Post by daniweeks on Nov 11, 2013 10:05:59 GMT -5
So now you know my motivation but you don’t know how I intend on making a change, well lucky for me I have a lot of help! But First I’m going to lay out some rules. Here we go!
Rule #1: I will address stress head on instead of waiting for it to happen. And when I can’t prevent the stress, I will find a better way to deal with it. What do I mean by addressing stress head on? Well in most cases I never stop feeling stressed, I worry about a situation. Sometimes I get anxiety about a situation and these things never really go away. So what I plan on doing is exercising pretty intensely 6 out of 7 days a week. Why? Because exercise releases feel-good endorphins, improves mental clarity and helps to ward off fatigue and anxiety. I am always less anxious when I workout consistently, plus the only thing I can worry about during exercise is “What’s Next?!?”. I will also try to my workouts first thing in the morning, because who doesn’t want their day to start of feeling good, and having mental clarity, I certainly do. Starting my day on the right foot is more likely to keep me worry free. Also notice how I didn’t say I’m going to work out 6 out of 7 days a week for weight loss. 90% of weight loss is diet related, but since the exercise is going to keep me feeling even keeled even during stress which triggers my I’m going to eat everything in a 3 mile radius binge, then I will be doing myself a favor. There are many reasons to keep exercising for weight loss but I plan on getting into that in detail next week. The other thing I plan on doing is mediating more often, specifically I will try to do it 3x per week. I’ve been doing it once per week and it feels pretty good when I do it, but mindfulness doesn’t happen overnight and once a week is not enough. My goal is eventually to do it every day, but we will start with 3x per week for now. And I will also start a healthy sleeping routine. Not sleeping itself is a huge stressor, and it’s something that I’ve struggled with for the last couple of years. I’m not expecting anything to happen overnight (I love my puns!) but I will be doing better in this department! Your thoughts and ideas on sleep would be very helpful!
Rule #2: I will stop feeling guilty and do best I can to not judge myself. I am human and self defeating attitudes only breed more stress and anxiety. I will also be doing some positive mantras every morning. I have been doing them more often and so far it’s helping, so I will continue doing them. This routine also helps me to break a bad mental cycle that happens from time to time.
Rule #3: I will not treat myself with food, I am not a dog. I love this quote and I saw it somewhere last year on one of the various social media sites I use. That doesn’t mean I will never have a dessert, an unhealthy meal or alcoholic drink, it just means that I will be changing my thought process. Just because I exercised for an hour doesn’t mean I get a donut, and that train of thought is a crappy one for life anyway. You don’t get a prize for everything you do, but you should do it anyways either because it’s the right thing to do, or it just needs to be done. So do it anyways, because it’s healthy!
Rule #4: I will be taking steps toward my progress instead of changing everything overnight. Changing everything at once invites failure, because you never let one thing become a habit so eventually you will break it. Same logic applies to a diet. As far as I am concerned if you go on a diet it assumes that you will be getting off of it at some point. Well that doesn’t lead to lasting change does it? Once you start only doing smoothies for every meal you better plan on staying that way forever, because otherwise that weight you lost will come back on and then some. How realistic is that? Nope no diets for me. Also I’m not starting from nothing on working out 6 days a week, on average for the last couple of months it’s been about 4 days/week.
When creating these rules, I had to think hard about them. I’m all for goals but that’s not where I wanted to start today. I wanted rules about behavior change that were not restricting because if they were then I wouldn’t do it. Has anyone ever said I will not eat fast food ever again, you don’t really even like it very much, but the minute you can’t have any, you start craving McDonald’s French fries? Which you haven’t eaten in years!!! The minute I can’t have something my immediate reaction is to want it (I know story of my life!) So restriction wasn’t going to work for me, instead I plan on working on my mindfulness of my habits and improving them. Because otherwise how can I or anyone else expect to succeed? Einstein’s theory of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. What hasn’t worked is simply changing my diet and working out harder. And the reason that didn’t work for me was because I changed everything so fast it wasn’t sustainable, and I wasn’t changing my behavior. I lost a few pounds and went right back to what I was doing before. Well this time I’m getting off the hamster wheel and focusing on something other than WHAT TO DO, rather I’ll be focusing on WHY I DO IT, and how to change that. The fact is I know what to do very well, and chances are so do you. So let’s change our thoughts and habits and then we will finally change ourselves. I’m ready to change, are you?
-Danielle Weeks CPT
