#146: 3 Mistakes That Keep You In A Rut, Unable to Start or Stuck In the On Again/ Off Again Cycle
Feel like you want to get back into your healthy routine or change a habit and you just CAN'T find the motivation to start? You keep saying 'next Monday' but it never happens?
Or, do you do what you say you're going to do for a few days or maybe even a week, but then give up again and can't stay consistent?
There are 3 key things that you could be doing wrong that keep you here. In this episode, I'll share the mistakes, plus give my solutions to help you out of these situatoins so that you CAN do what you're wanting to do and achieve what you want to achieve.
I hope this helps you!
Links:
Download my FREE eBook with 4 15 minute meals: click here
Start your weight loss, gut healing and anti-inflammatory journey now with my 3 Week Body Reset
Continue your journey and figuring out YOUR own balance in the Health with Bec Tribe
Explore my free recipes & website: Click here
Follow me on instagram: @health_with_bec
Read This Episode:
In this episode today, I'm going to be really helping those of you who are stuck in a rut and can't seem to do what you want to do. So maybe you're telling yourself that you really want to increase your fitness, start going to the gym again, eat healthy, give up sugar or maybe you are doing those things, whatever you're trying to do each day, but you're doing it and then you don't do it the next day and then you're doing it and then you don't do it the next day? Maybe you're doing it for a week and then you give up and you don't do it again for a month and you just can't seem to form those consistent habits?
If this is you, there are three key things that are very important to get right that you might be missing or doing wrong that's holding you back or that's keeping you in that rut. Now obviously there are more than three things, but like always I like to keep these podcasts really short. It is called Body Bites with Bec so these are just three of the most important things that I see and three of the most common mistakes that I see people making that makes me upset because I always think to myself - oh, if you just did this thing a slight bit better, it would make the biggest bit of difference. Honestly!
So if this is you, I hope this podcast episode inspires you and I hope one of these tips you can take on, or maybe all three of them you need? So these are the three things that you might be doing wrong if you are stuck in a rut and need to get out of it, or if you keep starting and stopping and starting and stopping with your health and fitness goals or with any goal in life. Actually, this can be related to any kind of goal, business goals, fitness goals, eating goals, whatever it is, they all make sense.
Before I get into it, I like to always say thank you so much to everyone that has left me a rating and review lately. I read each and every one of them and it really helps to support me and this podcast because I do all of them for free for you with no ads and it means the world to me when you show me your appreciation, when you subscribe, rate, and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you're listening there.
Okay, mistake/ tip number one - you're not prioritising it enough. Now, what I mean by this is if you want to do something, usually it means that you need to create space for it in your day and unless you create that space, you're not going to want to do it. So, let's say you want to start going to the gym every morning or going for a run every morning and you can't seem to do it, you can't seem to build the habit or you can't seem to stay consistent.
Sometimes it can be because you're not prioritising it enough by looking at other aspects of your life. So, let's say you want to get up early most days and go for a run or go to the gym. Are you really prioritising the night before with what you're doing to set you up for that habit in the morning? It's going to be so much harder to get up if you drink alcohol the night before, if you get a bad sleep, if you stay up too late scrolling Instagram or watching a TV show. All of those things are totally fine. I do that too but if you can't get up early, maybe you need to start going to bed at 9pm instead of 10pm or 10pm instead of 11pm. Obviously this depends on when you're going to bed and how much sleep you need but what are you doing the night before?
If you're trying to really change your eating habits and cook, let's just say you're trying to cook more food at home and you're trying to stick to a certain meal plan, a way of eating, maybe you're not staying consistent and doing that because you're not prioritising enough time to get organised on the weekend and buy your groceries and maybe do an hour or two of meal prep or maybe you're not creating the amount of space at night time from 5pm till 7pm, whenever it is for you, to be able to spend 20/ 30 minutes cooking in the kitchen. So what I'm trying to say here is that you need to really look at your life and your week and think - why am I not able to do this and is it because I'm actually doing something in my life that's interfering with this habit that I'm trying to create and you can shift things around?
If you care about something enough, you truly can do anything you want, if it is a priority to you. So when people say, I don't have the time, I don't have the time, it's always just an excuse. I know the busiest women, women that do my plans are mums, they have full time jobs and they still manage to prioritise eating healthy food and doing some sort of exercise. Sometimes it's a home workout or whatever the case may be, it's absolutely possible. So that's the first one. Is it a priority enough and how can you shift your day or the night before to set you up so that you can have more space in your day to get that thing done?
Mistake/ tip number two - you're trying to go too hard too soon. Now, this is probably one of the most common ones that I see and this is what can keep people seriously stuck in ruts and not able to do something for more than a day or more than a week. Here's an example, if you're trying to increase your fitness and maybe you used to be a runner and you used to be able to run 5kms, 5x a week or 7kms, 5x times a week, or whatever it is for you and you've stopped doing that for a period of time. Maybe you've lost motivation, maybe you've got an injury and you're trying to get back into it? If you try to go back to where you were and say to yourself - I'm going to start running 5kms, 5x a week, you are seriously going to find that so hard and it's going to stop you from probably even wanting to do it or you'll do it, you'll find it extremely bloody challenging and you won't want to do it the next day or again for another week.
So my tip here to counteract this is to really start new habits slowly. So if you want to get into running, for instance, just start by doing a 10 minute walk, maybe running one kilometre and then walking for the rest of it. Obviously, we all have different fitness levels and we're all not runners, this is just one example.
An example with food and this is obviously different for everyone too, but if you are someone that has fallen back into unhealthy habits - maybe you're eating a lot of sugar, a lot of refined carbohydrates, a lot of takeaway and you try to follow a diet that is free of sugar, free of processed foods, low in calories, super healthy and you go straight into that, you might find it too hard unless it's the 3 Week Body Reset because I really hold your hand through that. I support you through your cravings. I support you with education and accountability. There's a Facebook group, there's food to keep you full. So unless you're following my meal plan, if you're just trying to do that yourself and throw all of your not so good habits with eating out the window and go into something too quickly, too soon, that's when things can backfire too.
So if that's you and you're not ready to join my programs, my suggestion for the first week or two is to just take it easy and go - okay, for one week, I'm just going to go sugar-free. Maybe in week two, I'm going to stay sugar-free and I'm going to cut my alcohol down and then maybe in week three, I'm going to look at getting take away far less. I hope you get the point, but it's so good to do things gradually and build yourself up to what you want to do. If you really want to reach your goals and stay consistent, because if you do go too hard too soon, it can be far too challenging on your mindset and your body to do and it stops you from doing it all together or you do it for a couple of days, like I keep saying, and then you give up. So that is something that I say all the time and that is one of the easiest things that you can truly do and fix if you really want to have consistent habits.
Now, mistake/ tip number three is kind of similar to mistake number two, but kind of not - you think you have to do what your goal is every single day of the week for it to be worth it or for it to be successful. Now, the reason this is a mistake is that it is pretty much impossible for any of us to do things that feel a bit uncomfortable and challenging because obviously building healthy habits and making change in your life usually isn't comfortable.
Not many of us find increasing our fitness and getting to the gym easy. Of course we can enjoy it. I absolutely love it but it's a lot easier to watch TV and veg out, right?! It's still a little bit of a challenge every time you go. I don't go every single day, I wouldn't want to. If you're trying to eat healthy and restrict your calories and lose weight a bit, you don't want to be doing that every single day either because what about enjoying life? What about going out for dinner and just enjoying yourself and enjoying a few glasses of wine? It's quite hard for all of us to keep things up every single day, non-stop in a row, ongoing and it's not necessary to do that.
So if that is you, I want to try to help you change your mindset now and really say that you don't have to do something every single day for a week or a month to be a success and to reach your goals. Now, just an example totally unrelated to fitness and eating, but no one really does anything every single day when they reach their goals - when someone grows a business and I'll take me as an example, if I look back on my eight year business journey now, I have not been working on my business every single day and my business has absolutely grown. It's grown gradually over eight years and it's grown exponentially in the last year.
Do I work on my business every single day? Hell to the no, because whilst I enjoy it, it is my dream job, it's my dream career, I love helping you, it's honestly my dream. There is no way that I would want to do it every single day of the week because I would burn out and I wouldn't enjoy my life because of course I need to enjoy my life and I also need to rest to be able to fill my cup back up and be able to then spend Monday to Friday, sometimes Saturday mornings, focusing on the business because growing this business, like I just said before, I love it, but it's challenging.
Most days are challenging. Some tasks are a bit fun and easy, and I love seeing your results, and I love seeing you win, but growing and maintaining a business, just like any job isn't easy, and there's lots of tasks that feel boring and feel hard, but I have to push myself anyway to do it, if I want to keep it going and growing but I don't do it every single day, but I've still grown. I sort of work on my business maybe 70% of my life and the rest of my life is filled with things that fill my cup up, so seeing my friends, watching movies, doing nothing some days, just lots of other things that I do outside of business, going to the gym, going for walks and if I didn't do those things, I know that my business wouldn't grow.
So for you, if we take it into fitness and healthy eating, it's exactly the same. You really don't need to go to the gym every single day or eat every single day “healthy” and how you're trying to eat to reach your goals every single day to see weight loss success or to see changes in your gut health, whatever you're doing it for, or to see changes in your fitness, it's actually really good for you to take a break about 20% of the time. So if we're thinking about exercise, rest days are really good for you. They help your muscles recover and grow.
So if you're trying to aim to exercise every single day of the week, it's really not necessary and if you're trying to do it every single day and you've got the mindset that you're only going to be successful and reach your goals if you do it every single day - then, what happens on a day that you get sick or a day that you have a really late night and you can't sleep and then you feel crap that day? You know, it's not going to be good for your body to push yourself to exercise in times like that and it's not necessary either.
So many people that I know that have achieved amazing fitness goals, don't exercise every single day. It is not good and it's really good to get out of that mindset because if you are in that mindset where you think you have to do something perfectly every single day, it really does create that all-or-nothing mentality where you will start and stop and start and stop or you don't start at all because you think it has to be every single day, which isn't exciting, it's not maintainable and that's when a lot of people don't get results and they stay stuck. So think about the habit that you're trying to build, whether it's your fitness or changing your eating or both, and make sure that you give yourself permission to just do your best. I always say 80%, but some weeks 70% or 60% of the time - anything is better than nothing.
That example that I just gave about growing a business - you can still absolutely grow in a linear direction slowly if you're doing the right habits 70 to 80% of the time because it really makes sense if you're doing something for the majority of the time. If you're doing things that get you further and further to where you want to be for 70 to 80% of the time and then you do things that don't get you there, like you're resting or you're just doing whatever you're doing, weigh it up - that's 20% of the time compared to 80%.
Obviously, 80% wins and you're still going to be reaching that goal of yours, so thinking like that is going to really help you stay on track because you have got other things to look forward to in your week. Iif you go to the gym every single day, I'm sure you'll just look forward to having a whole Sunday off relaxing and letting your body rest or if you say to yourself that I'm going to be as healthy as I can, cook meals at home Monday to Friday, I'm sure you'll be really looking forward to going out on the weekend and enjoying a few drinks or going out for dinner with your friends. That is what really helps you build long term habits and stick to your intentions week after week.
So let's just recap …
Mistake/ tip number one is are you making it a priority enough because anything that you want in your life is possible, but you need to take control of it and look at your own week and day and think - what can I change to create more space or to be in a better mindset for that thing that I want to do? Sometimes it's looking at your day, sometimes looking at your weekend before that day, and sometimes looking at the night before. I love looking at the night before because the night before with how I act really sets me up to be in the right headspace to feel motivated and clear headed to run this business.
Mistake/ tip number two is going too hard too soon. Is the thing that you have set yourself too extreme for you to get into right now? Can you dial it back and start very slow and work your way up to what you're trying to do slowly? If you want to run 5kms, say to yourself - I'm going to do 1km in the first week, 2kms in the second week, 3kms in the third week, and maybe by the end of the month, I'll be running 5kms again. Go slowly and build it up gradually!
The final thing was you don't have to be doing something every single day to have a good week or to reach your goals, it's going to be far more effective for you and you'll be far more likely to stay on track and to actually want to start, if you just tell yourself that I'm just going to try my best to do this 70 to 80% of the week and for the other 20 to 30%, I'm going to do the things that I love, the things that fill my cup up, the things that make me feel happy and give myself a rest that from that, because then you'll want to repeat that next week when you know that you've got something to look forward to.
I really hope at least one of those tips helps you if you are stuck in that rut and you need to get started. One bonus thing I have to leave you with though, because this really helps as well is to always remember that change is usually not very comfortable. Our brains naturally like to stay comfortable and do things that feel easy, so we do have to push ourselves if we want something new, if we want a new result, if we want to increase our fitness, if we want to lose weight, you do have to push yourself a little bit, so that's why I do so many more mindset podcasts.
One thing that can really help you in this way is to always remember that action creates momentum. So, if you are stuck in a rut and you can't seem to start what you're trying to start, let's say it's exercise - sometimes you just have to know that it's hard and no amount of willpower or motivation is going to make you want to do it but what will make you do it is just action. Get into the gym or just getting dressed or just getting your feet on that path and just saying to yourself that I'm just going to do a five minute walk or whatever it is you think of the easiest thing that will help you just start moving and then once you start, it does help so much.
Quite often women will say I'm just going to go for a 10 minute walk and they'll end up doing a 30 minute walk and this relates to absolutely anything - sometimes when I go through a creative block, if I do one Instagram post, then I kind of get that motivation back and then it helps me throughout the week to continue so sometimes it's hard, but just remember that action creates momentum. So just do it, get it done. Tell yourself that you can do something tiny or just simply sometimes putting your exercise clothes on in the morning can help you or just having that one good day of eating will make it easier the day after.
You just have to push yourself to just start and honestly, that's one of the best things that's going to help you as well. I think that's why I have to create so many episodes like this because change is not easy and we have to push ourselves. Not every single day, like I said, but we do have to push ourselves about 80% of the time if we want to achieve big things and reach our goals.
If you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave me a rating and review. It would mean the world to me. Also, if you're not following me on Instagram yet, you can find me @health_with_bec.
Also the link to my programs are in the show notes above - women start with my 3 Week Body Reset to see if it works for them and then if they enjoy it, the Health with Bec Tribe is my monthly membership, which comes second and that really helps you turn your new “diet” into a sustainable lifestyle. I also have lots of free recipes on my website and I have an incredible free download - 4x 15 minute dinners which gives you four 15 minute dinners to cook through the week. That is the perfect thing to start with, to really create that momentum if you're in a rut and you want to get back into healthy eating.