The theme of this article is MOTIVATION. Motivation and how to stay inspired despite falling off the wagon or losing the spark to continue.
I’m going to give you my top five tips to stay motivated and inspired when you’re on a health journey.
Staying healthy and disciplined towards your goals is a mental game, much more than it is a physical game.
A patient of mine, Lena, was about 50 pounds overweight and she knew she wanted to be healthier because she had just gotten over cancer treatment for her breast cancer.
She felt UNMOTIVATED. She also felt sad because she was 50 pounds overweight. She felt like she was toxic. She felt like because she had grown up in the South many of the foods that she was eating with her family and things she did growing up were attached to her. And it was a culture and a lifestyle that weren’t in her best interest moving forward. Especially when her goal was to have a higher level of health and wellness and to lose weight.
She started working with us and we started to show her a more healthy nutrition plan. And we worked with her to eat different foods, how to prep them and how to make recipes that were different than what she had done before.
It took an open-mind and she was really proud of herself because halfway through her program, she had lost 30 of those 50 pounds.
When we had done a stool test, as we do with many of our clients, to show us the underlying issues were contributing to her inflammation and problems in her body, we found blood in her stool. She was having some type of tumor or inflammatory bowel disease, something that was causing a lot of the inflammation that ultimately led to blood in her stool.
And for those of you who have ever had that before, you know, that’s a serious issue.
She needed to have a colonoscopy and see what was going on so we could get to the underlying cause of the inflammation she was experiencing.
What we found was something called diverticulitis. Diverticulitis is inflammation of narrow little pockets that are in the colon. When you have diverticulitis, there’s some type of microbe or infective agent that has lodged in there and taken hold and has created a lot of irritation to that gut lining and has caused an infection.
That caused that bleeding which ended up in her stool.
Because of this, she needed to have a more invasive procedure. She was also told that her diet couldn’t have any fiber in it, and all she could eat was white bread, white rice, bland foods or she would have more irritation of that area.
She became very depressed because all this good work she’d done in the program and all the results she’d received would be at risk because she was having to eat foods she knew were not good for her.
She said, “and that’s what my doctor’s telling me to do. And I don’t know what to do.” She was really afraid that she was going to fall off the wagon because it had taken so much effort on her part to get to this point.
This is a great example of something that happens in life that can throw us off. And our thoughts start to change. You need to be prepared for when these things happen because they always do.
Number one
Be self-aware when you start to feel a lack of inspiration or motivation. Ask yourself what has led to that.
A new trigger has come into your life. It has triggered something from the past that has led you to some of these behaviors that are healthy for you.
Maybe you’re tired of stale workouts or stale recipes. You need something new to spice your life up, and it’s just led you to kind of go back down to a path that isn’t as healthy for you.
Keep A Daily Journal
You can use a journal in a number of ways. One way is to just write down how you feel, even if it’s just one statement a day. Just get into the habit of getting what’s in your mind, out onto paper, whether it’s the same time every day at night or the morning, it doesn’t matter, but just be consistent with it.
It helps you with your self-awareness. It helps you to see if you are falling back into old patterns that were obstacles for you before getting to where you want to be. A lot of people will default to things like taking care of everybody else in their life.
I work a lot with women who are in their fifties and sixties and their whole lives they’ve taken care of other people, their kids, their parents, and they put themselves last. When you start to take healthy action, taking healthy action, oftentimes it’s taking care of yourself first and prioritizing yourself. Unfortunately, sometimes we fall back into what’s comfortable… like taking care of everyone else.
When you start to journal you’ll notice when you’re putting other people first. When you notice it and are self-aware then you can take action to get back on track.
Another way that you can use journals is by having two different journals. One is a negative journal, and one is a positive journal. In your negative journal, get out all those thoughts that are negative, that angry thoughts you have about yourself, your insecure thoughts, the things that you did, that you weren’t proud of, get it out on paper.
Then have a gratitude journal. In that journal, put what you’re proud of, the accomplishments and the wins that you’ve made, what you’ve achieved. Even write down any inspirational quotes. It’s important to keep those two journals separate. And when you’re done with the negative journal, burn it, you know, put it in the fire and let it go, put it out to the universe and say, thank you for the opportunities to see where I’ve gone wrong and things that haven’t served me.
Create a Vision Board
Always know your why’s and your goals and a great way of doing that is to create a vision board. The vision board, since it’s visual, is a great way to keep inspired. When I work with my practice members I asked them to create a mission statement for themselves about who they are when they’re in their most empowered self.
What are you achieving? Who are you serving at that moment? And then create a vision board around that mission statement. Then put the vision board where you can see it, like above your desk at work or put it in your bathroom.
I had a practice member. Her name was Hope and she and her husband, unfortunately, couldn’t have children.
Her sister could have kids and she had a baby niece. She wanted to be super active. She wanted to be there for her niece. She would have a picture of her niece on her vision board next to her mission statement for herself. She also had a picture of Disney World on that vision board because she wanted to take her niece to Disney World and be able to walk the entire park.
That’s what kept her inspired. Having a vision board and having a mission statement for yourself will help you stay inspired and motivated each day.
Get an accountability partner or an accountability group.
I also recommend to my practice members to have an accountability partner. Maybe it’s a neighbor next door to come over once a month and look in your dry goods closet to see what you bought from the store.
Maybe you’ve got some things in there that aren’t going to serve you on your path to being healthy. But we notice that as we look at our dry goods closet, it’s kind of a marker for where we’re at in our health. What are we actually buying from day to day? Are we going back to buying processed foods.?
Maybe you have a walking partner. Or it’s a class you’re going to, but when you have someone else who is counting on you, you are more likely to stay motivated with things come up.
If you start to notice that you’ve fallen off, bring one thing back. Maybe you’re just going to go back to journaling. Maybe you’re going to rededicate yourself to going back to the gym, but just do one thing at a time to get you back in. Take baby steps. Don’t make it such a huge mountain that you have to climb to get back on board.
Do Something DIFFERENT
I got this from Tony Robbins. Do something different to energize you, to spice up your life when things are going stale. If you notice that you’re in a funk or you’re feeling depressed.
Take a dance class, take a cooking class, do something different than you did before to get you out of the funk.
You have to flex that brain muscle, that psychological muscle, just like you’d flex your physical muscles in a gym in order for you to be disciplined and to stick with things that are healthy, you have to flex the muscles when you have the opportunities to do so. And the only time you’re going to have those opportunities, or when you’re feeling down when you’re noticing those negative thoughts, the point is what are you going to do to get yourself out of it?
Change it up. Change yourself. Go to a different room. Call your mom, call your friend. Volunteer, take a drive, but the point is to change your setting which will energize yourself to change your mindset
I myself had COVID two weeks ago. And just prior to having COVID, I rededicated myself to go into the gym because being physical is always what uplifted my thoughts. But when I got COVID, I couldn’t go to the gym. Today is my first day of getting back and doing yoga for myself. It’s a step forward, it’s a baby step, but it’s something that inspired me to inspire you about what you can do to stay motivated.
I hope one of these tips has helped you today. And if you feel like you’re already doing some of these things that have helped you, or maybe you have other ideas that can help motivate yourself or other people, other than what I’ve said, please write it in the comments section.
Tell me below what you’ve done to help yourself and how it’s helped you. I want to hear from you, how has it impacted you? And if you’re interested in speaking with me or a member of my team about your particular health obstacles to see if we could help you please click this link to schedule a free 15-minute consultation with us.
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DISCLAIMER: The information in this email is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content is for general informational purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional
