The new year is upon us, so you know what that means—the motivation for starting a new workout routine has never been stronger. But amidst the excitement of starting a new wellness journey, it’s important not to set your sights too high.

Fortunately, it’s very possible to strike a healthy balance. Even if you’re new to exercise, you can form realistic wellness goals that help you keep the pace and the faith. Keep reading to learn more about why balanced goal-setting is crucial in transforming your health.

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Avoid Burnout

We’ve all been there: we set out on a new wellness journey with high hopes and ambitious expectations only to completely let it all fall by the wayside come the third week. It happens! We’re human, after all. But this scenario offers a critical lesson worth considering when setting wellness goals for yourself.

Our culture encourages us to push ourselves beyond human possibility to achieve great things. While this optimism helps to an extent, at some point it does more harm than good. Unfortunately, this mentality is alive and well in the health industry, and may ultimately lead you further away from wellness.

To stay on track (and sane), try not to aim too high when fleshing out specific benchmarks for your plan. Psychologically speaking, achieving frequent small wins is better than occasionally knocking something out of the park. So instead of running a mile one week and then a mile and a half the next, try incrementally adding a tenth of a mile to your treadmill routine each week. In time, you’ll see the small wins add up to something bigger and better than you ever imagined.

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Form New Habits

Setting small, realistic wins is excellent for new habit formation as well, which is the key here. Improving your health is a great goal—but only if you keep it up over the long term. By gradually hitting your goals, you’re much more likely to keep these habits as a consistent part of your daily routine.

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Enjoy the Ride More

Did you know: getting in shape doesn’t have to feel impossible! It’s much more enjoyable when you don’t constantly feel like you have to move mountains to get where you’re going. Setting realistic wellness goals makes becoming healthier more fun. And if you’re having fun, you’re much more likely to stick with it for the long term.

Live to Move, Love to Move

Our most significant takeaway is that setting realistic exercise goals is ultimately for your internal psychological benefit rather than your external physical benefit. If you can change your mindset to improve your health, you’re much more likely to succeed in whatever it is you pursue.

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