Creating a Personalized Health Plan

When you set out to improve your health, a personalized health plan can help you outline your health goals and how you’ll achieve them. A health plan improves the quality of care you receive from your medical team and helps you stay on track with your progress. If you’re wondering how to create a personalized health plan, here are the steps to making one. 

Complete a self-assessment 

You know your body better than anyone else, and there’s no one better to do a health assessment than you. In your self-assessment consider the following aspects: 

• Diet and nutrition
• Exercise
• Your sleep quality 
• Any medications or supplements you take
• Mental health
• Lifestyle

These factors play a role in your health and work incongruence with each other. A self-assessment is essential because it helps pinpoint what’s going right with your health and identify problem areas that could use improvement. For example, you may have a healthy diet and exercise regularly, but maybe you use tobacco regularly, negatively impacting your health. As you go through your self-assessment, begin thinking about the goals you want to set and work toward. 

Review your health status with a doctor

After you’ve completed your self-assessment, you need to consult a doctor to get a medical opinion of your health status. Hopefully, you meet with your primary care physician for your yearly check-up, and this is the perfect time to consult your doctor about your self-assessment. You and your doctor can work together to set health goals and find your track to achieving them. They can run tests and assess your physical and mental health so you can more effectively create your health plan. To safely improve your health, your doctor will identify ways to do so. 

Set your goals 

The goals you set for your health plan will depend on your needs.  You should set your goals based on your wants and needs, as well as the findings from your doctor. When setting goals for your health plan, they should be S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T. goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. An example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal would be “to get more exercise, I will go hiking once a week starting June.” As long as the goal is relevant to you and realistic to your current lifestyle, you can incrementally increase and update your goals as you hit your milestones. 

You can set health-specific goals and implement lifestyle goals to improve your overall life satisfaction. For example, if you’ve been suffering from hair loss, you can collaborate with a doctor to help you plan how to stimulate hair growth through medication and lifestyle changes. Remember, your goals are your wants and needs, so you can make them whatever you want! 

Evaluate metrics to monitor progress

Now that you have some goals in mind, you need relevant metrics to help you monitor your progress. Depending on your health goal, you may base these metrics on your weight, improvements in your health, increased exercise, or whatever applies to your situation. You must have metrics to monitor your progress because it will help you see how much progress you’ve made on your goals and keep your motivation to continue. Nothing is more gratifying than seeing how far you’ve come, so make sure you have a way to track progress toward your goals.  

Create a plan for achieving your health goals

Your doctor may have given you some ideas on achieving your health goals, but you need should strategize a system to help you work toward your goal. You already know where you want to be, but you also need to figure out how to get there. If one of your goals is to eat a more nutritious diet, you might work with a nutritionist to help you improve your diet. If your goal is to become stronger, sign up for a workout class or find a personal trainer. Knowing your goals and how you’ll achieve them will help you get motivated to reach the finish line without feeling overwhelmed. 

Things to consider for your health plan:

As mentioned in the self-assessment section, there are crucial aspects of your life to consider when creating your health plan. 

Diet and nutrition

Diet and nutrition play a huge role in our health, helping to prevent certain diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. An unhealthy diet increases our risk of developing illnesses, affecting our quality of life. A nutritious diet is essential in regulating hormones and energy levels and can improve your mental health. 

Exercise

Exercise is another vital aspect of your health plan. Engaging in physical activity helps you in many ways. Exercise can improve your brain health, regulate your mood, manage weight, and reduce your risk of developing a disease. Exercise also works wonders to improve your energy levels and strengthen your bones and muscles while helping you perform your day-to-day activities and responsibilities. 

Lifestyle

Lifestyle habits can also affect your health. Consuming alcohol, smoking tobacco, drug use, poor sleep, being sedentary a majority of the time, and staring at a screen for hours can all impact your physical and mental health. If you find that despite a healthy diet and exercise, you still are experiencing health issues, your lifestyle habits could be the issue. 

Supplements and medication

If you take medications or supplements for certain conditions, these prescriptions can also affect your overall health. For example, many users of anti-depressants or SSRIs find the drugs make it harder to regulate their weight. You should consider the medications you’re taking in creating your health plan because those medications could make it harder to achieve your health goals, and you should make adjustments to your plan as needed. 

Additionally, consider supplements you’re taking or should be taking. Based on your blood work analysis from your doctor, you may be lacking in certain essential nutrients or vitamins. If you aren’t getting enough protein or vitamin D for example, this could be negatively impacting your health. When creating your health plan, consider which supplements you could benefit from. 

Personalized health plans

Now that you know how to make a personalized health plan, you can start working with your doctor and setting some goals for yourself. By holding yourself accountable to your goals, you’re on the right track to better health.