Example Goal: Eat 14 servings of vegetables per week

Unfortunately, there's not yet a magical app that will automatically track and verify your vegetable consumption and post it to Beeminder (holler if you've made one!), so a manual-entry goal is needed to beemind this. Fortunately, that's straightforward to set up!

First, decide the metric you care about most. Do you want to get really specific with a scale and beemind how many grams of vegetables you eat? Maybe you're more relaxed and can just estimate servings? Precision is nice in principle, but consider what's convenient in the long term as well.

Your choice of metric dictates the type of goal needed and how you enter your data, so pick a metric that'll be useful to you but not too difficult to track -- whatever that means to you.

Manual-entry veggies goal setup

  1. Head to create a new goal (also accessible through the New Goal link in the top menu).
  2. Click the + icon to start a new manual entry goal.

    Goal creation page: "How will you track your progress?" Below there is a button with a + sign on it, with the caption "Add progress manually to Beeminder"
  3. Select Do More as your goal type (because you want to Do More vegetable eating).

    Goal creation: Select goal type. Shows all the current goal types (Do More, Do Less, Lose Weight, Gain Weight, Custom, Odometer and Whittle Down), with the Do More option in the top left highlighted.
  4. Enter the units you want to use and the amount you want to commit to. In this example, I'm aiming for 14 servings per week, i.e. roughly 2 servings per day. Beeminder always works on a per-day basis, but don't worry: if you eat six servings of vegetables in a day (nom nom nom), then you'll be safe for three days (6/2=3) instead of just one! (If you don't want to gain safety buffer and you really just want a goal of 2/day, every single day, you can ratchet when you've done extra.)

    If you want to delay your goal's start a few days (maybe you're traveling this weekend), be sure to tick the Start this goal with extra leeway box. Enter the number of days you want to delay and press Continue.

    Goal creation page: "Commit to at least" followed by a stepper that you can click or a data entry box you can put the number in. Below that, you can enter the name of the units for your goal, e.g. "steps", and check a button to add extra leeway to choose when you start the goal.
  5. Give your goal a brief name. If you want, you can also write a short description with more information.

    "Give your goal a name", followed by two text entry boxes. The first allows you to enter a short slug which will name your goal and create a URL for it. The second textbox allows you to set a short description, and is optional.
  6. Finally, choose your initial pledge. This is the amount you will pay the first time you derail on the goal. After derailing, the pledge will increase by default — use the dropdown below to control how high it goes by selecting the cap. In the example below, I have chosen to start at a $5 pledge, which will increase each time I derail, until it reaches $270 — the pledge cap. (To read more about pledges and payments, check out some FAQs!)

    If you want to start out with a sort of trial period, you can choose to start the goal at $0. If you do that, the pledge will automatically increase to $5 after seven days. If you derail before that, it will also increase to $5.

    Screenshot of the "Starting Stakes" screen. The text says "Your pledge will increase each time you derail until you reach your pledge cap (which you can adjust below)", with a demonstration below showing the pledge progression: 5, 10, 30, 90... to the pledge cap, which currently shows $270. Below, a checkbox button allows you to choose to "Hold the pledge at $0 for 7 days while I get my feet wet"
  7. And now once I step through the confirmation and preview steps, my goal is ready to go! I'll need to get stepping in 4 days to avoid paying Beeminder my first $5!

    An example goal where shanaqui needs to eat two servings of vegetables before 4 days 7 hours are up, or pay $5

Veggie goals in action!

You can explore a real user's healthy-eating goal below to see how your goal might look once it's been going for a while.

Alys' fruitveg goal


Keywords: eating more vegetables, example goals, example graphs, health goals, nutrition, diet

Did this answer your question? Thanks for the feedback There was a problem submitting your feedback. Please try again later.

Still need help? Contact Us Contact Us