Motivation and Self Care

by Tia Dewick in News

I have led an active lifestyle for as long as I can remember; however, the challenges of the current climate have most certainly impinged upon my ability to sustain my usual lifestyle and that’s okay. The most important thing is that we don’t beat ourselves up about not having our usual lifestyle and instead focus on what we can control and work from there. So what can we control? Find out below👇🏻

 

Self Care

Self care is defined as the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health. Most people are currently falling into the mindset of “I’ll get back to looking after my health once the pandemic is over”, but that’s dangerous territory. Many physiological complications can occur in just a few months. Without exercising and maintaining a healthy diet, many factors such as elevations in cholesterol, BMI, blood glucose and many more could lead you to be at risk of many health conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. But these conditions ARE preventable and so we must focus on our self care now more than ever to prevent these complications from occurring

 

– Although physical health is a powerful predictor of health outcomes, so is mental health. It’s really easy to fall into that trap of just popping the tele on when you finish work or once you’ve done your daily chores and spend the rest of the day there. But instead you need to make sure you remember to do AT LEAST 1 thing every day that you enjoy. This could be having a bath whilst listening to music, FaceTiming your friend or even having cuddles with a fury friend🐶. Giving yourself that ‘me time’ is so important for our mental health

 

-From the inevitable increase in sedentary time for many individuals during this pandemic, you’re far more likely to suffer from muscular aches and pains so try to regularly stand up and move around every 30-60 minutes and even get some extra stretching/yoga into your routine to help prevent these aches and pains and to loosen up any tightness and knots

 

-Also try to keep your routine as ‘normal’ as possible. If you used to walk up a flight of stairs to get to work, take a walk up your stairs at home to make up for not having that routine whilst working from home. And continue to have your same eating routine so try not to eat those snacks just because they’re so easily accessible as you’re not too far from the kitchen. If it helps, don’t buy those naughty foods, keep them out of the house! Ask yourself, am I really hungry? Would I normally eat this or am I just bored?

 

Motivation

How can you get yourself motivated to keep on top of these self care techniques? Find out below 👇🏻

-Planning ahead is one of the key methods to motivate us to lead those healthy lifestyles. If you don’t tell yourself which sessions you will join next week, before you know it you’ve skipped lots of sessions and don’t have the capacity to complete your 3 sessions a week target. Alternatively, telling yourself you are going to be at a class at a certain time means you are much more likely to meet your weekly targets and fit those sessions in

 

– Mindset is a powerful motivational component. It’s very easy to guilt ourselves for not doing our usual level of activity pre-lockdown, but a more effective approach would be to use it as a lesson and motivational tool. Alternatively, when that ‘guilt’ kicks in, remind yourself why you want to look after your health. This could be for better physical functioning to help care for your grandchildren or because you’ve still got that marathon to do that you’d signed up for. And so instead of festering in that guilt, tell yourself you’ll go for an extra walk this week or do some extra chores around the house to try and increase your daily physical activity accumulation

 

– If your current routine isn’t working for you, change it up! Are you struggling to workout on your own? Then grab a friend or a partner to join in! Are you struggling to motivate yourself to do a class after work? Then try a morning class! Just because you do something in a certain order now doesn’t mean it’s what’s best. Establish what you do and don’t like about your current routine, maybe even make a list, and come up with a plan as to how you can overcome the current limitations

 

– In addition to changing your routine, you may also need to change your perspective. Do you currently view exercise as a chore? Like something you don’t want to do? Well that’s where you’re going wrong! Have a think about what you enjoy about exercise, and every time you feel like you don’t want to do a class, remember what you love about it instead of focusing on the fact that you don’t fancy it today. If you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to want to do it. So get those positive pants on and remember why you love it 💪🏻

– One of the oldest tricks in the book to help motivate yourself is to set a goal or challenge! A goal could include wanting to lift a certain weight for x amount of reps on a bicep curl or lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date. For double motivation you could also set yourself a challenge. Have you heard of the 100 mile challenge in July? The rules of this challenge is to complete 100 miles over the month of July with any form of activity that suits you such as running, walking, cycling. This is quite a large challenge so even setting yourself small, weekly goals such as walking 10 miles in a week could help you get motivated to be active

 

– Put variety into your routine! Do you always sign up for the circuits classes? Then why not try cardio and core?! Or try going for a bike ride. The more variety you have in your routine, the more fun you’ll have and so the more motivated you’ll be to keep it going!

 

-My final trick to help keep you motivated whilst working out at home is to assign a particular area at home for your workouts. You know that feeling when you arrive at the gym and you have that motivation boost because you associate the gym with exercise and working hard? The same applies for at home. If you perform your exercise in the room you would usually lounge in or work from, you’re less likely to get that motivation kick prior to your workout. So assign yourself a workout room and keep it solely for workout use!