Girls Guide To Weight Loss
You’re serious about losing weight and getting fit this year. There’s just one obstacle in your way. Life.
It’s busy. What can you do to make time for healthy habits? Find out in this girls guide to weight loss
Ask pretty much anyone you know if staying healthy and maintaining their desired weight is important to them, and the response will be a resounding ‘yes!’
But if you then ask if they’re able to do everything they’d like to do to stay in shape,
they’ll likely reply that they don’t have time.
Whether it’s work priorities, family commitments, running the house, or a combination of many things creating an overwhelming to-do list,
it can feel impossible to carve out some time to look after yourself, which can be extremely frustrating.
Can You Find The Time
So, is it possible to fit everything in and still lose weight? We think so, and here are a few suggestions to help you do just that.
‘I work full-time and have a family. My work/life balance isn’t good. What can I do?’
When you have a lot on your plate, it’s tempting to put everyone else’s needs before your own and view taking time for yourself to exercise as selfish.
Isn’t it the most important thing that everyone else is looked after and has what they need, whether this is colleagues at the office or family at home?
Try looking at this the other way around. How will things play out if you continue to put your own needs or desires further and further down the list of priorities?
Chances are, you’ll begin to resent the people that you’re spending the bulk of your time trying to accommodate.
How to Find The Balance
You deserve to be on an equal footing with work and family commitments, but if you struggle to accept this, it’s at least important to acknowledge that you’ll be far
better deliver your best at work and home if you spend time prioritizing and looking after yourself.
If you’re able to begin thinking this way, you’ll likely discover you don’t even need a huge shift in how you run your week to create a more appropriate sense of balance.
Think carefully and be specific about exactly what you need your ideal week of work/life balance to look like, and you will quickly find opportunities to make small changes that will get things moving in this direction.
Getting your desired outcome clear in your mind is the first step, and things will evolve from there.
Finally, talk to everyone else concerned about what you need. They might be surprised or even shocked to hear that you’re giving everything and taking nothing for yourself.
If they know what could be different and better for everyone involved, they’ll know what they can do to help make it happen.
Family Troubles
‘I get interrupted a lot by family when I try to exercise.
There’s no me-time. What can I do?’
There are a few things you can try here. The first is to remove yourself from the environment so that no one can interrupt you.
Depending on the age of children, you might be able to get out of the house to go to the local park for a quick workout or the garden if the kids can’t be left alone.
Even removing yourself to another room and closing the door might be enough to buy yourself some uninterrupted time.
Children of most ages have something that holds their attention, so set them up with distractions to avoid them pestering you.
It’s a good idea to manage their expectations of how long you need to yourself/how long they have with the distraction so everyone can make the most of this time.
Clearing Communication
Clear communication helps, and this includes advanced preparation.
Let everyone know that you’ll be busy for a while in half an hour, so anything they need should be requested before that, or they’ll need to wait until after your workout.
It might take a few tries before everyone respects that you’re not always available, but they’ll soon get used to it. And if all that fails, get them involved in your workouts.
Either they’ll love it, and you’ll have some fun family time, or they’ll hate it and leave you alone to get on with it!
Time Cannot Be Excuse.
‘I don’t have time to do more than 20 minutes of exercise a day. Is that going to be enough to get results?’
Absolutely. In fact, 20 minutes a day is plenty.
Five minutes a day would be enough provided you make good use of the time you have and keep your exercise routine as a consistent feature of your week, every week.
When looking for consistently good results with exercise, it’s also important to manage your own expectations about what you’ll achieve.
Will your routine be 20 minutes a day every day of the week?
Sometimes if this is the expectation and something gets in the way on one or two days, then people are left feeling frustrated, even though they’ve managed a workout on each of the other days.
Workout Plan
Just 15-20 minutes of focused exercise three or four times a week is enough to make excellent progress, so it might be better to set this as an objective rather than feel the need to work it out every day.
Then, if you achieve three of four workouts, you’ll feel great. If you’re able to do more, you’ll feel fantastic.
If you feel positive about what you’ve achieved, you’re more likely to stay motivated, but if you set your sights too high and don’t manage to deliver, through no fault of your own, you’ll feel demotivated and risk giving up altogether.
‘I feel so tired at the end of the day and don’t think I’d have the energy to exercise. What can I do?’
Whenever you find yourself thinking, ‘I feel too tired to exercise,’ replace this thought immediately with, ‘I’ll feel more energized after just a little bit of activity.
Final Word on Girls guide to weight loss
Fast-track the focus of your mind to the buzz of having completed an exercise session
and away from the perceived effort of getting the session started.
Thinking this way may feel a little artificial at first, but that’s simply because we’re quite familiar with the feelings and emotions that accompany the idea of being too tired to exercise,
even if we find these feelings frustrating, but we don’t often take time to create an alternative ‘argument’ in our head that could lead us to a more positive outcome.
Once we create new ways of thinking and then practice them, these can soon become the thoughts that inhabit our minds at all times.
The other thing that helps in this situation is to plan the days you’d like to exercise seven-10 days in advance and commit to doing something on each of these days, even if it’s just two minutes of activity.
If you’re tired, the prospect of a short workout will be more welcome than a long one, but
chances are, once you get started, you’ll do more than you planned.
