You cannot hate yourself to a fitter, healthier, lighter body. You just can't. Not longterm. Start today, wherever you are, fully appreciating your magnificent body. All that it has been through. All that it has given you. It is a gift. Thank it, and honor it by making the next small decision to give it what it needs.
It is very tempting in the new year, or with a new fitness goal, to go all-in immediately. Rev up the treadmill and run like a gazelle with the recirculated breeze in your hair. You do you, boo. If that is what your body wants, give her the breeze. But for longterm results, slow and steady is the key. Micro changes and bits of progress lead up to compounded results. Most of us cannot maintain an hourly workout every day, and a diet of chicken breasts and peppers. But we each can walk a little more each day, and stop eating when we start to feel satisfied. Do things that you can continue longterm.
Only eat when you are hungry. Full stop. If you are eating for any other reason than hunger, you are emotionally eating. You are eating because you are bored, sad, celebrating, mad, or acting on an urge. Wait until you are hungry.
Stop eating when you start to feel satisfied. Eat slowly and deliberately. Bring your awareness to your plate. Don't look at your phone or the tv while eating. Appreciate your food and what it will do for you. Listen to your body and stop eating when you start to feel satisfied. Set down your utensils. Drink water. Wait. Don't overeat to the point of discomfort.
Eat a fruit or a vegetable at every meal.
Make like a teenage girl and get yourself a fancy water bottle that slays. Name her. Take her everywhere. Fill her up and drink! For some fun entertainment, watch a couple youtube videos of "preparing my Stanley." My daughter and I love those.
Create accountability. Unless you are the rare unicorn that my husband is, and rise from slumber at 4:30 a.m. to run, read, and walk the dog (not kidding, he has a robust and robotic form of discipline that should be studied), you may benefit from some old-fashioned accountability. Yes, you know what to do. Yes, you have a treadmill in the basement. But are you doing it?? Find a way to add accountability and everything will become magically easier. Hire a trainer, join a fitness group, join an online group, text a friend daily. Whatever works for you to check in with someone. This adds so much to the experience, in addition to just keeping you doing it.
Consider getting a dog. The number of steps you get daily dramatically goes up when you have a dog that needs walking.
Step outside. Even for a minute. Tidy up the front porch. Take a five minute walk. Being outside is calming, brings perspective, and makes you want to make the next healthy choice.
Make it more difficult to look at social media. Hide the app. Break the constant habit loop of checking facebook or instagram. Social media is subliminally telling you "YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH. YOU SHOULD BE DOING MORE. YOU SHOULD LOOK DIFFERENT. YOUR LIFE WILL BE BETTER IF YOU ORDER THIS PROTEIN POWDER AND THIS COLOR-BLOCKED CASHMERE SWEATER." Set down the phone. You have protein in your house. And you have too many sweaters.
Find a podcast that you love. Some of my favorites are Happier with Gretchen Rubin, Mel Robbins, and old episodes of the Life Coach School Podcast. Find something motivating and inspiring.
Find some type of movement that you enjoy. Walking, aggressively cleaning (not my fave, but my mom totally wins at this), yardwork (here's where my dad shines), a dance class, yoga in your living room or in a candle-lit essential-oil infused studio. Find what works for you and doesn't fill you with dread. Dread doesn't lead to longterm wellness.
Michelle Obama once said she realized if she had a job that required her to be there early in the morning, she would absolutely be there. But she wasn't showing up in the same way for herself and her fitness. Once she started thinking of it in this way, it totally changed for her. Think of your workout like a job. In fact, it is more important than your job. The most important thing you can do each day is take a few minutes to invest in your health and wellness.
Be a role model for your children. They see and hear everything. The lovely Kate Winslet said: “As a child, I never heard one woman say to me, I love my body. Not my mother, my elder sister, my best friend, no one woman has ever said, I am so proud of my body. So, I make sure to say it to my daughter because a positive physical outlook has to start at an early age.”
A 2013 study looked at body dissatisfaction in women in multiple age groups. "Body dissatisfaction was present in the majority of participants in each age group: 90.0% in the 25-34 group, 93.2% in the 35-44 group, 88.9% in the 45-54 group, 89.0% in the 55-54 group, 88.2% in the 65-74 group, and 71.9% in the 75+ group." This is dramatic. Why are we all wasting our time on this? Seriously!! ALMOST ALL OF US are wanting to look like someone else. When I realized that over 70% of women over 75 were dissatisfied with their bodies, it really struck me. Shouldn't we at some point get to revel in our wisdom, our interests, our books, our loved ones, our hobbies? Why in the world should an 80 year old magnificent human be worried about her hips? On that note, why should ANYONE be more consumed with their hips than their contributions?? (Citation: Runfola et al. Body dissatisfaction in women across the lifespan: results of the UNC-SELF and Gender and Body Image (GABI) studies. Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2013 Jan;21(1):52-9)
Momentum is better than motivation. We all want a blast of motivation to strike. Rarely it does, and those days are freaking magical. But what is way more reliable is momentum. Just start doing something. Something tiny. Just put your sneakers on. Simply doing one little thing will lead to the next and the next. Yesterday I was just going to clean out a drawer in my daughter's bedroom. This lead to me going through her whole dresser and closet, getting rid of all the too-small clothes, Marie Kondo-ing her shirt drawers, and taking a load of donations to Goodwill. Are you kidding? Had I waited for motivation to strike, I'd still be watching Queer Eye on the couch. But simply by opening that one drawer, it led to Mom-on-a-Mission.
Which leads me to my next trick. Say "I'm just going to..." I'm just going to look over some recipes for next week. I'm just going to set my alarm 15 minutes earlier. I'm just going to put my workout clothes on. One tiny little step is usually all it takes to get the momentum ball rolling.
Embrace B- work in this realm. There is no such thing as perfect anything. But definitely not in the fitness and wellness realm. Embrace a kinda sorta good workout, and a pretty good diet. That is exponentially better than drive-through and Netflix.
Follow someone that inspires you. Peloton instructors are super inspirational. The podcast "Losing 100 pounds with Corinne" is great. My new favorite thing to do is watch Jennifer Garner whip up some food in her kitchen. How can anyone be that delightful?
Get up earlier. I hear the groan. But really. Even if you take an extra five minutes in the morning to set your intentions, tidy your bedroom, or take your vitamins, it will pay dividends the rest of the day.
Keep your phone out of your bedroom. I now keep my phone charging in the bathroom next to our bedroom overnight. I no longer do my midnight scroll which interferes with falling asleep. And I no longer roll over and look at the news first thing in the morning. My alarm is set on my phone so I have to physically haul my person out of bed to turn it off. Plug it in somewhere else, and sleep and rise with intention.
Keep track. The control freak in me likes to have a number I can log. I like to either keep track of my daily steps (10,000 per day is the goal), or my weekly minutes of exercise (150 minutes per week is the goal). Interestingly, I hate tracking what I eat. But for many, this is a must. For anything you want to change (exercise, nutrition, finances, work projects), tracking everything is powerful. It shows you in black and white what the problem is and what you need to do differently.
Coolly assess what you might need to do differently and then do it. No more piling on of negative emotions. Feeling shame, guilt, embarassment, and frustration will not move you forward. Assess things as you would someone else's bank account. "Ok Floyd, let's spend a little less on vintage legos this month, and tuck a bit more in savings." No emotion. Just action.
An urge is a wave of emotion. Urges to eat when we are not hungry can feel intensely powerful. But just know it is a temporary wave. Recognize it and be with it as you would any other emotion. Say to yourself "This is an urge. I'm having an urge." If you are hungry, eat. If you are not hungry, just simply ride the wave of the urge. It will come and go, and then come and go again, and again. Over time this gets less and less.
Live a fully realized life. Don't be held back by body hangups or weight. Wear clothes you love, spend time with people that light you up, and do things that speak to your soul. Life is way too short to hide at home. Get out there and live.