Fit It Together

This blog is designed to create lasting and successful behaviour changes. If your change your mindset and behaviours you’ll be able to fit in enough health and fitness measures into your day to see good health and fitness improvements in your life without necessarily needing more time.

Take this scenario-

I tell you to stretch your neck out daily because otherwise it will lead to lack of mobility, pain and possibly degeneration of the spine but then the thought goes out of your mind despite an email reminder and week in and week out you forget even though you mean to do it each week and it’s causing you discomfort.

Same scenario but with changing your behaviour-

You scheduled in an alarm/ reminder on your phone at the time when you have to sit down for a few minutes and then stretched out your neck and found you felt better for it, possible slept better that night and you didn’t require pain relief for headaches or neck tension you usually get. This intern changed your mindset to stretching as you felt the benefits and it’s an easy win each day. Over the coming weeks, this now becomes routine and part of your life so the need for reminders is no longer there.

Scenario 2-

You know you shouldn’t eat you lunch in front of your laptop reading news/working/surfing social media but it feels more productive and it means you can just eat whenever you “get time”. You forget to eat until 2pm and you feel really hungry. You’ll eat almost anything and you feel like you need a sugar and caffeine hit too. You smash it all back while replying to emails. You still feel tired daily and are struggling to shift the extra pounds you gained “somewhere”.

Scenario 2-

You schedule in time in your diary for your lunch breaks daily and go find somewhere where you can get outdoors to eat or at least get some natural light. You sit and eat mindfully while watching the world, maybe eating slower, chewing your food more, mindful of how much you’re eating, whilst stepping away from the stress that screens can bring, maybe breathing a little deeper and not forgetting the extra movement you got it in the process of going outdoors. You’ve noticed over the weeks you’re feeling better- less stressed, your digestive issues don’t occur, you feel more recharged and productive and even clarity of thought has improved. It seems that the extra fat around the midline has effortlessly melted away too.

I’ve found the easiest way to change my mindset is by changing my behaviour. If something is planned for in advance then that takes the decision making part away which simplifies things. And when these new routines becomes daily routines like cleaning your teeth then it’s not a chore especially because you know you’re benefiting from it.

For some just changing their language can be an effective way to change their mindset and behaviour-

“I have to walk the dog”, versus- “I get to walk the dog”. The word have brings a feeling of heaviness to it. The word get implies reward or fun.

Looking at some tasks in life as your daily exercise is not to be underestimated. How much you’ve moved in the day can be- mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, carry the shopping, walking around the zoo, playing with the kids or grandkids etc. The healthiest people in the world aren’t the ones that sit all day and then workout for an hour. If you look at these as positive movements for your health it can eliminate the feeling of laziness if you don’t “exercise”.

You can literally think yourself healthier and the opposite is also true. If you can wake up feeling grateful about something then the day’s off to a good start.

Start small as to not set the bar too high. If you change one thing a month (it takes around a month to forge new habits/routines) then you’ll be leading a whole new lifestyle by the time a year goes by!

Check out some of my other blogs for new routine ideas (here’s a good place to start) . If your adding/changing 12 habits in the year, see whether you need a balance of movement, nutrition, sleep and mindfulness or whether you should focus more on just 2 of these pillars of health such as sleep and mindfulness. There is no perfect format but every positive change counts so what will be your first positive new regime for this month?

Thanks for reading!

Rich