Bariatric Foodie Pledge participants: I challenge you to a self-evaluation!

I know, I know…the thought of taking a self-evaluation sounds about as fun as kicking a rock. Am I right?

But here’s the deal.

One of the most crucial steps we often miss when working on our goals is self-evaluation. And it’s important! Why?

• Because it gives you the opportunity to see what challenges you, and make a plan around it
• Because it gives you the opportunity to see if your goal was too challenging and adjust
• Because it gives you the opportunity to see if your goal wasn’t challenging enough and adjust
• Because it gives you a chance to identify what went right so you can do more of it

How taking a more methodical approach to change can help you.

By day I (Nik) work in marketing. And in marketing we are very intentional about how we set goals. We look at what needs to be addressed. (For us that would be something like “I’ve fallen back into old eating habits…” or “I’ve stopped exercising” or “I need to be more consistent with my vitamins…”) Then we figure out how we will address it (“I will replace X unhealthy habit with Y healthy habit…” or “I will exercise X times a week” or “I will take all my vitamin doses this week…”). Then we figure out what tactics we will use. (“I will journal my habit replacement efforts…”, “I will identify X classes at the gym and put them on my schedule to attend them.” “I will set vitamin reminders in my health app…”) And, finally, when it’s all over, we ask ourselves three questionis:

1. What did we expect to happen?
2. What actually happened?
3. What went right and what went wrong?

From there, the process repeats itself. Over and over and over and over again. If that seems overwhelming, consider this: Socrates was quoted as saying “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That means we are constantly supposed to be working on ourselves and I would even argue that we like working on ourselves when we aren’t stressed about doing it.

Back to the self assessment

If you competed for the Bariatric Foodie Pledge Grand Prize, you probably already did this assessment and are off the hook! If you didn’t qualify or compete for the Grand Prize, I’m talking to you.

Here are the “rules” (and I use that word loosely) for doing this self-assessment:

1. Don’t rush. Carefully consider the questions. Many of you spent weeks focusing in on goals. Inevitably you had to learn some stuff from that. If you didn’t…sorry…this may sound harsh…but I think you may be a zombie. 😉
2. Don’t judge yourself. Avoid statements like “I failed” or “I messed up.” Be as objective as possible when considering how things went and why.
3. Do this in the spirit of moving forward. This challenge was to help you kick-start a year of living your best healthy life. Consider what you need to continue doing that from this point forward.

When you are finished filling out the self-assessment and press send, you should receive a copy of it by email. (If you don’t see it right away, check your junk folder.) A Foodie in the Pledge Facebook group gave a great tip. In Gmail you can “snooze” emails. Try snoozing this email for up to a year (or less, if you want) so that you get it sent to you in the future. I am willing to bet that if you take the information in this assessment seriously, you will have made major accomplishments in that time.

Enough talk. Here’s the assessment!

If you didn’t participate in the Bariatric Foodie Pledge but feel like a good old fashioned self-assessment may be in order, check out my Back on Track Toolkit. It will help you work through where you are now, where you want to be, and will nudge you to take the first steps in that direction!