Kick Your Craving

My habit-busting targets for 2009

So there are a bunch of habits that I’d like to quit, and I’ll be following my progress on this blog. To see how successful I’ve been, I’ll be setting SMART targets for each one. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-based

So “I’d like to lose weight” would not be SMART, but “I’d like to lose 4 pounds in weight by the end of August 2009″ would be.

Here are my current goals, to be achieved by the end of 2009:

Smoking

I smoked my last cigarette on Tuesday and ideally I will remain a non-smoker permanently. However, I accept that something may not work and I may need a couple of attempts, so my goal is to have not smoked a single cigarette for 3 months by the end of the year. That means if I lapse or fail at quitting this time I get to have another go or two before the year’s out.

Exercise

The key here for me is consistency. I’ve dabbled in a few different exercise regimes for varying lengths of time, but nothing that I keep up for more than a couple of months. By the end of the year I want to be doing some form of exercise at least 3 times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes a time. I’d like to gave kept that up consistently for 3 months.

Drinking

As a test to myself, to save a little cash and to help with stopping smoking I have quit drinking completely for the whole of June. My aim for the rest of the year is to consistently stick to the “glass ceiling system”. The basic premise is that you have no more than two alcoholic drinks in any day. That means if you want to have a few drinks say on a Saturday night you can have two before midnight and two after midnight as long as you don’t drink on Sunday night two. Easy, eh?

I’m haven’t come up with goals for money or diet yet - I’ll commit to writing these up within the next two weeks. Hassle me of I don’t!

Photo by pbo31