7 top tips to catapult you from the sofa into a healthy life.
1. Make yourself accountable. It’s easy to lose the plot when you’re not accountable. Make a pact with a friend or a group of friends to help you commit to your goals. Plan a meeting and get serious. Tell them all about your goals and plans and agree to meet or phone once a week so you can report on your progress. Create graphs and charts that measure your achievements – be specific. Tell them you want to hear a lot of cheering when reporting your wins and successes and lots of support when you’re flagging. Consider doing some kind of charity sponsorship, which again makes your journey to health, all the more public – and more difficult to renege on.
2. Focus on the next 5 minutes. Stop looking at the top of the mountain and thinking 'I'll never get there/lose that weight/ever be able to run 5 miles.' Simply focus on what you can do in the next 5 minutes – whether it be drinking water instead of wine, chatting to your best friend instead of giving in to the urge to chocolate/a cigarette, putting your trainers on and just walking up the street. 5 minutes is all you need to start doing something differently. And that’s the secret. If you keep on doing the same old thing, you keep on getting the same results. Promise yourself that you can have the wine/chocolate/sit on the sofa after your 5 minutes of doing something different is over. You will usually find that those 5 minutes will turn into 20. However, those first five minutes allow you to break the old behaviour pattern and start creating a new healthy habit.
3. Get specific about why you want what you want. Many of say we want to be thinner/fitter/younger looking etc but ask yourself – what do you think being thinner/fitter/younger looking will get you? More respect, more love, more happiness, more freedom? Once you’re clear, record a tape for yourself answering the following questions: What will it be like to have more……….(you fill in the blank – freedom/love/happiness) in my life? How will I feel when I wake up in the morning/when I go to bed at night? How will I handle any future challenges feeling my new feelings? What will be different in my life? How will others react to me? What will I look like? How will I feel about myself? What advice will I give to others about how they can feel this way too? Listen to that tape every day. Getting to the root of what you really want in life and then spelling out the actions that will get you more of that is a very motivating strategy.
4. Set yourself up to succeed by under promising. If your pattern is to
promise to drink water, eat rice cakes and run for an hour every day for the next 30 days, it's time you stopped sabotaging your success and get realistic. Set yourself realistic goals and then lower the bar. Underpromise, overdeliver and you’ll feel like you’re actually achieving something rather than feeling you are always failing.
5. Celebrate every mole hill. Don't wait 'til you've reached the top of the
mountain before you celebrate. Acknowledge yourself every day for all the
small achievements and create a reward system - from allowing yourself a lie in on Saturday for going for an early morning run in the week to buying flowers for eating healthily for three days in a trot.
6. Focus on how great you are. Low self esteem is often at the root of lack of motivation because deep down, we don’t think we can change or we don’t believe we are good enough to reach our goals. To boost self esteem, give yourself positive messages about yourself constantly. Write down 10 messages from 'You are a kind and thoughtful person' to ‘You are wise and wonderful’ and stick them all round your house/on your bedroom mirror/on the fridge door for 7 days. After 7 days you usually stop seeing them, so write another 10 messages. What you focus on expands. It’s time to change your focus.
7. Change WHO you are as well as WHAT you do. When you change behaviour you usually just change what you’re doing – if you want to be healthier, you’ll stop eating cake and start going swimming on Monday, Try a different approach and ask yourself - WHO do you want to become? (E.g. I am someone who takes care of my body at such a luxurious level that I feel pampered) Ask yourself what actions would this person take? If you want to be become a person who has enormous amounts of energy – what would you eat, how would you deal with stress, how would you get up each morning? The focus is on creating a new identity for yourself versus simply trying to change what you’re doing. Be patient as it can take a while for the results to show up but the changes are usually permanent.
1. You feel sick with excitement.
2. You ring all your friends and say: 'You never guess what I'm going to be/do?'
3. You scream 'Eureka!' in the bath.
4. You wake up very excited and go straight to the computer and starting writing and researching.
5. You don't do any work at the office because you're too busy surfing the Internet for information.
6. You start ringing round colleges, training organizations or estate agents so you can find out all that needs to be done to make the leap.
7. You start noticing other people on the train/reading articles/seeing stuff on TV that all confirms that you're doing the right thing.
8. You ring up your best friend a dozen times a day because you want to talk to someone endlessly about this.
9. You wake up, remember your bingo moment and feel a smile splatter over your face.
10. You feel impatient and raring to go – your sights are fixed firmly on the future and you become very critical of the life you have now
