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Do you struggle with lack of motivation? Have you felt like you either don’t have a desire to change or you don’t think you have what it takes to make the change? I don’t know anything about any of your personal lives or lifestyle but I bet there are those who are just barely surviving, and there are those who are living or working in a toxic environment. There are people who are in relationships that are challenging, and I know there are people who feel very blessed and fortunate for what they have. In either case, I have to believe that everyone is doing the best they can. Yes, you are doing the best you can under the circumstances.We need to take things in stride and find a starting point that isn’t threatening , we need to make simple modifications to an existing behavior that is already in place. For example, maybe it’s eating dinner 15 minutes earlier than you normally do, or taking a stroll around the building before you go into work. Everything we do serves a purpose, whether we like it or not. This is important for you to know because often the answers and solutions to a problem can be found by understanding the purpose the behavior serves. For example, Mary, who would exercise consistently for weeks at a time and then all of a sudden she would stop exercising for weeks at a time but there was no consistency in the weeks she would exercise and wouldn’t exercise. So she started to keep track of the weeks she would exercise and the weeks she wouldn’t exercise and you will be amazed to know what we learned. Her husband traveled a lot. Come to find out, she would exercise the weeks he was gone and she wouldn’t exercise the weeks he was home. When I asked her why she did this, she said it was because he always criticized her workouts when he was around. He would say things like “are you already done, I don’t think you’re exercising long or hard enough for it to be doing you any good.” So she stopped exercising when he was in town to avoid the criticism. That was incredibly useful information, so she didn’t have issues with being inconsistent. She was inconsistent because she was protecting herself from being judged!!! So it’s important to know why we do what we do because there is always something we can learn from it. Another important factor to realize is that change is a process of trial and error, success and failure, patience and understanding, honesty and introspection. Very rarely will the first attempt be the answer, but every attempt teaches us something, what worked and what didn’t work. From there we keep modifying things until we figure out what does work. Don’t focus on how hard, how often, how long, or what types of exercises you need do to lose weight or burn the most number of calories. Don’t focus on food in terms of weight loss, weight management, carbs, fat grams, or calories, or what you should or shouldn’t eat, or how much you should weigh. Don’t think of exercise and food in terms of being “good or bad.” Instead I focus on the purpose food is serving in your lifestyle and what gets in the way of making exercise a habit. Think about this: Do diet and exercise go hand in hand for you? Do your eating habits affect how much you exercise? or vice a versa? Does how much you exercise affect what you eat? Well, let me tell you this, once you breakthrough your exercise barriers you will see other areas of your life improve. For example, you may find that you don’t procrastinate as much, or your expectations become more and more realistic. It is then when you will find the motivation to exercise and make that lifestyle change.
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exercise, weight loss, lifestyle, lose weight, lack of motivation, lifestyle change, weight management,
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