Fitness is a lifestyle sounds so cliche, but it is so true. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me they don’t have time to cook a healthy dinner, well, I could quit my day job. Let’s be honest, the majority of us don’t have an hour to prep and cook dinner, another 30 minutes to sit and enjoy the meal, and the next 30 minutes to clean up the kitchen. That is why meal prep is such a common phrase in weight loss and fitness communities. I work part time from home, and as a general rule, I do not cook my lunch daily. I batch cook, so I only have to reheat or I make extra at dinner the night before.
My mentor talks about your feet hitting the floor the second your alarm goes off. No talking yourself into anything, just do it. Seth Godin talks about minimizing decisions required in a day. Sleep in your work out clothes or at least lay them out before bed. Ariana Huffington is a huge proponent of sleep hygiene. She talks about bedtime routines and evenings screen time free. All these help lead to a healthier lifestyle. You can’t add into your day waking up early without taking away staying up too late watching television.
When you start to create new habits, excuses seem to come out of the woodwork. I am a huge fan of working out first thing in the morning. You have fewer excuses then. Granted, you can still have a sick kid, or a hubby who kept you up with his snoring all night, or a dog that needed to pee at 2 AM. But getting stuck at work, forgetting your gym bag at home, or neon got get to your kids soccer game are all eliminated. The fewer excuses, the more likely you are to succeed. Some people are motivated by punishment, so add a dollar to a jar every time you hit snooze on your alarm. Others are motivated by others accountability, so join a boot camp class. Find ways to set yourself up for success.
Often times, we try to fit our work outs and healthy meals into our current frame of life. When really we need to replace and not just add. Replace your Sunday nap with cooking lunches and prepping dinners for the week. Replace mindless time on Facebook with a quick HITT work out. Just can’t give up your show? Hit the treadmill while you watch your favorite indulgence. Sometimes, we need to change our friends. No one really likes to talk about it, but it happens. When you and your friends get together every weekend to drink martinis all night and snack on pizza, it is not beneficial to you waking up on Sunday morning to go for a long run. Does this mean you can’t be friends anymore? Absolutely not! If you are lucky, when you duck out early on Saturday nite, they will start to join you on Sunday morning. If they don’t, you may need to make coffee dates with them after your run. Remember that when you start to make healthy choices, it forces those around you to look at their choices. They may not like what they are choosing, or they may feel that you are judging them for their choices. Give them some space and grace, and find who in your circle does support you on your journey.
So have you been trying to fit healthy into your current life? Where can you start to replace instead of just add?