Have you ever noticed how much how you feel about your body and how you feel about you diet / training are interlinked?
When you feel good in yourself training and eating feel good and easy and that tends to make you feel better about how you look at the same time. Equally when you feel a bit rubbish it’s so much more tempting to comfort eat and easier to feel self conscious in the gym and lack motivation. It’s almost like a vicious circle where because you don’t feel great it’s so much harder to stick to the habits which make you fee better.
I’ve really found this to be the case since Covid. After lockdown, changes in my teaching patterns, injuries, changes in my personal life, all coming as a kind of perfect storm, I’ve really struggled to regain strength and lose gained weight and this is largely because I’ve struggled with motivation and body image at the changes to my body shape which I perceive as negative (negative comments from some people haven’t helped here).
I’ve been working on the basis that just getting started helps with motivation and trying to make myself do things regardless of how I feel with the hope that this will start to manifest itself in feeling better. It hasn’t helped that works been stressful but I’ve tried to keep doing small things regardless. It’s been frustrating because I’ve still felt bloated and I’ve had an outbreak of spots. Then this morning I woke up and thought urgh I feel bluegh but then realised I’d started my period, I suppose that explains the bloating and spots! So there’s another thing to remember about motivation and body image, your hormones are going to influence these things as much as your habits so sometimes you can do everything right and still need to accept you’ll have bad patches you need to ride out.
Right now I do feel fat and weak and slow and unfit, I have to accept that whilst I keep rebuilding habits that will help me turn that feel around because the changes won’t happen without me keeping going regardless of how I feel at the time.
Heather Sherwood Fitness 