on many Canadian Talk shows, and is often the first to offer nutritional advice in most Canadian newspapers.
Image from The Ottawa Citizen
His book, The Diet Fix - Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work, outlines the fact that at least 90% of diets end in failure. In this book, and on his popular blog, he considers years of medical practice and cutting-edge research about metabolism, nutrition, and willpower.
The Diet Fix exposes the myths of modern-day dieting that so often interfere with weight loss. His practical advice includes keeping it realistic and offering advice that people can actually follow. Here is an overview of his most celebrated ideas to improve your eating habits.
Watch this video where Dr. Freedhoff condenses his main point about successful eating habits:
Canada’s Food Guide is often used by dietitians as a guide when people are attempting to improve their diet to include all four of the food groups, while minimizing the extras.
This healthy eating pattern is based on extensive scientific evidence. The eating pattern was also evaluated against evidence that links certain foods with reduced risk of chronic diseases.
It outlines the following top recommendations.
- Eat at least one dark green and one orange vegetable each day.
- Have vegetables and fruit more often than juice.
- Make at least half of your grain products whole grain each day.
- Drink skim, 1%, or 2% milk each day.
- Have meat alternatives such as beans, lentils, and tofu often.
- Eat at least two Food Guide servings of fish each week.
- Include a small amount of unsaturated fat each day.
- Satisfy your thirst with water.
Go to this site to access the full guide to help you with your healthy eating goal.
Another suggestion for healthy eating looks at a realistic view of how to live with the 80/20 Rule. The rule is simple to follow.
If you eat wholesome, healthy meals 80% of the time, then you get to indulge 20% of the time. Go to the following site to learn more about the 80/20 rule as a strategy that might fit with your plan.
Go to the following site to learn more about the 80/20 rule as a strategy that might fit with your plan.
It is always important to consider the space in which you will become more active since this might be new territory for you. Here are some helpful strategies and tips to help you with your physical activity goal. Click on the links below to learn about helpful strategies and tips as you get active.
Resources
- buzzfeed: Helpful Workout Tips for Beginners
- SSISA: Personal Safety Tips When Training Outside
- eHowFitness: How To Use A Treadmill Properly
- Empower Your Body: How To Safely Workout With Cardio Machines
Measuring and tracking your goals is very important to your success. There are many different ways you can get help to track your healthy eating, measure your daily activity efforts, heart rate, sleep, or even financial goals. Using wearable devices that are on the market today could encourage you to work out and track your individual results.
Technology is changing so quickly, and a tool which is used this month, will most certainly change in six months to a year. Read this article about how fitness apps/technology may or may not help in achieving fitness goals.
Introduction
Learning Goals and Success Criteria
Learning Skills and Work Habits
Rubric 1