DASH Diet For Dummies. Sarah Samaan

Sodium 2,300 mg Potassium 4,700 mg Calcium 1,250 mg Magnesium 500 mg Fiber 30 grams

      Source: National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute

Creating Goals for Dietary Change

      Imagine a stronger, healthier you. Visualizing yourself accomplishing your new diet and exercise goals is one way to begin the goal-setting process. Consider writing down some of the aspects of your vision. For example: I will feel better, I will be more fit, I will look great in new clothes, I will have more energy, I will learn more about myself as I keep a daily journal, and so on.

      After you’ve visualized yourself living a healthier lifestyle, you can start setting the goals that will ultimately help you get there. For the best chance at success, keep your goals specific and realistic. You also need to track your progress toward your goals to hold yourself accountable. We help you do both in the next sections.

      Being SMART

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. What does all that mean, exactly? Well, the specific aspect is pretty self-explanatory. Instead of setting a bunch of general goals, give yourself specific ones that you can better hold yourself accountable to. We list some examples in Table 4-3.

TABLE 4-3 Setting Specific Goals

General Goal	Specific Goal
I will eat more fruit.	I will pack an apple or orange every day for work.
I will lose weight.	I will record my daily food intake and follow my meal plan, working toward a 10- to 20-pound weight loss over the year.
I will eat more vegetables.	I will have a variety of fresh, frozen, and low-sodium canned vegetables on my weekly grocery list and try a new recipe each week that includes them.
I will exercise more.	I will schedule a workout for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday right after work.
I will eat out less often.	I will cook dinner at home at least four days a week using simple recipes from this book.

Specific goals are more measureable. Measureable goals are easier to track and help you visualize your progress. Work on one or two measurable goals at a time. To measure some of the goals from Table 4-3, simply keep a journal for the week. Let’s say your initial goal is to eat 3 servings of fruit daily. You can easily measure that by recording your intake daily and comparing it to the goal.

      You can do the same for exercise, but you can also measure the activity itself (not just completing it, but the intensity or duration of it). If you begin a walking routine and it takes you 60 minutes to walk 3 miles, you may consider setting a goal to improve your speed. Measure this goal by using a watch and timing your walks, and then you can easily see your progress.

      You can also take some baseline measurements right before you make changes in diet and lifestyle and then come back and measure them in three months (fruit/vegetable servings, weight when starting DASH, waist measurement, and so on).

      

The scale is an objective measurement tool, but don’t get overly obsessed with it, especially if it isn’t budging or your weight loss is slow going. Body weight is one aspect of health, but there are others. Meeting your weekly exercise goals and goals to improve the quality of your daily diet is wonderful progress in the right direction. Sometimes getting overly concerned with the number on the scale can be negative feedback that sends you off track.

      Consider using your smartphone or a fitness tracker (like a Fitbit) to track your sitting and standing goals. Let’s face it, we sit too much. Simply working toward more movement and standing in your day-to-day life helps keep your metabolism revving. You can set goals into your program and continue to track and improve.

      Also consider how attainable your goal is. Losing 30 pounds by next month isn’t attainable, but breaking that goal into smaller, doable goals — such as “I will lose 2 pounds over the next week” — feels a lot more attainable. Setting attainable goals is all about being realistic and not setting yourself up to fail.

Setting realistic goals helps you move forward and stay on track. Realistic goals aren’t self-defeating; they’re doable. Try to be honest with yourself. If you’ve never eaten fruits and vegetables on a daily basis, then don’t set yourself up for failure by setting the unrealistic goal that starting tomorrow, you’re going to eat 8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. It probably won’t happen. Start small, and then build on that. A small step forward is still a step in the right direction.

      Goals should be timely too. While you want them to be realistic, it’s still helpful to look down the road a bit and set the bigger goals you want to achieve. For instance, maybe you started jogging a mile a day. You may set a goal to add a quarter mile to that every week, to be able to run 3 miles in 8 weeks, and to enter a 5K race in 12 weeks. Placing goals on an incremental timeline helps you achieve them more successfully.

      

Recording an end date can keep goals timely and help make sure they happen. Whether you set goals for behaviors that need to occur daily, weekly, or over a period of months, putting the timeline in place helps you stay on track:

       I will plan my meals and snacks.

       I will weigh myself every Tuesday to track my weight-loss progress.

       I will begin eating two extra servings of fruit per day.

       I will cook two new vegetables this week.

Having a visual goal sheet in writing can help you stick to your plan and be accountable. Figure 4-1 provides an example of how you may record your goals.

      © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      FIGURE 4-1: Sample goal worksheet.

Setting too many goals all at once can be overwhelming and unproductive. Try to work on two to three goals at a time. After a goal becomes an everyday habit, check it off and move on to a new goal.

      HOW MANY CALORIES DO YOU NEED?

      Several clinical formulas can determine