Staying motivated to work out

1 Comment April 9, 2020 Erin Haske

When I was in my 20s, I lived with a lady who got up at 4:30am to get to the gym before work. She was a self-professed not-morning person, so one day I asked her how she managed it. Her answer?

She slept in her gym clothes. It’s a genius idea.

Let’s be honest. No one is always motivated to workout. This can be a hard thing to admit. Society tells us that we should have no problems with being motivated, let alone fitting a workout into your day. But it’s actually quite difficult to stay motivated sometimes. This is especially true when exercise is a new habit, or when your routine is significantly changed (hello, COVID-19).

A big part of my job is actually helping people understand that there absolutely can be a difference between what you see in the fitness-related media (magazines, websites, TV shows) and how you actually feel about working out. That is, you don’t have to love it, or even like it 100% of the time. You do not have to always be super gung-ho motivated.

Four things that help you stay motivated

This won’t be the first thing you’ll read to tell you to find something that you enjoy doing. Not surprisingly, enjoying what you do helps a lot. The whole “no pain, no gain” mindset is not a great one – really, who wants to hurt themselves? And it has some pretty big potential drawbacks, like physical injuries

Enjoying what you do for exercise makes it a whole less lot like a chore. It doesn’t have to be intentional “exercise” either; some of my best workouts have come from gardening. Take a look at what you do regularly in life that gets you moving, especially if it helps get your heart rate up or gets you moving in different ways than you might normally.

Thinking outside the box is helpful when stuck in one place. Make your workout worth doing. What can you do around home that gets you moving, and that you need to do anyway? Lots of bigger household chores are a good workout and help you get things done.

Of course, keeping your goal in mind makes a difference too. If you want something badly enough, you’ll make it happen! Which, e… but you might not realize how much you don’t connect the effort and the outcome, in the moment. It’s so easy to find reasons not to work out. I often struggle with the excuse of “I really should do these other things…” and let that derail you. It can be helpful to keep a small reminder of your goal nearby, or near where you might be if you’re putting exercise off.

And remember, you won’t always enjoy it, and you don’t have to. No one likes to talk about it, but “work” is part of work out. I wrote this piece about staying motivated a while ago. It was inspired by some of the different things people to do keep themselves going, especially when feeling unmotivated. It’s actually one I go back to frequently in my own efforts to keep on track! Hopefully some of this might help you too.

Treating You Like Family

Leave a comment January 15, 2020 Erin Haske

I’ve noticed a trend in the health and fitness industry, and I bet you have too:

Long waits, and short appointments.

This actually is tough on everyone involved in the process: your health care team, including doctors, medical staff, and allied health practitioners, and of course, YOU.

Part of my success has stemmed from my willingness and ability to take plenty of time to get to know you, your body, what you want and need, and importantly, what a realistic program for achieving this looks like. This is a departure from the rapid turn-around times that are rapidly becoming the norm in health care (and is one of the reasons I really like being the boss!).

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not faulting the medical or allied health community at large. These people got into their work to help others, just like I have. They are often working within larger systems and sometimes under constraints that demand high patient volumes and ever-shortening appointment times. Couple this with the time it takes to clearly explain the basics of any given health condition, sometimes numerous treatment options, potential outcomes and side effects, and it’s no wonder that many patients are confused about what’s going on in their bodies. It’s not an outcome anyone is looking for.

Since I have the luxury of time, I want to use it. My goal for each patient I see is that I give them the gold standard of health care: A patient-centred approach. This means making sure I realllllly understand you. As well providing you with the best exercise and nutrition programs, I want to get what’s important to you, what your priorities are, and what achieving your goals will actually mean for your quality of life. After all, what’s the point of dieting so strictly that you miss out on your kid’s birthday party (or are too grumpy to enjoy it!)??

It also means taking the time to make sure YOU understand what you’re dealing with. I want you to understand what’s going on with your body, how your program will help, and what this means for your quality of life. In understanding your body and how it’s working, you’ll be able to more easily make informed decisions about your health care and fitness. My ultimate goal is that you are comfortable with, and confident in, your own approach to living a healthy life.

In treating you like family, I mean that I’m driven to give the same care and kindness that I want my mother to be treated with. There’s no yelling, no guilt, and no expectations other than what you’ve set for yourself. You’ll get all the time you need to understand your body and how to help it work better, and support to help you fit your new healthy habits into your lifestyle. Really, it’s all about making your program work for you, and feeling great because of it!

Over-extended?

Stop Stressing and Get Healthy

Leave a comment January 5, 2018 Erin Haske

The best way to prevent health care hassle is to minimise your need for it in the first place.

It’s not uncommon for our health challenges to get away from us. Anyone who has had a long-standing challenge to their health and fitness can tell you, getting answers can be the pits. There’s nothing worse than spending a ton of time, money, and energy on fixing a problem, and still not actually getting anywhere!

Our bodies are complex, and while medical and health care training has come a long way from the days before antibiotics, there is still a lot that we don’t know. Complicating matters, most doctors and other health care professionals spend a lot of time getting really good at one area or treatment approach. This is good, because when you need specialised care, you want someone who knows that they are doing! But what happens when you aren’t really sure which professional to see for which body problem?

Sometimes solving a health problem is straightforward – when you have had a heart attack, you see a cardiologist so that it doesn’t happen again. But it’s surprisingly common to not feel particularly well, but to be unsure about who to see for the best treatment. This is totally understandable. There is a lot of overlap among different health care professions, and many that will provide care for a problem that they are vaguely familiar with, rather than sending a patient on to someone with greater expertise. I’d bet money that rather than running from appointment to appointment in an attempt to get some symptom relief, you’d like a simple, straightforward plan for getting healthy and staying that way.

Health and fitness coaching is about providing that plan.

Your health and fitness coach will provide you with the best exercise programming and nutrition guidance that you can get, and will help you build on your strengths to provide you with a plan that will keep you in good shape for years to come. But we know our boundaries too, and when you have a challenge that we can’t help with, we’ll connect you with the person who can. With HealthFit acting as your health care hub, you wont have to worry about running from appointment to appointment and not getting solutions. Instead, you’ll have only the appointments that you need. No unnecessary treatment, and no dead ends, just feeling better.

Just imagine what you could do with all the time and money you’re spending on not getting results?

Take the first step to your best health and fitness. Contact HealthFit Coaching now to schedule your obligation-free consult call and find out what we can do for you.

Very happy woman giving thumbs up after health coaching

Get Motivated With An Awesome List

1 Comment December 15, 2017 Erin Haske

I read a piece from the Smarter Living section of the New York Times earlier this week discussing reader tips for outsmarting procrastination. While one reader had gotten his do-it-now mantra tattooed on his arm, it was another reader that submitted the tip that really struck me as spot-on:

Make your list.

Not the list you might be thinking of though – decidedly NOT a To Do list and not quite a wish list, either. The reader in question titled her list “I Will Feel Great About Today If I…” and noted that this particular list is all about giving yourself the reward of feeling awesome every day. This “reward” can be directly linked to the release of dopamine – the feel-good neurotransmitter – and the pleasure centers of the brain.

Why is this important?

Procrastination can be defined as the absence of progress, or the voluntary delay of an important task, despite knowing that you’ll suffer as a result. Avoiding a task or activity that you know is good for you, or that you need to do, often will lead to guilt, anxiety, or shame, and then to further avoidance of the task. Even thinking about those feelings is not fun! In the long run this can have a negative impact on both physical and mental health.

Back to the list!

I’m calling it The Awesome List. As a concept, recognizing that you can help yourself feel awesome is perfectly aligned with the Be Nice To Yourself bedrock of HealthFit Coaching. As a practical tool, this concept is simple and easily applied (though it may not make the actual tasks any more fun). I love this so much that it’s immediately gone into the coaching processes.

The biggest benefits of making and sticking with your own Awesome List:

It will help you prioritize. Keep your daily Awesome List short, with no more than three tasks. Remember that this isn’t a To Do list and will not encompass all you’ll get done in a day. Rather, this is about decreasing the dread that comes with the To Do list. Think of which task(s) you’ll be the most relieved to get done, or are the most challenged by. Start with one task a day.

You get to Recognize the Suck! Many tasks we put off doing are challenging, outside our comfort zone, or things that we just plain don’t want to do. It’s not uncommon to think of the task, think “ugh, not looking forward to that” and then immediately think “But I should be better at it/should enjoy doing this/should be more motivated/etc. etc. etc.” You may recognize some of these thought patterns! Like ripping a band-aid off, admitting that you don’t want to do it can actually make it easier to get the task started and get it done!

You’ll get a mental boost. This is the crux of The Awesome List! Anytime you do or get something that you wanted, your brain releases dopamine. Checking items off your Awesome List will lead to dopamine increases, and you’ll also get to bask in your accomplishment! Yay for you! And yay, because it will make it so much easier to do it again tomorrow.

Reinforces your competence and ability to get things done! We often hold ourselves back because doing new or unusual things can be intimidating. Hopelessness at starting a new task and fear of failure can loom large. But as the saying goes, done is better than perfect, even if you feel challenged by the process. No longer will you feel hopeless. You did it!

Small Win Saturday: Finding Friends Leads To Success!

Leave a comment November 25, 2017 Erin Haske

Small wins are the little things that give us a (big) boost, and lots of small wins add up to big changes and powerful breakthroughs. Small Win Saturdays are where we share a tiny-but-awesome thing that happened to a HealthFitter or a HealthFit coach in the last week. Try it out for your a mental or physical boost, or share own your small win in the comments!

Finding Friends

A HealthFit Coaching client who has been working hard at making a morning walk part of her daily routine had a great boost this week. She was on her usual route along the Coronation Drive section of Brisbane’s Bicentennial Bikeway when she ran into some friends who were finishing a similar walk. She joined them a few days later and said that she’s now walking with them a two to three times per week. She looks forward to it so much more now that she’s walking with them regularly, and has noted that she’s even going farther than she thought she could handle – and is handling it really well! Small wins are big wins!

Support in healthy choices makes them so much easier to make. If you’re struggling to cement a healthy habit, ask a friend to join you to make the going a little less tough.

Small Win Saturday: I’m A Quitter!

Leave a comment November 4, 2017 Erin Haske

I Quit My Gym Membership!

Waaaait a minute. Isn’t HealthFit supposed to be about more movement, not less? Well, yes. But we’re also all about stress management. Paying for a gym membership that I wasn’t using was making me feel guilty as heck, in equal parts for spending the money on nothing, and for actually not going. And guilt is a sure path to more stress.

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about dropping my membership for a few months now, but I felt like I shouldn’t. I felt like I should go, even though I have really been struggling to find the extra time that a gym workout would take. Keeping the membership was part of the “I’ll get there next week” lie I was telling myself. To be clear, I am still exercising, but I’m finding it way more convenient these days to sneak in a workout at home or go for a quick run than to add another half-hour of gym-commute time into an already packed day.

Once I gave some thought to where the go-to-the-gym pressure was coming from, I realized I was trying to meet some expectation that I had formed for myself: That if I didn’t do this, I was giving up on healthy and that would make me a total loser – and that’s much nicer than what my brain actually says. As an aside, I had a great reminder from my psychologist recently: it’s mind-boggling how we speak to ourselves, and recognizing it when it happens can actually make a big difference.

All this guilt and self-disappointment, despite the fact that I’m still practicing what I preach. I’m often slow to act on the opportunities to decrease stress in my own life, but I finally figured out that I could reframe “I should go to the gym” to “I prefer to work out at home”. I’m guilt-free (at least about this!) and have $60 bucks a month to spend on yoga classes that I will enjoy way more!

Small wins can be big wins! What was your small win this week?

Deep Sleep Music on YouTube

I often struggle to get my brain to shut down in the evening so I can fall asleep. Since finding it earlier this week though, I’ve been able to stop my brain in it’s tracks. This sleep-sounds track has quickly become my sure-fire way to calm down, switch off, and get some shut eye. It’s gentle and unobtrusive, and I can focus on it without getting wrapped up in it. With this on, I drop off in minutes.

As we prepare to sleep, our brains generally decent through four stages of electrical activity from highly active to less active. The final state of low-level activity is the delta wave state, which is associated with deep sleep and dreaming.

This music is designed to help you achieve delta wave state. This particular track is about three hours long. As a norm, your brain becomes accustomed to noises, so it’s likely that you won’t actually hear the whole track. But it’s great to help you relax and kick that sleeplessness and insomnia to the curb. Small wins can be big wins!

Small Win Saturday: Free Deep Sleep Music

Aside Leave a comment October 28, 2017 Erin Haske