I lost the motivation to exercise and eat healthily for a month. In this post, I show you how I found motivation again and how you can too.
I lost the motivation to exercise and eat healthily for a month
During the first three months of this year, I was really motivated to eat healthily and exercised about 6 times a week.
Then came the 2 weeks long Easter holiday. We traveled a lot and spent 10 days at my parents’ house, where we had way too much delicious and not-so-healthy food. Apart from the occasional walks, I did not exercise at all.
When we came home I didn’t have any desire to do any sport whatsoever. I sometimes walked for an hour or so but very rarely. I also had my birthday the week after we came home, so I had a gorgeous cake and just ate too much in general. The result: I gained about 2-3 kilos (about 4-6 pounds) during the last 5 weeks. I don’t measure myself but my clothes are very tight.
I started to research how to motivate myself to get back to eating healthily and exercise regularly.
This is how I found the motivation to exercise and eat healthily again
1. The weather became warmer – the pain became greater than the pleasure
The weather finally became warmer, consequently, I couldn’t hide under my coat anymore. The “pain” of not looking the way I want to in my clothes became greater than the “pleasure” of eating chocolate and sitting on my butt all day. As I mentioned before the main jobs of our brains are to keeps us away from pain (basic survival instinct) and to seek pleasure. Therefore, one of the keys to motivating ourselves to achieve any kind of goal is to associate pain with not going after our goal and pleasure with achieving it.
2. Trying new recipes and exercises – switch it up
Sometimes I’m simply bored with the type of exercise I do and the food I eat. I found that changing up my workout routine and trying new recipes can give me new motivation. Switching up our usual routine from time to time can prevent boredom to kick in and keeps us motivated to achieve our goals.
3. Taking action – starting new habits
It´s interesting that motivation usually comes after starting a new habit. Like I said above, I found new recipes and a new workout routine that I enjoyed, and my motivation to exercise and eat healthily came back. It´s commonly believed that we get motivated by watching motivational videos, or listening to podcasts, and reading books. Although these are very good motivators, they can’t do anything for you until you actually take action.
Once you start doing something it’s much easier to carry on than it was to start doing it in the first place. Therefore, the key is to make this first step very easy. For example, you just need to try one new recipe and one new workout. You only need to commit to making this one step.
It’s the smallest steps that can make the biggest difference. If you’re looking for a simple way to start your healthy lifestyle and lose weight permanently without dieting this Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course is perfect for you.
You’ll discover simple habits you can start doing today to aid in weight loss and to improve your overall health. It’s so simple to start, yet the course is packed full of useful information.
Setting yourself small goals will help you see consistent results. The smaller the goal, the easier and quicker it is to achieve. As you start to tick off these small goals, it gets you a step closer to your long-term one and gives you that much-needed motivation boost to continue.
4. Schedule your new habit
You need to schedule your habits leading to achieve your small goals. If you don’t schedule your workout and just let it happen whenever you feel like it, the chance is that it´ll never happen. If you don’t have healthy food at home and some recipes to try you´ll most likely just grab whatever you can when you´re already starving.
Stop waiting for motivation to appear, schedule your habits. Choose a time when you do your workouts and prepare your meals and stick to it.
5. Plan your habits in advance
A good plan helps to make that first step to start your workout or decide what to eat. Without a plan, you need to think and decide: Which exercise should I do today? What should I eat?
Often we just don’t start doing something because we can’t decide what to do and by the time we figure it out, it’s too late. We have no time to work out and we´re too hungry to cook something healthy. Planning ahead removes this decision step. It becomes automatic to look at what’s planned for the day, take your workout clothes, and go.
A workout and meal planner can be a huge help to schedule your workouts and meals. If you find it difficult to decide what to eat, try my 7-day clean meal plan here. It removes the decision step from your busy life.
6. Choose optimum difficulty
Choose workouts (and any kind of goals) that are just right for you. Not too hard and not too easy. Both extremes will lead you to stop. If it’s too hard, you get discouraged and give up. If it’s too easy, you´ll stop because it’s too boring and it doesn’t challenge you. You should aim for a goal that is challenging enough but still doable.
Take a look at the goals you’ve set yourself. Are they specific, clear, and measurable? If not, that will likely cause a motivation block.
It’s common for people to set one overall goal, rather than several smaller goals. The trouble is, it takes a long time to reach an overall goal, leaving plenty of time for your motivation to falter. So, start by breaking down your current goals into smaller ones.
Make sure they’re specific and realistic. Once you’ve set smaller goals, you’ll be surprised how much motivation it can give you.
7. Track your progress
Tracking your progress with gadgets can be fun. You can see how you progress, improve and you get rewards when you complete a task. This gamification of your routine can really motivate you to keep going.
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Apps (food, bike, step tracking)
My partner goes to work by bike and he uses the Strava app to track his performance. It can be used for running and swimming too. It tracks distance, pace, speed, elevation, and calories burned.
On the phone, we can track how many steps we took that day. However, if you don’t have your phone with you all day, it’s better to use a pedometer.
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Fitbit
Fitbit has become one of the most popular fitness trackers on the market. I love mine too. This clever little device is worn on the wrist and it can measure your steps, activity level, calories burnt, heart rate, track your sleep, provide reminders to move when you´re inactive for a long period of time and it has an incredible battery life of up to 5 days. When used alongside the Fitbit app, you have a comprehensive fitness tracking service that provides you the motivation to exercise.
You can even buy fashionable bracelets for your Fitbit instead of the black plastic band that makes your Fitbit look like jewelry.
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Fitness and sleep tracking ring
However, if you don’t like to wear a band on your wrist, there is a fitness tracking ring too that has similar features. Two friends of mine have this and they really enjoy using it.
This fitness and sleep tracking ring tracks your steps and distance, your heart rate, how many calories you burned, and also monitors your sleep. First, you get a sizing set to find your size, then you can choose from three different colors. It’s waterproof and durable.
- Use a Planner to track your habits and progress
This Floral Coloring Planner is designed to help you plan your weeks and days and track what´s important for you. It will also help you reduce stress by becoming more organized and using the coloring pages to release stress. It can help you introduce healthy habits into your life for the price of a coffee.
5. Find a role model for motivation to exercise and eat healthily
Find someone who has already achieved what you want to achieve and use her/him as motivation. This could be a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance.
Social media can be a good place to look for motivation. It´s important though to use these accounts as inspiration and not to compare yourself to these fitness experts. These people spend a lot of time looking the way they look. If you have a job, family, and other responsibilities, achieving their physique can be irrealistic for you.
You can check out my Instagram account too for gentle motivation and education 😉
6. Find an accountability partner
While it’s certainly possible to change your lifestyle by yourself, it makes it much easier if you have somebody to do it with. A fitness buddy can help to keep you motivated and focused on your goal.
If you don’t know anybody personally who would be interested in exercising with you, it’s possible to meet someone either online or offline. There may be local groups in your area or online forums that could connect you to like-minded people.
There are Fitness Challenge apps too that give you tasks to do every day. Or you can use the above-mentioned fitness tracking apps and devices to engage in friendly competitions with other users.
What to do when your motivation to exercise and eat healthily starts to fade away
1. Always have a reminder of why you started the new habit
It can take quite a long time to see the benefits of a healthy diet/workout routine. Unfortunately, this can have a significant impact on your motivation.
It’s difficult to stay motivated when you’re seeing little, or sometimes no progress. However, you need to remind yourself that it is working, you just won’t always see it. This is where a reminder of why you started your healthy lifestyle comes in useful.
Having a reminder you can constantly see, enables you to stay motivated and strive towards your goal. If you’re doing it for your family, have a photo of them close by. If you want to get fit to look better, have a picture you’re not happy with or preferably one showing how you would like to look with you as a reminder. You could even have a piece of clothing you would like to wear and feel sexy in to remind yourself why you´re exercising now.
But it´s also important to wear pretty, comfortable (not too tight) clothes now, so you can feel good about yourself at the moment too. It´s so important to accept and love yourself in your current shape. Always be kind to yourself! Hating your body can lead to emotional eating.
You can also create a Vision Board to motivate you to achieve your goals.
Whatever reminds you of your goal, set it somewhere you’ll see it on a daily basis. You’ll be surprised just how much motivation this will give you to carry on.
If you want to learn 20 simple habits to lose weight without dieting download the short ebook below:
2. Don’t keep unhealthy food in front of you
Out of sight, out of mind. If you don’t see it, you won’t eat it.
Keep fruits and other healthy snacks around instead.
But it’s also important to let yourself eat your favorite, not-so-healthy foods too when you crave them. If you restrict some foods you will crave them even more. When everything is allowed, the treat foods will not be so tempting anymore.
Pay attention to eat slowly and mindfully, enjoying every single bite of your food, and stop eating when you are not hungry anymore.
3. Remind yourself, the discomfort will pass
Exercise can be a major barrier for some people. Just the thought of getting active can be off-putting. It’s also something you won’t see immediate results from. That means it’s easy to become demotivated when you’re aching and you’re not seeing much progress.
Also, when starting a healthy diet you may miss junk foods initially.
However, remind yourself that it all works and the discomfort is temporary. Your workouts will become easier and your taste buds will adjust to the new flavors. Your motivation to exercise and eat healthily will come back.
Don´t restrict your favorite junk foods too much because you will crave them even more. Try to eat them in moderation and less often instead.
4. Use self-hypnosis for motivation to exercise and eat healthily
If you find that the discomfort isn’t temporary for you, you should consider using self-hypnosis to find the motivation to exercise and eat healthily. These Hypnosis MP3s are completely safe and it’s such an easy option to boost your motivation to live a healthier life. You just relax and listen to a really pleasant NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) Hypnosis session. This effective Hypnosis session reprograms the way you view exercise and healthy eating, enabling you to overcome the obstacles holding you back. I wrote about self-hypnosis at the end of this post in detail, go end check it out. Then come back to download your free Hypnosis sample below.
Click here or the image below to claim your FREE Exercise Motivator Hypnosis MP3 (or any of the other 5 Hypnosis MP3s)! You’ll also receive a copy of “The 18 Rules of Happiness” by best-selling author, Karl Moore. All for FREE!
Isn’t it a fantastic deal? Yes, it is 🙂 Thank me later.
And the good news is, if you liked this sample Hypnosis audio, you can download many more. There are about 200 Hypnosis MP3s on the Hypnosis Live webpage. Take a look: Hypnosis Live.
For example:
and many more.
If you want to try a Weight Loss Booster Hypnosis session for FREE, you can download it from here.
One more thing
Allow the odd slip-up
You’re only human and that means you´re going to slip up along the way. Even the most dedicated fitness enthusiasts have their off days. The key is to not let the bad days cancel out the good ones. Just dust yourself off and start again the next day.
Losing weight and becoming fit should be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. However, that does mean you´ll need to find ways to keep yourself motivated along the way. Above all else, don’t give up! 🙂
If you need help to build the most effective habits to lose weight permanently without dieting, and break your habits leading to weight gain check out my Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course. This course is not simply about habits though. We will also discover and reprogram your subconscious blocks stopping you to lose weight or making you gain it back after losing it. You will also break free from emotional and stress eating, yo-yo dieting, body hate and many other eating issues keeping you from losing weight. Check out the program below:
Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course
If you use food as a tool to release stress or as the main source of pleasure, check out my How to Stop Eating Your Feelings Workbook to discover what you are REALLY hungry for and finally break free from emotional and stress eating.
You can read a free chapter of the workbook HERE.
If you need help to stick to a healthy diet or you don’t even know what a healthy diet is, contact me, I’m happy to help. I have a 6-week health coaching program as well, check it out here.
What is your favorite motivation tip? Let us know in the comments.
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