Healthy Lifestyle Tips
Think of a time where you failed at something. Think about how you felt after you failed. You probably felt angry, frustrated, confused or a blend of them all. You were probably overwhelmed with defeat and failure. The good thing is, you learned what doesn’t work for you. If you had difficulty with a weight loss program, you may have learned that a restrictive diet does not work for you, and that’s ok. You now know that you need to find a more sustainable approach when it comes to changing your diet. It is so challenging stay motivated after failure, but I have come up with a few tips on how to stay motivated to reach your goals.
FIND YOUR WHY
First, you need to dig deep and find out the reason why you want to accomplish your goal in the first place. For example, you may want to lose weight so you can move better and run around with your grandkids. You may want to eat healthier so you can get off your medication. You may want to run a marathon or accomplish something you never thought was possible. Find your why and write it out on a note card and put it in a place where you will see it every day. This could be on your bathroom mirror, in your car, or your iPhone wallpaper. Seeing this will motivate and push you when you want to hit the snooze button instead of exercising in the morning or when you want to go straight home after work instead of hitting the gym.
REALIZE BUMPS IN THE ROAD
You need to realize that there will be guaranteed mistakes & setbacks during your journey – no one’s journey is perfect. Progress is never linear. There are always ups and downs. This sounds discouraging, but it shouldn’t. You need to recognize that most of the poor decisions you make, won’t completely derail you, especially if you have consistently been making healthy choices. How you respond to your setbacks is way more important. Your response to your setbacks is the difference between success and failure.
You might not lose as much weight as you plan to in a week, you may injure yourself and not be able to walk for a few days, or you may make poor food choices when you go out to eat with friends. These are all frequent setbacks that could occur so it is imperative to prepare your mindset for these situations.
PREPARE YOUR MINDSET
Get rid of the all or nothing mindset. What do I mean by this? Imagine driving down a road and all of a sudden you feel a few extra thumps as your driving, and you recognize that something isn’t right. You get out and realize that you have a flat tire. What do you do next? You would probably either change the tire yourself or call someone else to do it for you, and then continue about your day. You wouldn’t get out of the car, realize you have a flat tire, and then slash the other three, right? Well, that is how we act after we make a poor lifestyle choice. I’m sure you have thought this way before because I know I have. “Well, I won’t be able to make it to the gym for a full hour like I had planned, so I guess I won’t go at all,” or “I made a poor choice at dinner last night so I might as well wait to restart healthy eating until Monday.”
We need to stop this all or nothing mindset now! How do we do that? For every “poor choice” you make, engage in two good ones. If you can’t spend an hour at the gym like you planned, instead of doing nothing, do something! Go on a walk for 15 minutes or do a quick 10-minute HIIT workout followed by 5 minutes of stretching. Doing something is better than doing nothing! If you feel like you made a poor choice at dinner, then go on a walk after, don’t feel bad, and move on from it. This is not excusing poor lifestyle choices and setbacks, rather addressing how we should react when they happen because they will.
REWARD YOURSELF
Another way to stay motivated is to reward yourself. Stay away from using food as a reward. Watch your favorite TV show after you complete a workout or allow yourself to buy some new workout gear after completing a program. Rewards should be things that you and enjoy and might not get to do very often. Rewards don’t have to cost anything, they just have to motivate you! You can go to a fun event like a festival or a concert, you could get a massage, or you could spend some time doing something you really enjoy like reading, watching a movie, or any other form of entertainment.
Once you have these reward ideas in place, it’s time to earn them! Do what you have to do before you do what you want to do. In other words, workout before you relax and watch your favorite TV show. Do the hard stuff first! Comment below with a list of rewards that you will use on your fitness journey!
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