I believe in living a sustainable lifestyle–whether it’s exercise or nutrition–it’s a lifestyle that I can have for my entire life.

I also advocate a sustainable lifestyle to those that I help. When talking to someone about their health I always ask what their health and wellness goals are. This helps me figure out what type of programming to create, as well as gives me an insight to where the person is looking to take their health and wellness journey.

Weight loss–this is a huge response I tend to receive. “I want to lose weight.” Even from people who are smaller and may really mean they want to change body composition (fat to muscle ratio), it’s all about losing weight.

Losing weight can be a good goal to have for some, but should not be the only goal to have. The reason? It’s not sustainable. A person can only lose so much weight before losing weight can become dangerous. Generally, when a person loses the weight they want, they’re left asking themselves, “now what?,” or they fall back into old habits because they’ve met their goal, just to put the weight back on.

A sustainable goal is to lead a healthy and active lifestyle. That can mean different things to many people. To be able to support that goal is to have smaller, specific goals, such as lose weight by a certain date, be at 10% body fat by a certain date, meal prep regularly, etc. These specific goals can certainly change. Once the weight is lost it can change from “losing weight” to “maintaining weight” for example.

All these goals are part of living a healthy and active lifestyle. Let that be a goal. It’s a goal that is sustainable, that will last a lifetime.