Halloween activities filled my calendar last week.
That school event. That costume prep. A Sunday night of Trick-or-Treating.
I thought a break was coming. I opened my calendar and saw that I was wrong.
Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away, but after church with my girlfriends this past Sunday, we started planning our holiday events and I saw that calendar fill up quickly.
When my calendar fills up I need to focus and make sure I keep my priorities in check.
Holidays often creep up and often throw us off in regards to our health journeys. The Thanksgiving staples. The pumpkin pie. The family dish everyone raves about. Not all of those goodies are unhealthy, it's usually the portion size we end up forgetting about. There’s the increase in adult beverages at gatherings too. And then there are the lies we tell ourselves:
Calories don't count during the holidays.
I will start working out when I'm less busy
I’ll tighten up for New Year’s.
These are just some of the untruths. We wouldn’t tell our friends to give up their goals and healthy eating. We do, however, tell ourselves these lies.
These holiday lies we tell ourselves are just versions of the lies some of us tell ourselves all the time right? Isn't there ALWAYS something to keep your calendar full? In the summer it's trips & fun, September is school events, spring is kid's ball practice. It doesn't really ever end does it?
Some of the lies I've overheard ME telling ME are:
I’ll start working out when….
In a society that focuses on start dates and resolutions, it is often hard to let go of that idea of “I’ll start when.” Have you ever set a weight loss or workout goal and joined a gym for the new year and then on January 1st or 2nd the gym is packed? Have you continued on that gym resolution and realized on February 1st that half of the people who were in the gym a month ago are no longer burning up the treadmill you had your goals set on using almost everyday? Yah. That’s really common.
For those who fall off, they assign themselves another next start date. The “let’s try again” thought.
If that is you, by all means, try again. If you are thinking about moving your body and starting your health journey - go ahead and get started! ANY DAY. You can start this evening. You can get back at it in the morning no matter how long ago you last moved your body. There is no need to set a date to start.
Don’t tell yourself when you start a workout or nutrition program that you’ll start the next time you go to the grocery store or when your workout equipment comes next week. Start now.
The longer we wait to get started, the harder it is.
I’ll be happy when I looked like/felt like....
Often, I’ve had to tell my clients and friends that they can’t set goals based on their figure from before. Our bodies change. We age. Our shapes morph based on our experiences and health journeys.
I don’t mean to shut you down if you say you want to lose your baby weight. I want you to reframe and look at your transformation/health journey in a different view. How do you want to feel?
I have a client, who happens to be a friend, who decided to make a vision board for herself. She printed pictures of her why: her hubby and her kids. She hung up her workout calendar. She wrote “strong” and “stronger” on her poster. And then she messaged me and asked me which picture of herself did I think she should include. One was of her giving a lecture and the other was her wedding picture. I asked her why she wanted to go back to an old part of her journey. She was confused by my question.
Then, I asked her to describe how she felt during those moments. Her answers: unstoppable, smart, strong, happy. I told her to picture what that looks like in the present.
Identifying how you want to feel should be included in your health goals. That doesn’t mean we just stop focusing on building strength and toning down or anything like that. But it is how we feel that should be what we visualize.
Instead of an old picture, she typed and hung up the words “unstoppable, smart, strong, and happy.”
I need to be more like her.
This lie is just stupid. But we’ve all thought it. America likes to idolize the thin woman. The airbrushed women in magazines and TV shows and the unrealistic weight loss pills and diets have been ever where. Those models and representations of brands were always in.our.faces.
Comparison is a dangerous thing. It seems almost natural to compare, so we’ve got to shift our mindset again. Odds are, whomever we compare ourselves to has had different sets of circumstances we have. Y’all, we don’t have the same DNA. We don’t react to food the same way. Our metabolisms are different. Our effort may be different. Our journeys are all different.
Be proud to be you.
I’m too old.
My body can’t move like it used to. Well yup. Time changes and our so does our body. We can start moving our bodies and changing our nutrition any day. Any age. Health and wellness is available to everyone. No matter the age, the more we move and the more we nourish our bodies, the more we feel younger.
Now don’t get me wrong, if we haven’t moved our bodies in a while, moving takes some getting used to. Some of us can dive right into a workout program. Some of us have to ease our way in. The first few days are achy and tough.
Then it gets easier.
Paying attention to our bodies, no matter what our age, is crucial on our health journey. If your knees are achy from 15 years of catching, you might not want to start on a high impact training.
I don’t have time.
I saved this one for last, because it is the one I hear the most. In all aspects of the health journey.
I don’t have time...
to meal plan
to meal prep
to make make my Shake
to exercise
to stretch.
There is just NO time.
I call B.S. It is the easiest, most overused excuse.
We look at our calendars and they are busy.
But if we all took a day or two to mark what we do from the moment we wake up until we go to bed, it would be interesting to see how much time could be used more to our advantage.
The obvious time killer is scrolling. I know not everyone scrolls or scrolls for long periods of time. But it still takes up a lot of time.
There are workouts created to maximize time and effort and still be extremely effective. We can all five 25 minutes in our day to move our bodies to boost our nutrition and physical well-being.
These lies often keep us from taking care of ourselves or propelling us into our deserved health journey. I’ve been there. It took me almost 30 years to realize I needed to stop lying to myself.
It’s really easy to get in our heads and repeat the “I don’t have time” and the “I am too old.”
It’s time to reflect - to evaluate what you are telling yourself that is ultimately holding you back.
You have time for that.