With a New Year, comes new goals, promises,resolutions and the onslaught of never-ending weight loss commercials on the TV(#dietindustrysucks). It can be an overwhelming time for many especially asthey reflect on the previous year’s goals and if they reached them or not. Forothers, it can be anxiety inducing as they take on the idea of completelyoverhauling their life and giving up old habits, with the expectation that itwill happen overnight!
This rarely happens, and this high expectation forsuccess is often why most people don’t achieve their goals. The majority of us(yes even me!) get three weeks into January and give up because it all seems sohard! Going to the gym takes up more time than expected. Oh, and what aboutmeal prep – pfft I have better things to do on my Sunday like attend a bottomlessbrunch!
So, we get to the end of January, thinking to ourselvesthis is all too hard, I can’t keep it up. Maybe this isn’t my year, so I’ll tryagain next month, which then eventuates into next year.
Does anyone else feel like January is a trial month and your year really kicks off in February? I do. So I usually use January as my plan making and goal digging time. That way, by the time February rolls around I”m ready to hit the ground running. I tend to make my goals based around habits. That way, as I slowly start to implement habits into my day, I eventually reach my goals.
A lot of this also comes down to motivation. It is so easy to fall into the trap and not be motivated to go to the gym. However, if it is a habit – it becomes something that you need to do and that need forces you to act on it as without completing the task you can end up feeling a bit lost for the day.
If you’re planning to make 2019 your year, it’s important that you pick a realistic goal and that you start out small in the beginning and before you know it – you’ll have achieved success!
When you break your goal down to smaller, realistic and more achievable objectives or habits, it will become less daunting and you will actually commit to success!
As you continue to commit, you will create amomentum which will create further movement towards achieving your BHAD (big hairyaudacious goal). Unfortunately, in this day and age people’s number one goalseems to be based around weight loss rather than health and wellness. Remember,weight loss doesn’t always equal health.
So today, I want to challenge you from turning yourgoal from weight loss and instead focusing on creating a happier, healthier andmore present you!
To help you on your journey to wellness I’ve listedfive non-weight related habits and ways in which you can slowly introduce theminto your lifestyle today.
1. Want to eat more vegetables?
Start by trying to include a minimum of five servings of vegetables into your day. You could start your morning off with a delicious green smoothie or try my skillet baked eggs, make yourself a roasted veggie bowl for lunch or have a crispy sweet potato noodle stir fry for dinner!
2. Feel like you need a detox?
After the festive season our bodies can be a little sluggish. While we have a fantastic detoxification system within our body that flushes out the toxins daily, it could always do with a bit of extra support. You can start supporting your body’s natural processes by having a warm glass of lemon water before breakfast.
3. Do you need a happiness boost?
Firstly, do a social media clean-out and delete anyone that makes you question your self worth or gives you negative vibes. Secondly, spend 10-15 minutes in the sunshine absorbing Vitamin D. Australian’s are known to have one of the lowest Vitamin D levels in the world! Not sure why Vitamin D is so important, stay tuned as I”ll be discussing all that soon!
4. Do you feel like you need to be more mindful?
While the term mindfulness seems to be thrown around a lot these days, it really is an important concept to consider. Mindfulness is about being grounded and focused on the now. With the busy world that we live in, it can be hard to bring mindfulness to our lives every single day.
A great challenge that you can implement to start to be more present and mindful is by putting your phone away while you’re eating lunch each day. Start to focus on your food, each bite, chew for a minimum twenty times, pay attention to the textures and flavours and really be in the moment. This not only helps you to begin to be present in other situations throughout your day, but it will also help with your digestion. As you begin to slow down, your body will move into its parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), also known as the rest and digest system. This is important because our PNS stimulates the digestive process by increasing the blood supply directly to our digestive tract. In times of stress and eating on the run, our body switches to our Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS), also known as our ‘fight or flight’ system.
To put it simply our body feels like it is in a state of threat and therefore switches off all it’s important functions like making the secretions that are needed for proper digestion.
Notice how you feel bloated after rushing to eat your lunch in a hurry?
5. Do you want to improve your sleep quality?
We could all do with a better night’s sleep. To improve your sleep quality, the best thing you can do is put in place a solid night time routine. I’ll speak more about implementing a solid routine in a later post. However, in the meantime, you can implement this one thing I do every night before I go to bed. All you need to do is spend about twenty minutes with your legs up in the air up against a wall. This will bring on a calm and relaxed state to your mind and body, as it increases the production of the brain’s calming neurotransmitter known as GABA. This will also assist with and support digestion, especially if you are prone to eating while in a ‘fight or flight’ state of stress.
There you have it friends!
By implementing these simple habits into your daily routine, you’ll be achieving success in no time.
I’d love to know what small steps you’ll be taking today to achieve your 2019 goals?
