I’ll Start on Monday

Starting things on a clear starting point always feels good.

January 1^st – New Year

1^st Month- New month

Monday- New Week.

Mentally we have this fresh start mindset with these kind of days and dates.

The problem is, if you decide to start on a Monday and it goes wrong on Wednesday, you end up writing off the rest of the week to start again Monday. Or you get to October and think well I might as well wait until January now. All that time in between start points just takes you further away from your goal. In fact if you think well I’ll start again Monday on a Thursday you far more likely to binge over the weekend because you know what’s coming.

The first thing to remember is it doesn’t matter what day you start. You can start the gym or a diet on a Friday or 6^th of the month or November, calories don’t only work in week or month long blocks.

The next thing to understand is you don’t need to be perfect. The only reason you want to stop a diet or training plan once you start is because you feel you’ve failed. You probably feel like you’ve failed when you don’t manage to do everything you planned to. Yet you are never going to stick 100% to something with no meals out, takeaways, days when things go wrong, days when you’re too busy to train. Accepting that a ‘bad’ day is just that and getting back to it the next day keeps your progress on track and means you won’t keep having to ‘start again’.

Progress is rarely linear. When we start anything we have ups and downs and your fitness or weight loss are going to be no different. Restarting every other week will be much more detrimental to that progress than the occasional bad day.

That’s not to say if what you’re doing for you doesn’t suit you and isn’t working for you, that you should just stick with it. If you want to train differently, try something new. If you wat to adjust your eating habits to suit you better, you can. Instead of seeing it as starting again though, see it as an adjustment in a long term journey, where you are going to make changes as time goes on. Those changes will be what keeps progress coming.

It might make things feel a bit messier but life is pretty messy so trying to make your fitness and diet the exception to life is pretty pointless.

Monday

Monday morning. New week. Here’s some reminders if you are looking to get fitter, slimmer, healthier.

Aim to exercise 2-3 times. Block out 5 times in your diary, if you miss a couple no harm, if you make all 5 appointments with yourself you’ve over achieved.
Try and add an extra 10 minutes walk into each day this week to increase your steps a little.
Drink a glass of water once every hour.
Track what you eat in MyFitnessPal, see where you are in comparison to your calorie goal.
If you aren’t in a calorie deficit try and reduce your intake by 200-500 calories a day.
Hit five portions of fruit and veg a day. Try to mix it up, eat a range of colours.
Eat 1.5 x your body weight (in kg) in protein a day.
Struggle to get to sleep? Try drinking your last coffee at midday.
Stretch. For a few minutes day, when you’re watching TV or at the very least once this week.
Identify one thing you struggle with and decide on one small change you can make to improve.

Monday Hungry

I’m always hungry on a Monday morning. I tend to have the same breakfast at least Monday to Thursday (apart from the occasional post HIIT class McDonalds on a Wednesday) but for some reason on a Monday morning my stomach always feels more empty.

Maybe it’s because I’ll generally eat bigger meals over the weekend and so come Monday my stomach feels like it has to readjust to the reduction in food. I probably tend to eat more carbs over the weekend so perhaps that contributes to that change in feeling full too.

Maybe it’s because I try to be a bit stricter in the week to give myself leeway over the weekend so mentally Monday is a harder adjustment.

I always try and drink plenty of water over the weekend and I probably get more seep so theoretically I should enter Monday feeling full rather than hungry but I just never do.

Does anyone else ever feel like this?

Motivation Monday

Motivation Monday posts. Posts where people either:

a) Post a motivational quote telling you to just go and do something

b) Post what they’ve done that morning

Both of these can be motivating. That little kick in the form of a meme, seeing what others have done pushing you to getting up and going to do something themselves.

They can also be a bit pointless though. If your posting them to motivate yourself fair enough, and if it does the job super, but if it’s to motivate the reader I think they sometimes backfire.

I mean I’ve posted them before too, but in reality, for every person they do motivate there are people who will look and go so what, you’ve done that doesn’t mean I can, or even look at it and just feel bad that you’re doing amazing things whilst they can’t find the motivation.

Here’s what I think is a more motivating Monday Motivation type of post.

What do you need to do when you feel unmotivated?

You need to do something, any one thing to get started. Book a class, order a pair of trainers, go for a walk on your lunch break, go to the gym after work and do ANYTHING it doesn’t matter what, buy some fruit and veg on the way home from work, cook a simple nutritious dinner with enough left over for lunch tomorrow.

Doing that one thing, whatever it is, will make you feel a bit better, in control, organised. It will provide momentum to do another small thing and then another and there you have it, you start to see results or feel a bit better in yourself and before you even realise, you have your motivation.