#166: Rebuilding habits & regaining motivation after a holiday or an 'off' period in your life!
I'm back after taking a much needed break from the podcast!
But, I returned from my 3 week trip to Italy and London and felt quite different to how I'd normally feel after travelling...
Whilst I felt re-energised from visiting such amazing spots and doing the least amount of work I have EVER done on a holiday, I ended the trip feeling bloated, puffy and heavier. This made it harder for me to feel the same level of motivation that I had for exercise pre the trip. I've also found it so hard to get that creative spark back in me that I usually have (most weeks) for work.
In this episode, I share how and why my eating and drinking habits changed a little bit compared to my usual travels (where I've worked out my healthy balance pretty well & normally return feeling pretty good) and my thoughts on why it's been harder to feel creative for work.
I also offer tips, of course, throughout this podcast on:
How to get your motivation and mojo back if you've let any healthy habits slip after a holiday or just a period of zero motivation
How to build your healthy habits back up again AND how to ensure they don't fall away again
Why it's a GOOD thing to feel crap sometimes from eating foods that you don't normally eat
I think I jump around quite a bit in this epiode because I just had so many thoughts to share, but I really hope that my reflection helps you see that I too am human and the occasional lows in your motivation is normal. I also hope that it encourages you to constanty reflect on WHY you're feeling and acting in certain ways, because without reflection, you can't figure out what changes you need to make in your life! Reaching your goals is ALWAYS about trying new things, failing, getting back up again and learning from past experiences.
00:00 Intro
01:10 Wrap Up Of 2024 Italy Trip + Why This Trip Was Different
03:45 A Vulnerable Share About Why This Episode Was Hard To Record
06:12 Discussing What This Episode Is About & Why It’s Important
07:56 Why Didn’t I Stay On Track With My Healthy Habits This Trip?
16:43 A Reminder About My Own Personal Health/ Weight Loss Story
24:12 The Main Point Of This Podcast
25:20 How To Rebuild Habits & Regain Motivation
30:30 What I’ve Been Doing To Get Back Into A Healthy Routine With Food & Exercise
34:58 The Importance Of Maintaining Habits Whilst Away/ On Holidays
39:08 What I Always Encourage You To Do When You Feel ‘Off’ After Losing Momentum
Further links & resources:
Podcasts where I talk about how I eat when I travel to keep my balance:
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 recipe eBooks: Click here!
Follow me on instagram: @health_with_bec
Visit my website: Click here
Read This Episode:
I am back after a four to five week break from the podcast, which was much needed for me personally because I went on a trip to Italy with my boyfriend and I also went to London for a couple of days for a friend's wedding. So when I was over there, I actually had probably the biggest switch off from work that I've ever had in my eight years of having this business which I'm saying that because it's absolutely related to this podcast and how getting back after a break and getting out of my routine has actually made it harder for me than it normally is to bring back that intense spark and motivation to do all the normal things that I normally do and I'm really excited to talk about it in this podcast to really share my experience with traveling and coming back and feeling a bit out of whack and how it was a bit different this time, because it's the first time I've been away on a trip for more than three or four days with a man.
It's the first trip I've ever been on where I've not worked as much. It's the first trip I've ever been on where sort of for the last half of it, I let a lot of my healthier habits slip a little bit more which means it's the first time I've got back to “reality” and struggled a bit more to be honest to get back into things and It's really made me inspired to share this with you, because I'm always wanting to share things that I feel really passionate and inspired about at the time and that's relevant at the time and it's really made me reflect on how normal this is and how many people would experience this.
I'm always doing podcasts on how to maintain your balance while you're traveling and how to boost motivation and mindset episodes all the time, but I'm even more inspired to share this one now, because it's really reminded me how it truly feels, even though I've felt it in the past, like eight to 10 years ago when I was finding my own health balance and I would overindulge on holidays and get back and feel crap and it's taken me a long time to find that balance. Now I'm feeling that all over again and so it's even more relevant to talk about with you.
I have been umming and ahhing whether I wanted to share my experience because I've had all these weird imposter thoughts as I'm about to share an episode that's all about - okay, I actually did drink a bit more than I normally do when I'm away and I did a little bit less exercise than I normally do and all of that. I've been thinking - Bec, you're a Nutritionist, you're teaching balance and always maintaining your healthy habits and maybe you shouldn't share this on the podcast because you'll look like a fraud and all this stuff. I have these weird thoughts like we all do, we're all human, but then I actually had a team meeting with my team yesterday. We all jump onto Zoom every second week and have a big meeting about what's going on in the business, what we can improve trends in the Facebook groups and so many things, but I actually got a bit vulnerable with them and I said - “I've been struggling in the last couple of weeks since I've been back, like where's my creativity”? I just feel like I'm struggling to get that spark and motivation that I normally have for work.
Whilst I've still been doing the normal business tasks to run the business, the extra things I normally do, like these podcast episodes, Instagram posts, emails, the things that take a lot of creative thinking, I've been really struggling to do and getting back into work is really similar to getting back into your healthy routine. It takes time when you've fallen off the wagon for three or two weeks and they said to me - “Bec, you're human, don't worry. It's completely normal and you should share about this on the podcast”.
So they actually inspired me to share this and I really hope even just that in itself, if you just take that away from this episode today, the point of just talking about your feelings with others and knowing that it's normal, hearing that it's just normal with what you experience, when you start to talk about it with others, even that in itself made me feel so much better for the rest of the day. Weirdly, my creativity came back and then I woke up this morning and I was really inspired to share this episode and that was simply just from them supporting me and saying Bec it’s normal and I spoke to another one of my business friends and I've been speaking to a lot of people about this, about the ebbs and flows in your motivation with anything in life, with your eating habits, with your exercise, with your career goals, just with anything there's going to be ebbs and flows.
I love giving you tips to always make sure your sort of motivation is as high as it possibly can be and now I'm going to in this episode, really talk about how to bring that motivation back when you feel like you're in a little bit of a rut, because if you're anything like me, I really thrive off feeling creative and motivated and inspired all the time. I really thrive off getting to the end of the day and knowing that I've done a good workout at the gym and I've eaten healthy and I've done the work that I want to do and I've done an Instagram post and I've done a podcast for you and if I'm not ticking all the boxes, it doesn't make me feel that great. I like to feel optimal and whilst occasional days here and there, I lose that of course, sometimes I'll get a bad sleep or it will be PMS time and I have days here and there where I feel like that, but I feel the last couple of weeks that I've been home it's been 14 days in a row of that.
So I've been slowly getting it back and I want to share the tips that I've learned since I've been back. I'll share a bit about my trip too and how and why I fell a little bit off track and how I've eased back into my lifestyle slowly to build back up the habits that I'm used to and now I'm definitely feeling this week, approaching my third week since I've been back, I do feel like that sort of motivation for work, creativity, motivation for exercise, all of that is starting to get a lot easier now, as of today, because I'm sitting here recording this for you.
Why did I not be as on track with my healthy habits as I normally am when I traveled? First of all, I just want to say that I've got episodes where I talk about how I maintain my sort of healthy balance with staying bloat-free, not gaining too much weight on holidays, maybe just maintaining weight or gaining a kilo so that I don't come back feeling crap and it takes me months to lose again. I've got lots of podcasts on that (Episode #158: (Replay) How to indulge with balance and quit the ‘all or nothing mentality’ when you go on holidays!, Episode #149: Maintaining my eating and fitness balance when I travel (and eat out at every meal), Episode #110: Tips For Eating With Balance When Travelling, Episode #80: My Italian Trip (PART 2): Eating with Balance, Maintaining my Weight , Gluten & Food Sensitivities) because it really took me years to learn how to find my balance in that way, so I'm not going to be going into that in this podcast, but I do want to say that the things that I shared in those podcasts, I did absolutely follow on this trip that I just went on mainly for the first half of it.
So really quickly, that’s a lot of steps each day, the gym when I can, it happened maybe every second day over there and then, and I also follow the Health with Bec principles, which if you've done my programs or you've been following me for a while, you'd be familiar with them, but I'm not going to be getting into that too much. What I want to talk about how this trip was different to me and I found my balance on those past trips from being solo Bec. So my trips in the past, I went to Europe twice last year to work, I went to Bali twice last year to work purely to just bring some fun into my life and have a new location because last year was maybe the most stressful year of business in my entire life.
It was just non-stop and I won't get into that but if you've been a long time listener, you would know what happened to me last year and the year before I went to Italy twice as well. Before that, for five years, I didn't travel at all. I just worked my butt off. So in the last couple of years, I have found this travel bug where I like to travel, but I'm always working there too and I've always been alone. So I'll meet up with a few friends sometimes in those trips, but all in all, I've been alone and I guess when you're alone, it's just you and so this trip was a bit different for me this time and those last trips as well I have not truly switched off from work, which is fine.
I've still got back from those trips feeling revived and I've had a reset and I felt really inspired to get back into things even more when I get home and all these things, but I still kept up my work every morning, most trips last year and the year before for, maybe three or four hours a day, or I'd sit at a cafe and I'd smash out of an hour of work because I'd be by myself and when you're by yourself, you don't have the distractions of other people eating with you and so I found it easy to just eat what I wanted to eat and as an example, like I'd go out for dinner if I was by myself when I travel and I'd maybe just have one drink and that's a big part of me finding my balance, but now my life has changed a bit and I've got a relationship now that I'm in and traveling was a tiny bit different, not hugely different, it really wasn't because I have really found my own balance myself and I'll always stay true to that.
I've really found what makes me feel healthy, what makes me feel happy and all of that. So I really try to do that as much as I can, but then now that I look back on the trip, it did absolutely affect me a little bit, and of course it does. It's the first time I've been traveling with a man for that long and it did pull me away from a couple of things. For instance, I absolutely did need to switch off from work and I still did work over there, I had to keep the business going. I still showed up for the Tribe Zoom call. I still loved checking on the Facebook groups with all my members and looking at their results. I still showed up on Instagram a little bit and I still did a few tasks that I had to do to keep the business running and that I love doing as well, but it was definitely a lot less than I'm used to.
As an example, going out for lunch or going out for coffee in the morning, or even just sitting at breakfast, I wasn't by myself anymore. I was with a man and I like to be present with Shannon, my boyfriend. This is just about work, but it relates to exercise, it relates to healthy eating, it relates to any habits too, but I was “forced”, even though I needed it, to do a lot less work because I wasn't by myself as much and so I think that's why it's the first time I've been on a trip, except for Christmas time, at Christmas time, I have two weeks off where I do no work and that is the one time of the year where I get the best switch off break, but the other trips I'm actually used to maintaining that habit of checking my emails once a day doing, a couple of hours of work and kind of keeping that work habit going when I'm away.
This trip wasn't as much, especially in the last week when I had a wedding and we're traveling to different destinations every couple of days and packing up your suitcase and it was busy in that way, so it was harder to work as well and I just let it go. I gave myself a true break from work. Then when I got back, I think that's why it's been a little bit harder in a way to just feel that intense motivation and creativity for work and get back into my routine where I'd wake up at six and smash an hour out before I go to the gym, and just all the things I normally do. I've still been doing the normal things, like I said, but just that extra dose of motivation to have that creativity that you need as a business owner, especially in my job, like just to think of ideas for Instagrams and different ways to help you and podcast episodes and all of that, it's been lacking and it's taking a couple of weeks to get back.
Now, that's the same when people go away and throw all of their sort of healthy routines out the window as well and then they get back and they wonder why it's hard to get back into the flow of things and for me, I did keep my healthy habits up. I still ate the Health with Bec way most of the time, but the difference with this trip is that in the final week or so of the trip, it was late 30s temperature wise, which was extremely hot. Our first five days were in Rome. I found it quite easy to do lots of steps there, even though it was really hot. There was a gym in our hotel, so I went to the gym a couple of times, but then in the last half of the trip, it was jumping from different towns every three days and it was really hot.
So because there were smaller towns with not as much to walk around and see, it was a different style of trip for the Amalfi coast, so my steps were a bit less because it was just too hot to exercise. I did go to the gym a couple of times, but there was definitely less exercise and then in the final sort of three or four days it was the wedding in London and then I had a late night for that. I was hung over the next day, and didn't exercise the next day.
So there was definitely less exercise than I'm used to when I'm traveling in the last week or so of the trip, plus there was more alcohol to be completely honest, because I was with Shannon, I personally am someone, I know we're all different, but I'm someone that loves having a sunset drink and then a drink with dinner. Then sometimes we'd have a drink with lunch too and there was also the wedding in there and there was also a night that we met up with some of these friends and both of those nights were really big sort of party days where there was more alcohol involved as well and so I drank more than I normally do on a day to day basis and more than I have on other trips.
In the last sort of five to six days, I just ate a bit more pasta. I started to have bread with my meals. Shannon would get ice creams after dinner or have a croissant in the morning and I was sharing that ice cream with him or when we got a dessert, I’d have a bite of his dessert or if he had a croissant in the morning, I'd have a bite and I never really had my own, I just wanted to share that all of those things add up, especially for me.
Now I'm sharing this because I also want to remind you that I have to try hard to maintain a weight that I feel confident in and happy in personally in my own body. This is different for everyone but I just want to say that I have no shame in saying that there is a way that I like to look and feel and I maintain that at home with my routine and it's literally the exact same way that I teach. I eat the same as I teach my members in the Health with Bec Tribe and also in the 3 Week Body Reset program, which is Step 1.
I eat the same as I teach others and for me, it's literally what I teach in my programs, plus a couple of little extras for weight maintenance, and for me going away, eating out at every single meal, plus the alcohol, plus then starting to have some bites of cake, some bites of ice cream all of that, it adds up and I came back feeling very bleh, bloated, really puffy in the face, low in energy, and I never get on the scales, but I'm guessing at least three kilos heavier than I was before I left and look, that's okay. It's totally fine. I totally believe in enjoying yourself in the moment and so that's exactly what I did.
So I'm not going to regret it and I'm getting back on track and it's fine, but like I've said in the last podcast that I've done, about keeping my balance while I travel, I actually still do really believe in indulging while you're away, but with a few tips and tricks to keep your balance in a way that you're indulging and you're enjoying yourself and you're immersing yourself in the culture and you're having maybe doing a little bit less exercise, but you're keeping your balance in a way that you're not coming back feeling so crap and 10 steps behind rather than three steps behind, because for me, and so many other women, it does matter. It's bloody easy to gain three or four kilos in a couple of weeks, especially if you're a foodie.
Food really adds up, especially when you're eating restaurant-prepared meals for every meal, when you're going out for dinner and then you're adding alcohol on top of that, plus some extra bread with your dinners and maybe some dessert and all of that. It really adds up and it's bloody easy to gain, but then when you get back it's hard to lose and I help women lose weight in a way that's actually quite easy -so big voluminous meals, tasty food, it's an approach that keeps women quite full, but you still have to commit and of course, there's going to be some days where you feel a little bit hungry and you've got to be conscious. A safe amount of weight to lose is about half a kilo a week and say you gain three or four kilos, it could then take two months to lose and so when I travel normally, I truly believe in indulging, but with balance so that I can come back and maybe gain a kilo, but at least that only takes me a couple of weeks to lose and just feel great again in my own body.
This time I definitely ate a little bit more than I normally do. I ate and drank and did a little bit less exercise in the final half and that's why I gained more than I would normally gain and it is going to take me a while to lose. I've been back on track with my healthy habits and doing exactly what I normally do, and I can say that my body's changed a little bit, but I still feel like it's going to be at least five weeks before I feel back to where I was before the trip and that's my kind of story this time. I'm sharing that as well, because I'm human and I'm a foodie, and it's not those past trips that I've been on where I've kept my balance, it's not like it's super easy for me to avoid having bites of croissants and that extra drink of alcohol or bread with dinner or choosing pasta for dinner. Of course I want those things, we all want those things. I'm a foodie, that's yum, but it all comes down to willpower and thinking about how it's going to make you feel after the trip or tomorrow and that's the only difference with this trip.
I had a bit more of a distraction with someone with me, so I wasn't as present to have that willpower and I just let myself have a bit extra in that final week or so and I guess I'm human and I'm not going to regret that, but also, it's made me remind you that whenever this happens, so whenever you are from your normal routine and then you feel the effects afterwards, maybe you've got more bloated or maybe you've got a small brain fog or maybe you've gained a couple of kilos, I'm always saying that it’s great.
It's actually a good thing because it is teaching you what works for your body and what doesn't work for your body and how much you can eat when you go on holiday to remain weight or how much you can eat to gain three kilo, so that, the next time you go away, you're like - okay, that last trip I did this and this and this trip, I'm going to maybe cut back on the alcohol a bit, or maybe don't have the bread with your meals. What I'm trying to say is that whenever you slip up, whenever you do something that doesn't make you feel that great, you can always look back and just use it as a lesson so that you don't do it as much in the future and whilst I've really found my balance over the last eight years, there's always times that I stray from that a little bit and then I learn again.
So I'm finding my balance all the time too and I'm not being hard on myself either, because this is the first time that I've been away with a boy, like I said, so if I really think maybe it was just me being less mindful about what I was eating and seeing him eat it. Of course when food is around and someone else is doing it, then you're not thinking about it as much and you're going to eat it.
I'm learning now how to keep my healthy routine whilst I'm with a partner and that was my first little trial of that, so that's a bit of a wrap up of that and so now I want to go into what I've done since I've been home. I shared this in far more depth in the coaching call last week with the Health with Bec Tribe.
So the Health with Bec Tribe is my membership for women after they do the 3 Week Body Reset, if they get results from the 3 Week Body Reset and they want to continue to learn how to keep losing weight and keep it off and form a really sustainable lifestyle with food and quit the yo-yo dieting. In the Health with Bec Tribe, I do fortnightly coaching calls, where everyone can submit their questions, and then I answer a couple of them, but in this one, I really wanted to share my experience with what I've been talking about today, but way more in depth. I was going into what I've been eating, and things like that with them.
The main point of this podcast is to just talk about when you get back from a trip or a period of just not feeling motivated. Let's say, maybe because we're coming out of Winter, a lot of people fall away a bit from their healthy habits or they don't exercise as much, and then maybe you're someone like that and you're trying to get that motivation back or maybe you've also been on a big trip and you've traveled and you've come back and you're finding it harder to get back into your healthy routine and back into things. I want to talk to those people because if that is you once again, I just want to say that is normal. Like I said, at the beginning of the podcast, it's normal to go through ebbs and flows, but how do you get it back, because it's really amazing how your healthy habits, if you'd stop doing them for even just a week, it's amazing how hard it is to get back into the flow and it is hard.
So what I like to suggest, and this is exactly what I've been doing too, is to build the habits back up slowly, rather than going straight back into maybe what you've done in the past. So what I mean by that is, let's say you used to go for 30 minute runs 4x a week and 3x 45 minute Pilates classes a week, and you stop that for a couple of weeks and you get back - don't go straight back into that. You would have lost a bit of fitness, plus you've lost a bit of that motivation to do that amount of exercise.
What I always recommend is to just build the habit back up by trying to go as many days as you can, but do a small amount. So make it very easy on yourself. Just tell yourself you're going to do a 15 minute walk every day and maybe one Pilates class a week, whatever it is for you, just ,ake it as small as you possibly can, because when you lose that momentum and that motivation for exercise or whatever it is, for work, for healthy eating, when you think you have to get back into the extremes, and what I mean by extremes is, your ultimate level that you're used to and you don't have the motivation to do it, it can actually cause you to just do nothing at all, because you don't have the motivation.
It's too much too soon and you'll form all of these excuses because it is really hard guys to build that back up. The better thing to do is to make it really easy on your brain and just go slow and ease back into your healthy life, your healthy routine, your healthy habits with work, ease back into it slowly, because then what happens is after a week or two of doing that, you've built the actual habit up again and you've started to increase your fitness a little bit. You'll start to feel a little bit better and then naturally, when you feel a little bit better, and you've started to build that habit back up again, it gets easier to build it up.
So action always creates momentum and if you don't think like that, that can keep you very stuck in that zone where you're like, I don't have motivation, I feel really stuck, I feel really gross, I know I want to be doing long runs again or working eight hour days again, or doing all this, but it's hard to go from zero to level 10 in one step or one week, you've got to gradually increase it and build that habit up again, and when you start, it does naturally make it easier to keep going.
Also, when you tell your brain, you're just going to do something small, especially when it relates to exercise - once you start the 15 minute walk, quite often you might actually walk for 30 minutes. You've got to make it as easy as possible on your brain as you can, and just know that action creates momentum. So if you just go small for a week or two with exercise, then it will be easier.
An example with food as well - let's say you have gone on a trip and you've had sugar every day, like heaps of carbs, heaps of alcohol and then you get back and you want to lose weight. So you want to count your calories, quit sugar, maybe you want to drop your carbs, maybe you want to have no alcohol and you want to just get straight back into a strict routine, that might be too much too soon for you as well.
So if you are someone that's trying to get back into this healthy kind of routine after a lull period, but you're struggling and you keep waking up going, today's the day, today's the day, today's the day, but then you don't do it and then you go to sleep and you're like, yep, tomorrow's the day and you don't do it. The next day is the day. This could be a reason why you're not doing it. Maybe the goals that you're setting yourself are just too much too soon? You're trying to do 10 out of 10 things, but you've been a zero for a while. You've got to work it up slowly.
So this will be different for everyone, but maybe a good thing to do is just to set one or two changes for yourself for that first week and just say, I'm going to go sugar-free for a week, but I'm not really going to focus on calories. I'm just going to eat clean food, not focus on a calorie deficit, just go sugar-free and alcohol-free for a week, that's my first step. Then the week after, I'll make another change. Once I've got the sugar out, maybe I'll then start to be more conscious of my calories so that I can lose weight by either, following one of my programs where it's literally all done for you or using a calorie calculating app. So whatever it is for you, I'm just really trying to get the point across of easing into things slowly.
Now for me, after the trip, my way of eating is quite second nature to me, so returning to the foods that I'm used to eating has been easy for me. Also, I know how good it makes me feel, so it's just a no-brainer.
Also not drinking alcohol has been so easy because I did drink far more than I'm used to and it made me feel crap and so even when I see a drink in these last couple of weeks, I haven't really been tempted. For the first week I was back, I was completely alcohol-free. The thought of even looking at a wine just didn't interest me, but then I did go out for dinner twice over the weekend and I had one drink with one of them and two drinks on the other night, but apart from that in the last two weeks that's all I've had and so I've done that too.
So my eating's been fairly fine to get back on track with, but the exercise thing - strangely, I have actually had to ease into it. Now, I think that's also because of jet lag. When I got back, I felt really tired for the first couple of days, because I didn't exercise as much in the last five days of the trip, then I got back and it was jet lag for a couple of days. It was probably a good seven days of not much exercise at all and that's definitely enough for me to lose that habit and momentum of exercise, especially when I came back feeling a bit heavier, puffier, brain-fogged, and bloated from the extra food and alcohol that I was having.
I just wasn't motivated to exercise, which I don't feel often. So I have personally eased into it slowly. What I've done up until today, so it was just a week and a half, I just literally did 20 to 30 minute walks at the gym and a couple of weight machines, whereas normally I would do maybe a 30 minute walk and five weight machines or a Pilates class or an hour walk and no weights. I'm used to doing a little bit more exercise, but I have decided to ease into it slowly and then when it hit this week, so as I'm approaching my third week of being home I did a bigger session on the step machine at the gym on Monday. Yesterday I did my first 45 minute Pilates class and then this morning I've just done a 30 minute incline power walk and five different weight machines and so I'm now doing my normal amount of exercise, but I eased into that slowly over the last couple of weeks whilst making my dietary changes, back to my normal way of eating.
So naturally I actually felt like doing more exercise this week because the bloat has gone that I developed on the trip, the brain fog has got a bit better now that I've caught up on sleep and the jet lag has gone and I haven't been drinking as much alcohol and I'm back to my sugar-free life and all of the things that I like to do that make me feel good and so I've got that motivation back for exercise now, but it took a couple of weeks of getting back into it slowly.
Same with work. I won't go into it too much because I know that obviously a lot of you aren't business owners and things like that, but with work, I've tried to just not be hard on myself on the days that I'm not super creative. I'm just like - Bec, it's all right. It's normal. It'll come back and even doing this podcast, because I haven't done it for five weeks, when you don't do things for a long time, it's harder to get that motivation back because like I always say, action creates motivation. Even for this, it took me half an hour of just sitting here before I could work up the motivation to start recording it, but I can feel that now, as soon as I started talking, it created that action and that motivation for me to keep going and voicing it with my team yesterday and them saying - Bec, it's normal to take a while to get back in the swing of things made me feel a bit better as well and I know that it's slowly coming back this week.
I want to end the podcast with talking about habits and especially when it comes to travel and how it really can take a while to build up regular healthy habits in your life, but then how quick it can be to lose them.
I do believe and I'm proud of myself on this trip, because I definitely did it as best as I could. I truly believe in, if you are in the habit of going to the gym five times a week, when you travel, don't completely throw out that out the window for a week or two, even if you don't really feel like, or you don't want to do as much and you want to give yourself a bit of a break, still go for a quick walk in the morning, still go to the gym most days, maybe every second day or just 70 to 80% of the time, purely so that you keep that habit and momentum going in your days so that when you get back, it is easier to continue. It might still be a little bit harder because you're getting back into things, but you've kept the habit going whilst you're away.
So I absolutely didn't throw my exercise habit out the window. Even though I'm saying I did less exercise in the final sort of five to six days, I still went to the gym and did something tiny on two or three of those days. Even though it's been a bit hard to get back into my normal amount of exercise after that trip, because of me feeling bloated and a bit gross from the extra food that I ate in those final five days, it was still easier for me to still show up and at least do a small walk every day or do a few weights in the gym because I kept that habit going, so I do want to say that.
Same with when you go away and in terms of your eating, some people would be like, just eat whatever you want, enjoy yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, it's important to enjoy yourself when you go away. This is just my personal opinion, but I believe in, still following a lot of your healthy principles that you normally do when you're at home that make you feel good, but then there's just a few extras on top, of course. Plus you're eating restaurant cooked meals, they're always going to be higher in calories, but the majority of the meals that I chose were still protein and veg and still stuck to the healthy vegetables at most meals, but then it was just the extra things on top that I gave into a little bit more in the final five days and obviously the extra alcohol on top.
So that's another reason why I can come back and I find it easier to keep going with my healthy eating because I like eating healthy foods that make me feel good when I'm away and keeping that momentum going so that when I get back it just feels like a no-brainer to keep continuing too. Keeping your habits up is really useful and important when you're going away, when you're traveling, when you're doing anything that sort of takes you out of your normal routine, so that when you get back, it's not going to be as hard to get back into things, as it is, if you were to just completely throw out everything out the window for a couple of weeks - no exercise, foods that you don't normally eat because then it will be harder to get back into things and always remember that.
When I was going to the gym in Rome and the times that I went to the gym, I wasn't motivated to be honest, to do as much as I'd normally do in Perth at home, but the reason I showed up and went was purely because I knew that I wanted to keep the habit going because I know how important it is to keep showing up, to keep that habit in your brain and your life so that when you get back it's easier. The more consistent you are with things, the easier it is to always stay on track and to keep those habits in your life. I hope that makes sense.
I really hope this helped you in some way. I hope it helped you to hear that I'm human too and your health journey, your career journey, your fitness journey, you're never just going to get to a point where you feel like you know all the answers and you know what to do. You're never going to not slip up. You're never going to not make mistakes. It's not reality. All of us have to constantly keep striving to find our own balance and to keep our motivation high and all of us have slip ups and times that are out of our regular routine that we're working on.
Like I said at the beginning, yes, I've found my balance when I travel, but there was a new thing added to the mix this time where it forced me to do a little bit less work than I normally do, so that's why it's been a bit harder to get back into work after this trip and it also just messed a little bit with my regular willpower and mindfulness with eating in the last five or six days and that's okay because it's literally a great lesson for me and I'm always trying to teach you that unless you have those moments, you won't find your balance and what works for you.
So I really encourage you to always reflect. If you go through a period of losing momentum, losing track, gaining weight, losing your fitness, feeling like a lull in your business, that's okay. It's normal. As long as you reflect on it and think about the things that you did that weren't serving you as well and then you can get back on track and make improvements when you get home and also for your next trip. So it's all good. A learning journey always for all of us and I hope this helps you.
If you are feeling a bit stuck and you're not motivated at the moment, I really encourage you to just know that it's normal. Itt really is. We can't feel great all the time and to get that motivation back, one of the best things that you can do is to set a goal. some things that you want to do for yourself for the next week or two, but just take it slow.
So if your thing is exercise, like I said, the beginning, just do a few walks and make it small or whatever it is, just ease into things slowly and then when that habit and momentum starts to build up after a week or two, it will be easier to increase that week after week.
I am very happy to be back. I really hope you enjoyed that episode. There's been a lot of people emailing into my team saying, when's Bec back on the podcast? When's she back? So I hope you are happy to have me back. If you enjoyed this episode and you think there might be a friend that would benefit from it, please send it on to them. I wish there were more podcasts like this out there. I know that I would have wanted to hear this myself last week or the week before, so if there is someone that you think of that might benefit from this, please send it to them or share it on your Instagram story and tag me to spread the word.
The last thing I would love to ask is if you could please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you enjoyed this episode as well, because that really helps me with the podcast and it helps other women find me too. So if you're not following me yet also on Instagram, I'm @health_with_bec on Instagram. My website is www.healthwithbec.com where you can find both of my programs to learn about them.