“Our goal is to eat well, but sometimes we need to eat good.” Wise words from Roniece Weaver, one of the great registered dietitians we worked with during our course in Culinary Medicine. She is co-author of The New Soul Food Cookbook for People with Diabetes and Executive Director of Hebni Nutrition Consultants in Orlando, whose “mission is to provide nutrition education and strategies to prevent diet-related diseases in culturally diverse populations.” She explained that eating well is everything we are supposed to be doing, following the recommendations of healthcare professionals and evidence-based medicine. It is being mindful of the ingredients that we use when we’re cooking and avoiding heavily processed foods and frequently eating out. On the other hand, eating good is that comfort food that sometimes we just need. It is enjoying a slice of cake for a birthday party or indulging in a nice meal out for an anniversary. It is not realistic to tell someone they must always eat well and that it is bad to eat good. This will inevitably set people up for failure and discouragement. The importance is knowing the difference between when you are eating good and eating well and finding a healthy balance, and a great way to achieve this is through SMART goals.

Self-Efficacy

Before I tell you about SMART goals, I want to introduce the concept of self-efficacy. This can be thought of as your confidence in your ability to achieve a goal or complete a task. It is an important concept to understand before discussing goal-setting, because it is the foundation that goals are built upon, and the outcome of these goal, in turn, can affect one’s self-efficacy.

Imagine you have never run a race in your life. In fact, you can’t even remember the last time you ran. But then one day you wake up, find your running shoes in the back of the closet, dusting off the cobwebs, and decide to run a marathon. Not only do you feel an incredible urge to run this marathon, but you have decided that this is not only something that you want to do, but it is something you need to do. You even went so far as to post about it on Facebook, letting everyone know your plans to finish a marathon today. You’ve put a lot of pressure on yourself to succeed, but you’re certain you will be successful. You step outside and begin running down the street. The first mile you feel great. You’re waving to your neighbors, telling them your plan along the way. They respond with thumbs up and words of encouragement. By the second or third mile, you are starting to feel a bit winded, and by mile five you realize you have bitten off far more than you can chew, but you can’t stop, right? After all, you set a goal. You told people about it. They’re cheering you on. If you stop now, you’ll let them down. You’ll let yourself down. You can’t fail, so you press on. But after finishing mile six you quickly do the math and realize that you still have 20.2 miles to run, your lungs are burning, your legs feel like jelly, and you’re pretty sure you may actually die on the spot. So you stop and accept defeat. Everyone asks you how your marathon went, and you have to tell them you failed. You feel humiliated. Maybe a month later you try again, but only make it to mile seven. A year later you try yet again, but can only make it five miles. How likely are you to keep trying? How likely is success while following this same plan? You’ve tried to run a marathon three times now and failed all three times. Your friends tell you not to give up and try again, but you’ve decided you will never run a marathon. It’s simply impossible. This feeling of defeat is what would be considered low self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy influences a goal’s outcome. It is easy to see in this example that you started off with a lot of self-efficacy; you were very confident that you could complete a marathon. But when self-efficacy was low, that lack of confidence diminished the likelihood of future success. But, at the same time, this example also highlights how, in turn, a goal’s outcome influences self-efficacy.  After each failure, you became less and less confident, even delaying each subsequent attempt, until you decided it wasn’t even worth trying anymore. With each failure, self-efficacy decreased, and as self-efficacy decreased success became less likely. This pattern can continue until, eventually, attempts to accomplish the goal are given up altogether. Obviously, deciding to run a marathon without any training sounds crazy, right? You would have to slowly work up to that. You would train.

It’s important to think about lifestyle modifications in a similar fashion. You’re training yourself to incorporate new habits. Whether it be eating healthier, drinking more water, or exercising, the key is to start with small, gradual changes that slowly move you toward a distant, long-term goal. This is where self-efficacy fits in. As you make smaller goals that are achievable, you set yourself up for success. These small successes increase self-efficacy, which makes you more confident, filling you with encouragement to continue to gradually work toward that distant goal. If you don’t meet one of these small goals, it’s not as discouraging, because it’s not as big of a setback. You have other successes to reflect on and motivate you to try again. With each success, you are encouraged to keep going. These small changes add up over time and eventually, you’ve crossed the finish line, achieved your ultimate goal, and are ready to set your sights on a new goal.

SMART Goals

SMART goals is a systematic way of developing goals that can’t guarantee success but will create goals in which success is feasible. With each success, you build self-efficacy and are ready to tackle a new goal. People are much more likely to be successful in incorporating healthy habits into their daily life through gradual changes than by trying to change habits overnight. People don’t develop unhealthy habits overnight; they develop slowly over time. Failure is much more likely to occur with sweeping, all-or-nothing changes. This kind of goal setting creates unreal expectations for the individual, so when they have a slip-up, whether that’s skipping a day at the gym or eating one of the doughnuts their coworker brought in for the office, they are more likely to view this as a failure, their self-efficacy taking a hit each time, leaving room for feelings of discouragement, defeat, and apathy to grow. SMART goals, on the other hand, are small, achievable changes to be completed over a set amount of time. Wise goal setting is the key to small successes that add up over time, resulting in more lasting changes. SMART goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.