Category Archives: Mindset
Why do weekends sabotage our progress?
It’s Friday and many of us have been dedicated to our healthy lifestyle all week – we’ve eaten well, worked out, and taken care of ourselves.
Yet for some reason the second Friday evening hits, it’s like our healthy habits never existed.
For many of us, weekends seem to completely sabotage all the progress we make during the week.
WHY!?!
What is it about the weekends that makes us lose all control?
Is it because we are home and have easy access to food? Is it because we want to go out and party? Is it because we spend time with friends? Is it the way we unwind and de-stress? Is it because we are sometimes bored and there is food right there? Is it because we mindlessly eat when we watch TV?
Maybe even all of the above?
Whatever the reason, if we want results, we can’t go completely crazy every single weekend.
So how do we help ourselves stay on track during the weekend?
Here’s what I’ve found helps people stay committed to their healthy lifestyle even on the weekends:
- Be active! When we sit around the house, we look for things to fill the time….Like eating anything we have in our cabinets. Yup…We tend to eat out of boredom, especially if it is easily accessible. If we stay active and entertained, for one, food won’t just be right there and two, we won’t be as tempted to eat. Activity keeps us motivated and from eating out of boredom!
- All social engagements don’t have to revolve around food and if they do, PLAN. Over the weekend, we tend to get together with friends and family. And too many get-togethers revolve around food. Try doing something active instead. Go bowling or on a hike. HOWEVER, there will be parties that you can’t avoid that are centered around food. PLAN for those and decide to either use them as a cheat or stay on track. If you plan ahead, you won’t let one party derail all your hard work and send you on a downward spiral the rest of the weekend!
- Clean out your cabinets. If you find you eat badly when you have bad food around, it may be best to clean out your cabinets and not keep the foods that tempt you in the house. When you get bored, you won’t have anything to reach to and you may find you look for something to DO instead. It will also keep you from mindlessly eating as you watch TV. Sometime the best way to stop yourself from doing something, is to not even give yourself the option to do it.
- Make some healthy snacks. Kale chips, carrot chips, apple and almond butter….Make a healthy snack to munch on as you hang around the house. It will satisfy you without derailing your progress. Plus, it may just cure your boredom to experiment with some healthy snack recipes…And…gasp…cooking may actually be fun! (It could also be a fun FAMILY activity!)
- Be moderate in your alcohol consumption unless you plan to cheat. We tend to make bad eating decisions when we’ve consumed too much alcohol. And some alcoholic beverages also contain a ton of calories themselves. So a great way to stay on track is to be moderate in your alcohol consumption unless you are consciously indulging. While the weekends should be a time to relax and enjoy, it doesn’t mean we have to binge!
- Be prepared and keep yourself motivated! All week long, we do things to motivate ourselves and prepare ourselves. We prep meals. We write out workouts. We cruise the web for motivation. Why not spend an hour or two on the weekends doing the same thing? Many people take the weekends off from working out. Instead maybe take a weekday off and save a workout for the weekends to keep you motivated. Doing a workout on the weekend may make you less likely to cheat because you are reminded of what you are working for and just even spent time working toward it! Just remember to remind yourself of your goals even on the weekends.
I would just like to note that a planned cheat day isn’t sabotaging your weekend EVEN if it means you lose a little ground on your goal. For many, cheat days are a chance to recharge and can actually help keep you on track.
That being said….If cheat days lead to a downward spiral, you may want to avoid them on the weekends until healthy habits are created.
Don’t let this weekend sabotage your progress! Stay on track using these tips.
What else helps you stay on track over the weekend?
Are you playing to win or simply not to lose?
A few weeks ago after a tough loss I asked the volleyball girls if they had played to win or played not to lose.
At first a few of them seemed slightly confused by the difference because wasn’t winning NOT losing?
Yes, winning is not losing BUT playing to win or playing not to lose are two completely different things.
When you “play to win,” you play confidently and go for your shots. You move, play and think like you are on top and your body language is upbeat and confident.
You are doing everything you can to CREATE the win.
When you “play not to lose,” you are playing defensively. You are playing like you are hoping the other team just makes a mistake and hands the win to you.
You aren’t GOING FOR IT. You aren’t CONFIDENT.
And unfortunately all too often I see people playing not to lose…and not only in the athletic realm.
If you truly WANT something, be it victory on the playing field, weight loss or even a promotion at work, you’ve got to go for it. You’ve got to give it your all and set yourself up for success.
You can’t just hang in their and hope someone is going to give it to you.
If you want to reach your goal, you’ve got to BELIEVE that you can.
Because when we believe, we train hard. We play hard. We stay focused and confident. We ACT like winners.
And when we act like winners, we do what is necessary to succeed.
That doesn’t mean victory is guaranteed or that it will be a smooth and easy road to success.
But it does mean you will be able to be proud of yourself – proud of how you acted, proud of how you worked – because you will know you did your best.
Because no victory is truly as sweet if you don’t feel like you EARNED IT.
Stop waiting for someone to hand you success. Stop “playing it safe.” Stop playing “not to lose.”
Believe in yourself and go and get the victory.
This past Saturday, the volleyball girls played a team they hadn’t beaten in two years. They’d even lost to the team earlier this year. But this past Saturday, they came back from near defeat to claim victory over the team.
They fought back from NEAR DEFEAT because they started playing to win!
They had the courage to believe they could win even when the odds were stacked against them.
Will you have the same courage and believe you can succeed this week?
Will you play to win!?!
Monday Motivation and Fitspo – Focus on the positive
Today is Monday and #MondayMotivation and a bazillion Fitspo photos clog my social media.
For some reason we all just need that extra push on Monday.
POSITIVE! Promotes a great mindset and a great reminder to appreciate even the smallest success!
Be it that we fell off the wagon this past weekend or that we just need that little extra push to get going this week, many of us seem to seek out motivation on Monday.
And some of the motivational pictures, the fitspo that I see, I like. Others make me roll my eyes or simply don’t do anything for me.
I mean I think there is a ton of CRAP fitspo out there. A ton that does promote eating disorders and the belief that to be a bad-ass you need to push through the pain and risk injury….AKA BE STUPID.
I do think there is a ton of CRAP and I wish I could sometimes give a swift punch to the face of the people who created it.
BUT I don’t think ranting against it is going to do anything no matter how stupid or pathetic or whatever I think the images are.
For one….Different things inspire and motivate change for each of us.. And while I may not agree with it, while I may think it promotes unhealthy habits, others may find it is the motivation they need to create healthy change. They just interpret it differently.
And two…I think the best thing I can do is create and promote what I consider to be healthy and positive fitspo. I believe we have to BE the change we want to see – we can’t just complain about things.
So when I choose fitspo or #MondayMotivation, I think of what motivates me. What encourages me to have positive self talk. What boosts me up and what helps me mentally overcome all the excuses.
For me it is often a VISUAL of the positive self-talk I want to use or a visual of my end goal or even the positive emotions I want to feel about myself.
For me it is about the POSITIVE RESULTS I want to create and the POSITIVE MINDSET I need to get there.
I believe the POSITIVE truly MOTIVATES. While those negative fitspos GUILT you into making changes.
And GUILT doesn’t last long, which means you probably aren’t going to stick with your new lifestyle for long. And guilt promotes changes being made in unhealthy ways to try to get results fast to change the way you feel about yourself.
Good fitspo should help boost you mentally to achieve your goals.
So stop focusing on all the crap fitspo that doesn’t help you. Stop complaining about all the stupid images out there.
Stop trying to GUILT yourself into achieving your goals.
And shoot…If there isn’t any fitspo out there that you like, MAKE YOUR OWN!
I know I did! 🙂
When you see progress…PUSH HARDER
Often I see clients start to get on a roll, start seeing progress and then completely slack off.
Instead what they should really do when they see progress is PUSH HARDER.
They should let the progress motivate them to keep going.
But that never seems to be the way it works.
For some reason when we see progress, especially when we progress quicker than expected, we let ourselves slack off.
We think, “Oh I should celebrate!” Or “Oh I can take a day off now!” We think, “I deserve a piece of cake.” Or “I don’t need to workout since I was so good about it all week.”
The thing is, success doesn’t work that way. Reaching our goals doesn’t work that way. Consistency is key.
Progress, especially great progress, should motivate us to work harder. To be more committed because we know what we are doing is WORKING.
We need to learn how to see progress as motivation to continue NOT an excuse to slack off.
So here are some tips to motivate you and keep you moving forward on this wonderful Monday.
Get Results, Push Harder Tips:
- Pick HEALTHY rewards that promote the changes you are trying to make. If you are trying to eat better and become more dedicated to your workouts, don’t pick rewards centered around food or cheating on your healthy lifestyle. Make something HEALTHY a reward. I’ve heard this comment before, “You are not a dog so don’t reward yourself with food.” And while I don’t like the statement, it does make a good point. Make your rewards HEALTHY. Make them something that celebrate and even further encourages the lifestyle changes you are trying to create!
- Take time to celebrate victories! Sometimes I think we slack off or give up on our goals EVEN when we are progressing because we don’t truly take time to celebrate our victories. If you hit your goal for the week, take a second and appreciate the hard work you’ve put in. When you look back at all the HARD WORK it took to get there, slacking off may not seem worth it. I mean…do you really want all that hard work to be for nothing!?!
- Be willing to adjust your goals. If you are progressing more quickly than expected, adjust your goals. Don’t use it as an excuse to slack off because slacking off will lead to you getting off track and eventually failing. If you wanted to lift 10 more pounds by the end of the month but hit that goal early, adjust it and up your goal for the end of the month. If you accomplish one goal early, don’t take “time off!” Move on to the next goal! Give yourself a reason to keep moving forward!
- Don’t measure your progress every day. Don’t weigh every day. Don’t take circumference measurements every day. Don’t do physical testing every day. You won’t see true progress every day and measuring every day puts too much pressure on you! Measure once a week at most. Preferably measure once a month. Give yourself enough time to truly achieve results; HOWEVER, measure often enough that you can see progress to keep you motivated. While we can slack when we see results, we can also slack if we feel like we AREN’T achieving!
- Remember it’s a lifestyle and lifestyles don’t have an end date! When we make healthy changes, diet and exercise changes, generally we aren’t just trying to hit a one-time goal. Most of the time we are trying to create a new lifestyle to last us years and years! So even if you’ve made great progress, even if you’ve hit that weight loss or exercise goal, that doesn’t mean you are done. Remind yourself that your actions every day add up to create a healthy lifestyle. While a healthy lifestyle isn’t about perfection, it is about committing and being consistent with new healthy habits.
So as this week goes on, appreciate all of your hard work. Appreciate your consistency and use your progress and results to further motivate you and keep you committed!
Get great results and let them motivate you to push HARDER toward your goal!
Wedding Week Part 4 – Love yourself!
I’m going to wrap up my wedding week reflections with probably one of the most important things I’ve learned, “You are never going to be happy if you can’t accept and LOVE YOURSELF.”
I stated the other day that I feel like fitness, the gym, working out, are sort of a microcosm. If you can learn to be confident and strong in the gym that confidence and strength will then translate into every day life.
And when I say that you have confidence in yourself, I’m not saying that you aren’t going to always work to improve yourself.
I’m just saying that you love yourself because of who and what you are and all of the effort you’ve put in to get there!
Found this on Pinterest the other day and really liked it.
Because of ALL THE EFFORT YOU’VE PUT IN TO GET THERE…
Almost every day I hear women complain about things they want to change about themselves. Occasionally I hear women mention something they like about themselves.
But rarely do I ever hear women say anything about all the hard work they put in to become stronger, smarter, healthier, happier, BETTER each and every day!
And as I mentioned earlier this week, the journey is the BEST part.
Everyday we choose the person we are going to be. Everyday we have a chance to reinvent ourselves and become an even better version of ourselves.
Everyday you get another chance to be who you want to be and not worry about what anyone else thinks.
Over the years I can say I’ve become more and more comfortable with myself. And it’s not because I’m perfect or because I don’t have anything I want to improve about myself.
It is because I know how hard I work each and every day to become better and stronger. It is because I know how far I’ve come and how much I’ve accomplished.
It’s because I truly really don’t care what anyone else thinks as long as I MAKE MYSELF HAPPY.
And the bulk of my strength and confidence was developed on the playing field and in the gym.
I developed it by pushing myself to compete against people who were supposed to be better than me. I developed it by putting in hard work every single day so that no matter what happened, I could at least say I gave it my all. I developed it by putting myself out there and trying new things – things that were far outside my comfort zone.
I developed it by pushing myself beyond what I thought was possible to realize what I could truly achieve.
I thought a lot about all of this when planning…and carrying out…our wedding.
We did a lot of untraditional things. A lot of things other people might not like or may even “judge” us for…aka laugh AT us not WITH us.
But honestly I didn’t care because those things represented ME and RYAN.
Loving yourself is about ACCEPTING yourself. About knowing your strengths and your flaws and giving yourself credit for the journey.
Don’t let another day go by that you aren’t proud of the person you’ve become.
Challenge yourself every day. Work hard every day. Appreciate your journey.
These are things you can control. Other people and their perceptions, you can’t control. So don’t let them influence your opinion of yourself!
Here is a little video to hopefully entertain you on this Monday! Ryan and my first dance! We are far from champion dancers…but boy did we have fun!
Building Confidence: Your Brain Is Really Pretty Stupid
This past week the Vanguard Volleyball team had a great victory over a tough team. But more exciting than the victory itself was the fact that they came back from one game down for the win.
That was a HUGE victory because it showed a mental toughness and a confidence in their abilities. They also didn’t get down on themselves and continued to believe even when they were behind.
And that mental toughness, that ability to believe and fight back will take them farther than talent or skill ever could.
The crazy part is that very little time is spent on developing that mental toughness and confidence in comparison to the time we spend on skill development.
So every week, I try to spend a little bit of time on their mental game.
Last night we worked on relaxation under pressure and positive self-talk. Both “drills” feel extremely cheesy and stupid.
I mean come on…who would think that cheering, “We’re awesome!” would actually make you more confident? Who would think that simply slowing down your breathing could make you relax and refocus so that you could prevail even when you are super nervous?
The thing is…That stuff does work.
And that cheesy, stupid and sort of awkwardly funny stuff works because your brain is really pretty stupid and easy to fool.
Yup that’s right…Even if you are a genius, your brain can be easily fooled into being confident and tough.
Our minds hear everything we say to ourselves.
Who do you THINK you are?
They hear us say, “I can’t do another pull up.” They hear us say, “That person, that team, is better than us.”
They hear us say, “I’m not good enough.”
But they also hear us say, “I’m AWESOME!”
And whichever we choose to say more often is what our MIND IS GOING TO BELIEVE.
Same thing goes for breathing.
If your breathing is panicked, your mind will feel anxious. If your breathing is slow and relaxed, your body and mind will feel relaxed and at ease.
It sounds strange to say, but our brain really is stupid and we can easily make it believe whatever we want it to believe.
The question is..What are you going to tell it?
Will you repeat positive thoughts so that you become more confident? Or will you bring yourself down?
If you decide you want to be more confident, try these tips to develop positive self talk!
P.S. Here are some other great posts to help you develop self-confidence and become mentally tougher!
Success builds confidence – Track your progress because even the smallest of successes can build momentum which builds confidence!
Act as if – Build self-confidence by FAKING IT!
Stop being your own worst enemy! – Believe in yourself!
Reaching Your Goals: Consistency Creates Habits
I often talk about being patient with yourself and not expecting perfection. I often talk about not worrying if life occasionally gets in the way and you “slip up.” I often talk about how you need to indulge and recharge every once in a while.
But there is also a flip side to all that.
While achieving your goals isn’t about being perfect day in and day out, you do have to be CONSISTENT.
The more consistently you work toward your goals day in and day out, the quicker you are going to reach them.
Often clients will get frustrated when they feel like they’ve been “good” yet they aren’t seeing great results.
Most of the time when they break things down though, they realize that “yes…they have been good, but not good for a long enough stretch in a row.”
Not “good” consistently.
I’ve often mentioned the 80/20 rule…80 percent of the time you do the things you should while 20 percent of the time you indulge in those not so healthy treats.
Eighty percent of the time is pretty darn consistent. Honestly, it’s more consistent than most people are . Twenty percent adds up very quickly.
80/20 doesn’t mean you can be good one week and then the next week slip back into old habits. It doesn’t mean you can be basically good during the week and then do whatever you please on the weekend. It doesn’t mean you can just excuse every little slip up!
80/20 really means consistently doing the right thing. It means creating habits that lead to change. And habits honestly take about 21 days to create.
That means for 21 days you have to follow the lifestyle that you truly want if you want it to create results and ingrain habits. It means you have to be consistent to adhering to the lifestyle you want.
I mentioned a bit ago that there are points where you will find you NEED to adhere more strictly to a diet and exercise program. That you shouldn’t feel like you are restricting yourself all of the time, but that there are times where it is ok to be super clean.
And one of those times is when you are trying to ingrain the habits.
I tell clients all the time that the hardest part is reaching their goal, not maintaining it.
Because once the habits are truly instilled, you won’t have to think twice about living the lifestyle you want. You won’t constantly be draining your self-control tank to eat clean and workout consistently.
So I would like to present a challenge….
Set aside 3 weeks right now. Don’t wait for the New Year to lose weight or have to worry about dieting over the holidays.
Take three weeks right now and be consistent in your healthy lifestyle. Take 3 weeks to do the right thing day in and day out.
Be strict for three weeks, ingrain those habits and realize just how much easier it is to get results when you are CONSISTENT!
Dedicating 21 days is really all it takes. Just three weeks to make a HUGE change.
Start next year off right….Create those habits NOW!
Wedding Week Part 2 – Adventure is out there!
I think that often fitness and working out is where we learn a lot about ourselves. I think it is a great way to become empowered and find the courage to be the person you want to be in your every day life.
It is a little microcosm that allows us to become the people we want to be.
I think working out is almost more important for the mental health benefits than the physical.
That being said, I’m going to stray today into the realm of sappiness and mental attitude with Part 2 of my Wedding Week series.
I think all big life events make us take time to reflect.
To reflect on where we’ve been. To reflect on what we really want out of life and who we are. To even reflect on where we want to go.
If you haven’t seen “Up,” go watch it right now! Just kidding….but seriously.
And when we reflect it isn’t necessarily the BIG EVENTS that truly stand out the most or seem the most meaningful. Actually it is often the boring little things that you can’t even fully describe that mean the most.
It is those boring little things that happen day in and day out that mold us.
Those boring little things are sometimes even the true adventures, whether or not we recognize it at the time.
I’ve done a lot of reflecting recently because of getting married…and because I was trying to figure out how to express how much I loved Ryan in my vows.
Actually it was super frustrating writing my vows. I generally have an easy time writing. I pick a topic and I just go. I rarely write a second draft. Most of the time if I have any sort of block I just walk around my apartment until the block has passed and that is often only a matter of minutes.
But with my vows nothing just seemed right. I can honestly tell you I wrote at least 10 drafts…some of them were even written in the note pad of my phone when I would randomly have an idea that seemed amazing.
In the end though, I wasn’t happy with any of them. They all seemed empty.
They stated that Ryan was my best friend….DUH.
They told funny stories about our relationship in an attempt to show our love. Like about how oddly perfect we are for each other.
But none of them could fully express just how much Ryan meant to me.
A little wedding weekend collage.
And then I stumbled onto a quote from the movie “Up.” (This by the way is one of my favorite movies and Ryan and I started our first dance to a song from this movie!)
In the movie, the little boy, Russell, tells a story to Carl about hanging out with his dad and then says, “That might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.”
The boring stuff is the stuff that I remember the most….
The boring stuff is the stuff that relationships are made of…That love is made of.
It isn’t grand gestures or romantic getaways that make you love a person. That stuff isn’t LOVE.
It is the little things that happen every day. It is the boring little routines, even, that won’t interest anybody but you that truly shape things – that truly shape YOU.
It is those seemingly boring little events, routines, habits that are the TRUE ADVENTURES.
And this doesn’t just apply to love and relationships.
Honestly life, in general, should be about remembering and appreciating the boring little things because those are the things that truly matter.
At least I’ve always found that to be true.
Thinking back over the years what I remember more than specific victories (like winning the powerlifting competition) or defeats (like not hitting my goal at the kettlebell competition) is the journeys.
I remember all the hard work that I put in day in and day out. I remember that feeling of signing up for something that I’d never attempted before and then committing to training as hard as I could.
And don’t get me wrong, the big events are nice highlights, but they aren’t what truly mattered. They honestly didn’t do near as much to shape me as the journey….As the boring work I put in each and every day to reach them.
Those nondescript events, those daily struggles that looking back I can’t pinpoint, but just remember the feelings of, are what truly mattered. Those were the true adventures.
Those are the feelings that I wouldn’t trade for anything else.
So I guess after all this rambling, what I want truly want to say is, “Stop getting caught up in accomplishing something big. In doing something BIG.”
You don’t have to force some big adventure or think your life isn’t complete if you don’t do something HUGE. Adventure is out there every single day. All you have to do is be willing to put yourself out there and live.
Because 50 years from now when you look back, I honestly think more than anything you’ll be proud of the journey. Proud of the days you spent in happiness or even in struggle working to move forward, grow stronger, become more yourself.
Adventure is out there! Don’t wait for something big to happen. Go out and enjoy all those boring little things that happen every day!
How Does Stress Factor In?
I fully believe that a healthy lifestyle – that feeling GOOD – is about more than just eating well and working out. I think that sleep also factors in. As well as sunlight (aka vitamin D).
And so does stress for that matter.
haha making yourself laugh or smile can literally brighten your day!
Actually I think STRESS has as much to do with a healthy lifestyle and achieving your diet and exercise goals as eating clean and working out do.
In many cases, it may be the reason you HAVEN’T hit your goals yet.
Stress can negatively impact your healthy lifestyle in numerous ways:
- Being stressed out can cause you to eat when you aren’t hungry. It can make you THINK you are hungry when, in fact, you aren’t.
- The hormone cortisol is released when you are stressed. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone and can actually hinder muscle and strength gains. It has also been linked with a build up of abdominal fat.
- Cortisol also interferes with your metabolic processes, causing your metabolism to slow down.
- Stress drains our self-control, which makes it harder to force ourselves to eat well and workout if those things aren’t already habit.
- When we are stressed, we have a harder time sticking to new routines and habits. If we are trying to create new lifestyle habits, those will likely be the first things to be dropped when we are low on self-control..
- Stress causes us to feel more fatigued, which makes us less likely to expend energy cooking and/or working out even though working out and eating well may actually help our stress levels.
Stress itself not only causes changes in the body, which can hinder you from hitting your health and fitness goals, but also causes you to not care about your goals…at least for the moment (which then leads to a bad cycle of giving up, getting frustrated, gaining more weight or moving farther from your goals, trying to start again and repeating the whole process over).
But the problem is…Controlling your stress isn’t as simple as eating well or going in to workout.
Controlling your stress has a lot to do with recognizing that your self-control isn’t infinite.
I’ve mentioned before that your self-control is like a gas tank. Every time you have to stop yourself from eating that treat you want or not yelling at that person who is being a jerk to you, you withdraw a little from that gas tank.
And if you withdraw too much without recharging, something is going to have to give. And as I’ve mentioned before, that is usually the diet and exercise program.
So how do we keep our self-control tank fuller and our stress level lower.
We realize that we can’t do everything all at once!
I know that is an earth-shattering statement…NOT…but it is the truth.
I’ve thought a lot about this over the past few months as I’ve planned my wedding and continued to work hard to build my business. I’ve thought about this as I’ve performed a fine balancing act of work, wedding, social life, diet and exercise.
I’ve thought about this as I’ve considered how many brides I’ve talked to claim they can’t keep up with their diet and exercise program because of the stress of wedding planning.
Let me just take a second now to say…I’m an extremely type A person. I love lists. LOVE lists. I love planning and having everything mapped out.
But there are lots of things in daily life that you can’t plan for. And it is those unplanned events that tend to stress us out and drain our self-control so much that we drop the ball on at least one of the things we plan to do (and generally that is the thing we deem the least important…aka generally diet and exercise).
So then how do you keep your self-control full if you can’t plan for certain events?
By planning for what you know!
This may seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many people DON’T take advantage and plan out what they can.
No…I can’t plan for a whole new group of people to randomly want a bootcamp at a time of day when I usually do other work. No…I can’t plan for a friend to need a babysitter last-minute for 7 hours on a day when I planned to finish up everything for the wedding.
No…I couldn’t plan for a whole bunch of the stressors that happened over the last month.
But there were a lot of different things that I could plan out – that I did plan out.
And those plans kept me on track even when it felt like my self-control hit empty for a second. Those plans kept me from having to stress about daily tasks, about my diet and exercise program, which in turned allowed me to stay constant even when I felt drained.
Shoot those plans, in many cases, even helped refuel me because I didn’t have to THINK about what to do when it came to many daily events.
Let’s face it…when you have a PLAN, you know what you have to do to hit your goal. You have something telling you what to do and something holding you accountable.
Not having to think and having something holding you accountable is powerful stuff. It is key if you want to hit your goals.
Not having to think about what you need to do alleviates stress because it lessens the number of decisions we have to make in a day, which is especially helpful when we are super busy and unforeseen decisions and problems arise.
And accountability…I find that when I know what I’m supposed to do, my self-control is strengthened. I don’t want to go against what I’m supposed to do especially if it is written down and I can see evidence of failure. I’m less likely to give up or cheat on something concrete than I am on an abstract desire.
The crazy thing is too, that if you stick with your plans, if you stick with your healthy eating and exercise program, your stress will also become less (even though generally those are the two things we want to give up on first when we are stressed).
How do you manage stress? How do you create plans to help yourself succeed? Did you realize stress was hindering you from hitting your goals and what did you do about it?
Priorities – Is health and fitness high up on the list?
Let’s face it…There is only so much time in a day to get things done.
HOWEVER, there is enough time in a day to get WHAT YOU WANT, what you VALUE, done.
The question is, “What do you value the most?”
Because what you value, you are going to prioritize. And what you make a priority, you are going to get done regardless of how busy you are.
Yea..housework doesn’t figure high on my list of priorities either….
The thing is…Most people don’t make health and fitness a priority.
That is really what it all comes down to when people say they just don’t have time.
They just don’t think it is a priority.
Personally of course, I think it is.
I mean…
Feeling great every day. Waking up with energy and being able to move well and take on any physical challenge. Feeling energized to get all my work done without needing caffeine or any other crutch. Feeling good about myself and the way my body performs. Not having injuries and being in great physical and mental health.
Those sound like good enough reasons to prioritize meal prep and workouts….Those sound like good reasons to spend a little time cooking and sweating even if you don’t enjoy those two specific things all that much.
But hey…It’s up to you.
And please don’t start trying to make excuses right now about how it is easier for me because I’m a trainer or I work in a gym or whatever.
It’s not.
While yes…I do love eating well. While yes…I do love working out. There are still days when I’m extremely busy and really don’t have the time to workout.
But I MAKE TIME even on those days.
That is the key right there…I MAKE TIME because I VALUE eating clean and working out.
I know there are all those fitspo posters about how a workout is 4% of your day or some crap like that.
But really what all of this comes down to isn’t the amount of time it truly takes, but what you would rather be doing with that time.
If you really want to reach your health and fitness goals, you need to make them a priority.
You need to decide that you are going to MAKE TIME to cook meals and prep. That you are going to MAKE TIME to workout even when there are 72 other things on your to-do list.
Shoot…you may even just find that by making health and fitness a priority in your day, you are less stressed and get even more done even on the busiest of days.
I can tell you that when my life is at its most chaotic (like right now with my wedding fast approaching and work busier than ever), I feel the best and most energized on days, weeks, months when I’ve kept my priorities straight and made sure to make time to eat well and workout.
So stop making excuses about why you can’t lose weight. Or rehab the injury. Or eat clean.
Decide to MAKE TIME and make it a priority.
It may sound selfish to make your own health and fitness a priority, but if you don’t take care of yourself, how can you truly be there to support anyone else?
Man Bicep 