Skip to main content

WHAT TO DO WHEN CREATING HEALTHY HABITS BECOMES A CHALLENGE

As you’re working on your health, wellness, or nutrition journey, you’re going to face daily challenges. It happens.

Obstacles. Setbacks. Faltering Motivation. Resistance.

It’s frustrating to hit a roadblock.

But hopefully some of the tips compiled here will help you navigate around these challenges and continue on your way to a healthier you.

Focus on Your Behaviors, Not Your Outcomes. 

I know I’ve talked about this before, but it’s actually a critical step of creating healthy habits. Outcomes vary. If you’re trying to lose 10 pounds, but the scale hasn’t moved past 5 pounds, it’s easy to get caught up in the number on the scale and fail to give yourself credit for the habits you’re creating like riding your bike 4 times per week, cooking healthier meals at home, and losing inches from around your waist. It’s important to praise and celebrate each habit you do, rather than only giving yourself credit when you hit a certain milestone, like the number on the scale.

Take a Look at Your Environment. 

When you’re not motivated to do something you know is good for you (ex. Stop eating junk food), it’s easy to feel like you’ve hit a wall. So instead of trying to dig from a depleted supply of willpower and motivation, the answer might be as simple as changing your environment. One of my clients LOVES a certain kind of candy bar. She used to keep regular sized candy bars in her fridge all the time and would grab one every time she got a craving for sweets. After a session, she decided to start buying bags of the mini candy bars instead, and then she had one of her kids hide them in a kitchen cabinet, but not tell her where. So when she REALLY had a craving and needed something sweet, she had to hunt through her kitchen for the bag or ask her child where they were. By changing her environment and not making the candy bars easily accessible, she was able to cut down TREMENDOUSLY on how much candy she was eating every day.

Time to De-Stress, Seriously! 

Does this sound familiar? “I was doing so well with my daily walk/avoiding sodas/eating more vegetables/stretching before bedtime, but THEN my kids got sick/a huge work project came up/my mom fell and twisted her knee, and I completely stopped!” Stress will literally alter your brain and push you from working on your goals to falling back into comfortable (and probably unhealthy) habits. Neurobiology is actually sabotaging you. To fix it, you need to recognize the situation (work project is stressing me out), and find whatever techniques are available to help you work through the anxiety in order for your brain chemistry to shift back into being able to focus on your goals again.

Separating Yourself from Your Problem. 

There is a difference. How many times have you made a mistake or missed a goal in your journey and said, “I’m such an idiot.” Or “I totally screwed that up.” This takes work and time, but it’s important to recognize that YOU are not your PROBLEM. Struggling with junk food isn’t who you are, it’s a problem you’re working on. When those thoughts come up, try reframing how you talk to yourself, and extend the same grace you would give your best friend to yourself if they were struggling, too.

Keep It Simple. 

Again, this is another topic I’ve covered (and even created an entire course around), but it bears repeating – keep it simple! Start small. Tiny. Micro. Creating new, healthy habits can seem more like a mountain than a bunny slope. Trying to do too much at once can lead to stress, overwhelm and burn out. The solution is to go back to the basics and do ONE THING. Just one. And once that action is working (prepping veggies for the week, taking a morning walk, strength training twice a week), then add another SMALL action. And any time you experience a setback or obstacle, go back to your basics again and just do ONE THING until you are able to do more.

Those steps are a few of the ways you can overcome the challenges of creating your healthy habits. There’s no way to stop setbacks because life happens, but you can learn ways to navigate around them and continue on your health and wellness journey. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I’m Going to Tell You the SECRET No One in the Fitness Industry Wants You to Hear….

Got your attention? Okay.  Now that I’ve gotten the theatrics out of the way, I really am going to tell you the “secret”.  This applies to most, BUT NOT ALL , cases of people who are trying to lose weight, deal with medical issues, overall health, living longer, etc. Pretty much anything health related. WHAT YOU’RE EATING HAS A GREATER EFFECT ON YOUR OVERALL HEALTH THAN ANYTHING ELSE YOU DO . I managed to get myself into a debate on social media, which was unintentional and not meant to be disrespectful. But RESPECTFULLY, I completely disagreed with their stance that food and weight loss do not have an impact on health conditions.  Health risks related to diet .  Nutritional Deficiencies . Is exercise important? Yes, it is.  But you can be very active, eat terribly, and deal with all kinds of health issues. Or be active, but still overweight because of eating too much sugar, fat, salt, or too many calories overall, and have NO health issues (high blood pres...
Post a Comment
Read more

PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY

This week my mother-in-law passed away. Hubs has been traveling back and forth between two states to take care of all the things one must handle after losing a loved one - final arrangements, legal, financial, etc. And in the midst of this, Hubs is also trying to take care of his own health and medical issues. I'm not really sure what this post is about, other than being a bit of a personal journal of my thoughts. So, if you're not really interested, that's fine. I'll be happy to catch you next week with more health and nutrition coaching information/tips/hacks/etc. I honestly didn't know her VERY well. When Hubs and I met, she was living two states away, and then ended up moving a little closer to his extended family, which was still a four-and-a-half-hour drive. So while we saw each other occasionally, we didn't have the chance to spend a lot of time together. But I did know this about her. She was fierce. She raised three sons as a single mom. I've heard...
Post a Comment
Read more

DO YOU KNOW “WHY”?

Why do you want to start a health journey? Why are you on a health journey? Why is your health important to you? As a busy mom, these three questions are important to ask yourself if you’re working on your health or thinking about working on it. Because, honestly, we've already got enough going on in our lives.  You might find out you’re not even trying to be healthier/eat better/move more/lose weight for the reasons you THOUGHT you were. Maybe you’re thinking about losing weight because someone made a comment that hurt your feelings. Or you went to put on a dress you haven’t worn in a while, and it doesn’t fit anymore. Maybe you don’t have energy like you used to and you’re tired of feeling tired all the time. Maybe you’re noticing that you overall don’t feel good after eating candy or cookies when it didn’t used to bother you before. Or maybe a relative is in poor health much younger than they should be and it’s got you thinking about how you want to be capable and act...
Post a Comment
Read more