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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. 

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