A Christmastime Confession
I have a confession to make: Today was the first time in a over a month that I've exercised. And I can count on (less than) one hand the total number of times that I've exercised in the past 2+ months.
I wanted to share this with you because even though I'm a health coach, that doesn't mean I'm perfect with my healthy habits 100% of the time. It's probably not even 50% of the time, if I'm completely honest! But to me, being "perfect" with my healthy habits isn't the goal.
To me, what's important is that I have the tools and knowledge to know what to do, and that I also have the ability to recognize when I need to tap into that toolkit and knowledge base.
For the past few months, I haven't been feeling myself. My son and I have both been battling a brutal cough/cold for over a month, and I've been beyond exhausted. As soon as I started feeling crummy, my self-care side took over and I knew that the most important thing for me was to rest and relax as much as possible, in order to feel better. This was exactly what I needed for a little while.
However, after several weeks in a row of not getting much else done other than the absolute necessecities and resting, I started to feel the negative effects. I wasn't feeling any better health-wise, my mood and thoughts were quickly making their way into the depressingly negative territory, and I just was feeling overall BLAH.
In the past, this would be the trigger of a major downward spiral. Feel crummy, eat all of the Christmas cookies in sight, feel worse, stay inside to watch TV marathons all day, feel even worse....and so on, until I hit my rock bottom. No fun.
Luckily, that's NOT how things go for me anymore. As soon as I started feeling the negative effects on my mood and my thoughts, I knew exactly what was going on, and what I needed to do to change everything. I leveraged my health coaching tools and thought about what I'd been doing, what was working, what wasn't, and came up with a plan to put in place right away.
Here's what I did:
1) Made a detailed plan for my day to ensure I got some of my top "to do's" checked off first thing.
2) Got outside and exercised! I signed up for my favorite Barre class and walked to/from class.
3) I ordered (and gobbled up) my favorite salad for lunch.
4) I planned out dinner in advance (for the first time in weeks).
After doing just these four things, I already feel back to my usual, happy self. I have more energy, I feel accomplished, my body is already thanking me, and my optimist mindset has been restored. Not bad for just a half-day of being "back on track" after a couple months of being off the wagon!
Now, here's my task for you:
The next time you find yourself "off the wagon" from your usual healthy habits, and you have the choice to either cont
inue down that road, or bring yourself back to feeling like yourself, stop to ask yourself these 3 questions:
1) What've my patterns been the past few (days/weeks/months)?
2) What's been working, and what hasn't?
3) What can I do right now to start making myself feel better instantly?
I hope these 3 questions help snap you back into your usual routine in no time! If you give it a try, let me know how it goes!
With Smiles,
Kim
