Pushing Past Your Excuses to Achieve Your Lifestyle Goals
A life and fitness coach encourages us to look beyond our logic and find our internal drive so that we can commit to achieving any goals like losing weight and keeping it off for good.
By Gale Ruttanaphon
When the editor reached out to me to write about tips for parents to better care for themselves I thought of writing about how to smash your New Year resolutions, how to eat better or how to motivate yourself to exercise regularly. All these topics are good reminders of how we can look after ourselves better. Chances are though, you will forget it as fast as you read the article.
Do you know that January is the busiest month of the year for any gym? The effect of the New Year resolution is real. But, do you also know that more than 50% of people who start a new exercise program drop out within the first 6 months? I’m sitting in a coffee shop as I’m writing this article. It’s me and another guy sitting across from me. According to the statistics, it’s me or him, or even both of us will call it quits, drop out and stop exercising by mid-year. So, what does it take for us to not become a statistic? What is the saving grace that will help us push through the resistance when it’s much easier to do nothing? As a fitness and life coach, I’ve trained and coached many clients over the years. Most of my clients come to see me because they want to lose weight. They all share the weight loss goal but what differentiates those who were able to develop healthy habits and create lasting change with those who could not?
When you bake a cake, you have flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, and butter. You mix them together but this does not make a cake. It makes goop. You have to put it in the oven and add heat. The heat transforms the goop into a cake. In a sense, this is what a lasting lifestyle change is like. You have all these ingredients and the logical, rational reasons from your brain that tell you - “I need to make time for myself, eat better, exercise and move more”, but to know them is not enough. You must add the heat and the energy of your heart. The heat is your feelings, your internal drive and your emotional sense of why something matters to you. What difference would it make to your life if you can lose this weight?
One of my coaching clients, “Em”, came to see me after the birth of her second child. We met in a coffee shop with her 8-week-old son sleeping in the bassinet next to her. She told me of her desire to lose weight so she could be her own happy self again. Em told stories of her constant weight gain and weight loss. Every time she gained, then, with the help of a dietitian, Em would go on a strict diet to cut out carbs and sugar and the weight would come down again. This time was different; she was worried about what the strict diet might do to her milk supply. Worrying for her newborn, she couldn’t do what she needed to do -- go on a diet and lose weight to become happy with herself again. She felt stuck and out of control. Em came to me because she wanted to find other ways of losing weight without going on a restrictive diet so she could continue to nurse her son. The objective of the coaching session for Em was to find a healthy balance where she could lose weight and enjoy food without feeling guilty. As we peeled the layers back, it became clear to Em that all her life she has been swinging between the two extremes, the restrictive diet and the eating spree. When she ate cookies, which are one of the foods she enjoys, she didn’t trust herself to stop at one, she’d binge eat. Em was never in balance. This was the heat, the fire that Em discovered inside herself that day. She wanted to change her relationship with food for good and regain control. She still wanted to lose weight but she uncovered her internal drive to establish “balance”. When you travel deeper inside yourself and when you’re able to go beyond where your logical mind thinks you should go, you will touch down onto something real. This is the heat that will allow you to burn through your excuses and keep going even when it’s easier to revert back to your old patterns.
Think about other areas of your life that you’ve been trying to change, do you know the heat that will keep your fire burning?
Photos by Caroline Veronez and Natalya Zaritskaya on Unsplash.
About the Author
Gale is a fitness coach with pre/postnatal specialisation, a corporate speaker, life coach and mother of two. She founded My Mummy First and has created The Mummy Reboot, a holistic program that helps mums to become stronger, healthier and confident in their own skin. More available on mymummyfirst.com/themummyreboot and IG: MyMummyFirst
The views expressed in the articles in this magazine are not necessarily those of BAMBI committee members and we assume no responsibility for them or their effects. BAMBI News welcomes volunteer contributors to our magazine. Please contact editor@bambiweb.org.