Written by: Sabrina Ridaura, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Imagine a mom who works 30 hours a week and comes home to cook dinner and help her kids with homework—let’s call her Karen. She’s busy; she wants to start exercising but never seems to feel like it. Lately, Karen has wanted to invest in herself. She realises the year is about to end, and she never finished her 2021 resolutions: to finally train for a marathon or begin a healthy routine that involves exercising and eating more fruits and veggies. Yet, here she is at the end of the year, eating reheated noodles and not exercising at all. Where did the time go?
She’s swamped juggling the day-to-day, telling herself she doesn’t have time to do anything else. She blames it on a lack of time and inspiration, however, it seems like motivation is overdue and never seems to come around.
She feels disappointed and angry at herself. She’s tired and her mind is cloudy. She wants to pursue a healthier path: eat better and go to the gym, as well as be more active with her kids and perform better at work. However, once she gets home, she can’t seem to get herself off the couch.
How can she achieve her healthy lifestyle goals?
Here are three ways to shift inaction into action!
Stop Body-Shaming Yourself. Instead, Be Mindful and Self-Compassionate.
Before any change can happen, it’s essential to understand you are unique and special. There is no space for self-pity, self-judgement, or negativity. Leave no room for letting your inner voice put you down. Instead, create a positive image of yourself. Begin by changing your inner voice into a compassionate, mindful, positive voice that builds you up. Working with positivity is way more accessible and more exciting than coming from a place of shame and negativity. An easy way to do this can be to fill your social media feed with empowering, awesome images and people that inspire you.
As Dr. Kristin Neff expertly describes in her book, book title, “With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend.” When we want to change something for ourselves, like being more healthy (or happy), for example, it’s essential to first accept how we feel, without judging and feeling worthless but accepting that we are humans. Understand and accept that things don’t always go as planned. Understand that as humans, everyone goes through moments like this. One way to practice self-compassion can be to begin your day by stating some positive affirmations about your body. Positive affirmations can help us rewire our brains and change our attitudes. You can repeat them as many times as you want. Examples of affirmations you can start putting into practice can be: “I am stronger every day,” “I love how resilient my body is,” “I love my body, and I take care of it,” and “I am making healthier choices every day.” I encourage you to create your own affirmations and begin to practice them.
Create a Structure You Can Update Every Week.
Changes start with a shift in your mindset. However, you need a clear and simple structure to know what to do. Usually, we set ourselves high expectations and by wanting to do too many things simultaneously, without realising it we will burn out before we even get started. Making a change is a skill, a skill that through practice, is improved. If you want to make significant changes, you have to take small, consistent daily actions. These small actions have to be focused on your behaviour, not on the outcome you want to accomplish.
Let’s go back to Karen. Before having a simple action plan, Karen tried to start exercising five days a week for 60 minutes at the gym and walking her dog twice a day. Also, she said she was going to do some outdoor activities with her kids on the weekends. How do you think that worked for her? Not well. She put too many things into action too suddenly. After two weeks, she was burned out and had no motivation to continue.
So what can Karen do instead? By simplifying her plan and breaking it down into smaller steps, she will accomplish each action successfully. There are many ways to do this; one way is to use the four circle diagram below.
For Karen’s goal of beginning to adopt a healthier lifestyle, she should start with the main goal and break it down into actions for the month ahead, the week ahead, and then a daily practice. This will give her a structure, and she can plan her small actions around this. Actions can be as small as walking the dog every day for 20 minutes, exercising 20 minutes every day, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator at the office.
After practising these smaller goals for a week, she can start to introduce another one. As easy as this sounds, consistently doing this practice will bring much better results. ONE SMALL ACTION. AS EASY AS CAN BE.
Action Before Motivation.
This brings me to the third part of the plan: consistency. How can you be motivated all the time to be consistent? What about the days Karen just doesn’t feel like it? She just can’t get herself to do anything; she tells herself she will wait to be inspired.
What do you think comes first? Motivation or action? You cannot rely on motivation to be successful. No one can be motivated all the time. Not coaches, not athletes, no one. Some days, you are not motivated to go to work, yet you go to work nonetheless. The same thing happens when you are trying to make a change. Some days, you will not want to do anything. You will want to throw in the towel. And this is when consistency starts to fade, your plan begins to lose momentum, and you begin to let your excuses take over. When you’re feeling this way, just get up and do what you set yourself up to do. As quickly as possible. Like ripping off a bandaid. I promise, once you get started, you will begin to feel the motivation kick in. When you finish, you will have a sense of achievement that will motivate you to keep going. Mel Robbins describes it in her book, book title, as the five-second rule. Simply give yourself a countdown from five to do whatever you set yourself up to. Take action and see how motivation will follow.
So, by creating a space of self-compassion, love, and affirmation, and coming up with structure to develop skills through gradual action plans, and taking action to motivate yourself, you will be able to realize the changes you want in your life.
Sabrina is a health coach and sports nutrition specialist. She helps busy parents improve their weight, energy and performance. For more help in designing the right plan to get you onto a healthier lifestyle path, please reach out to Sabrina.
Sabrina Ridaura, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Sabrina Ridaura is a recognized L1 Precision Nutrition Coach, a NASM certified personal trainer, a soccer nutrition specialist from Barcelona’s famed Barça Hub, and she holds a postgraduate degree in Sports Nutrition from the Universidad de Barcelona. Her focus is on helping the so-called household superheroes—parents that are busy juggling work and family life, maintaining the demanding schedule of the young athletes of the house, and figuring out where to carve out some time for themselves—achieve balance in their life while hitting all of their fitness and nutrition goals.
