4 Pro Tips to get Motivated to Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
Have you lost interest in exercise and eating healthy? Or maybe you’ve stuck to a rigorous diet in the past, and now you’re fed up and have gone back to poor eating habits.
Are you sick of years of yo-yo dieting, and struggling around food?
We call this an all-or-nothing mindset. Either everything is good, or things are going terribly with your diet, workout plan and meal prep and everything is bad. Unfortunately, so many of us experience this all-or-nothing mindset and it seriously hinders our potential for progress towards a healthy lifestyle!
This is what psychologists dichotomous thinking: that our brains perceive only two states of being - your health habits, diet, exercise, etc going really well, or the alternative - that you’re binging, overeating, failing at your workout plan, and being a lazy couch potato.
Um, not a very helpful mindset at all!
What I encourage my clients to embrace is the gray space in between: acknowledging that you don’t have to be perfect at a health habit or behavior to still practice it and make progress.
That you can improve your nutritious eating, while maybe not yet having the ‘perfect’ workout plan.
That you can have a healthy relationship with food - AND lose weight sustainably if that’s your goal.
These things don’t have to be mutually exclusive!
Today, we’ll be discussing how a particular mindset will help you achieve a healthy lifestyle while staying motivated - or more importantly, staying consistent on the path to your healthy lifestyle.
Motivation Vs. Consistency
It’s SO easy to keep putting off a new habit or task. We don’t feel motivated. We’re too tired when we get home from work. It’s just too much effort and energy to try to meal prep, or make a new recipe, or get to the gym for a workout tonight. Our brain is just sooo good at making excuses. Have you felt like this before?
We often say we’re not motivated enough to do the new habit or task, but we often fail to realize that motivation is fleeting and temporary: it’s not actually what’s going to help you cross the finish line when it comes to cooking healthy dinners (or insert other healthy habit) for the next months and years to come.
What if instead of waiting for the circumstances to be just perfect…you focus on making a commitment and an agreement with yourself? And you decide that you are worthy of honoring your commitments to yourself?
It’s the consistency and dedication that you have made with yourself that keeps your motivation high.
I believe there is only one way to begin: take action, no matter how tiny. The best and only technique to generate more energy and motivation is in this way. As we make progress, excitement spreads and becomes contagious.
Let me state that more simply:
Motivation comes from taking action. Not the other way around.
The more we sit around waiting to feel motivated in order to start something new, the more you’re feeling ‘stuck’. We have to get the ball of momentum rolling - and we do that by taking ONE tiny action.
You've made a noble choice if you wish to become (and remain) motivated to make certain lifestyle adjustments to improve your health. Whatever habit you decide to adopt, I've discovered that following these steps will help you stay motivated - and this is exactly what I recommend to my clients!
4 Ways to get Motivated (and Stay Motivated) for a Healthy Life by Relying on Consistency
1.Have a positive attitude towards yourself
Don't feel bad about yourself if you have not gone to the gym for a long time or have a habit of overeating. Feeling guilty, ashamed and being hard on yourself is going to lead to more resistance about making a change and getting the ball of momentum rolling again.
You can take tiny steps to achieve results and change your practices. Choose ONE small strategy to focus on for one week at a time - and make that the only new habit you’re adding. Then build on it from there!
If you need more support and structure with this, it’s exactly what I teach you to do inside The Method: Healthy Habits for Life program. Check it out by clicking here!
Shift yourself to half a cup of coffee rather than a full cup. Positive self-belief will make you more confident about yourself, and there’s going to be less resistance towards a healthy lifestyle.
2. Set your goals
If you don’t have a specific and strategic goal, it’s going to be difficult to achieve anything. Knowing your plans to stay motivated and reach that goal is essential - using small, sustainable steps along the way.
For instance, you can fix your goal of achieving a target weight so you can stay motivated to diet and exercise to reach that goal.
There are both short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals can motivate you as they are easily achievable; you can set a short-term plan to have 1000 steps daily. When you achieve them daily, it will help you to achieve your long-term goal of losing weight.
3. Plan your actions toward your goal
Jumping into a new diet, exercise routine, and way of life all at once hardly ever leads to long-term success. Create some more manageable objectives and write them down. After achieving one small goal or adding on a new habit, go on to the next! Remember to cheer yourself on along the way. Small wins matter, regardless of what your brain tells you!
Goals must be measurable and transparent. Ever heard of SMART goals? It’s so well-known for a reason!
It’s going to make a world of difference if you have a detailed and quantifiable action plan to get there once you have determined the specific strategy you want to pursue.
Need help creating sustainable lifestyle change and sticking with your healthy habits? I use evidence-based strategies to guarantee behavior change inside my program The Method: Healthy Habits for Life. Learn how it’s changed my clients’ lives by clicking here.
4. Start with small changes in diet
If you have to alter your present diet and eating habits entirely, it’s going to be challenging (and often close to impossible!) to create a complete dietary overhaul overnight. Instead, choose ONE modification to make to what you eat daily to start small and make the process more achievable.
Consider switching one of your daily meals to something more plant-based, if you’re looking to improve your gut health, increase fiber consumption, lower cholesterol, and reduce meat intake.
Focus on the overall advantages of a nutritious and well-balanced diet for your body and mind!
In conclusion…
I hope you enjoyed these tips to improve motivation - and more importantly consistency - to approaching your healthy lifestyle and nutrition change.
Remembering the initial inspiration behind a goal can frequently enable you to stay motivated and laser-focused on it. Why did you want to make a change to begin with? What truly matters to you about making healthy lifestyle changes? Share with us in the comments below!