You want to optimise your health and take action, but where do you start?
When it comes to making change, understanding your start point can be a really important part of the process.
Because it’s very easy to focus only on change and improvement, and on what you want to be different. It’s also very easy to get focussed on the external change - whether weight loss, or fitness and strength, which are hard to maintain if you haven’t got the foundations in the right place.
Do you need to rest more?
If you’re exhausted, stressed and overwhelmed, then no matter what you do with your diet and exercise your body is going to stay in emergency mode and hold onto the calories as best it can. Just in case you need to run away from danger (our body’s fight or flight system hasn’t yet moved on from dangerous animals and warring tribes days).
But if you fix the exhaustion, focus for a while on getting good sleep, adequate rest and removing some stress, then often it’s easier and more effective to make changes to your diet and exercise plans.
do you need to find balance on your plate?
We can get stuck in a bit of a vicious cycle with food when we are tired and stressed. Both of these things will drive our physiological responses towards high sugar, high fat foods. It makes making ‘sensible’ choices hard when overtired.
You can make a good start by looking at one meal a day and finding a good balance of nutrition on your plate. Breakfast is often the best place to start. Add protein and complex carbohydrates to help you maintain energy, and try and hold out for coffee until later in the morning as it drives your blood sugar and cortisol levels up. A boiled egg and wholewheat soldiers, a vegetable/berry smoothie with a scoop of pea protein, or nuts and seeds in your morning porridge.
do you need to move a little more?
You know I think exercise helps everything, right? But it can be as simple as a morning walk around the block. I have a client who introduced a walk after school drop off, listening to an audiobook or podcast, it’s become an important part of her day and she’s even started adding a short run into the mix…took herself by surprise because she actually wanted to do it!
So, where are you right now?
What score would you give yourself on rest, energy, nourishment, physical and mental strength?
Where do you need to place your focus first?
When I work with clients in my online membership group or one to one, this is key. I recently shared this process in my free Feel Good Factor mini course and loved seeing the light bulb moments.
And in my online Wildly Well Woman Mentorship we will be taking one focus at a time and helping you create plans to put them into place in your life in a way that works. The next intake of the mentorship is in December 2020.
Or if you’d like to book a one off session to find your focus and put together a plan I’m offering 60 minute focus sessions until the end of October 2020. £99 to fully focus on you, on where you are and where you might want to place your focus to optimise your health this season. Drop me a line via the button below if you’d like to find out more.