You're Not Ready For This...Yet!

Becoming mentally fit to overcome roadblocks ahead

One of the main reasons why we struggle to be successful in our transition into a healthy lifestyle is that we aren't mentally prepared before we get started. For me, I did the mental work in tandem with the physical and nutritional work, which extended my journey out a lot longer than it should have been. Basically, I was flying the plane as I was building it and I ended up struggling more than what I needed to. So, here are three ways to get your mind right before starting your own journey into a healthy lifestyle and avoid making the same mistakes I did.

Photo: Hannah Nicole Photography

Kiss Your Fixed Mindset Goodbye

Before you go trying to lose weight, one thing is absolutely for certain: you need to adopt a growth mindset. Growth mindset is the belief that you have the abillity to learn and change for the better. And if you believe this to be true, then you're going to take the steps needed to be successful. A fixed mindset is believing that you are who you are, this is the best you'll ever be, and there's nothing that you can do to improve.

For example, I hear people say things like, "I can't try to be healthy because I wouldn't even know where to start" or "I can't understand all that healthy food stuff so I just eat whatever." These folks feel like they're not capable of learning and that their intelligence is fixed with the information they currently know. Whereas, a person who has a growth mindset would say, "I don't know where to start but I'm going to ask a health coach to help me" or "I can't understand all that healthy food stuff yet, but I will."

Helpful Hint: YET is such a powerful, three-letter word for someone who is contemplating the transition into a healthy lifestyle. Adding it to the end of an "I can't" phrase changes everything! It takes a closed-minded, definite 'no' and makes it an open-minded committment to work toward a goal.

Your Weight Does Not Determine Your Worth

When you find yourself in a position like being overweight, you tend to carry shame and guilt around with you which leads to feeling like you're not worthy of living a healthy life. And while it's popular to say your weight does not define you, it's really hard to believe that when you're in the thick of things. It seems like your weight is all you can think about and you feel like everyone is judging you for it.

So, here's the mindset shift...instead of using those negative emotions to prevent you from working toward your health goals, how about you channel them a different way and make them your reason to work that much harder. Do it because you don't want to feel ashamed of your unhealthy condition. Do it because you don't want to feel guilty for all the years you gave your body more food than what it needed. Imagine yourself being proud of your health and feeling good in your own skin! That is possible - you just have to know you're worthy of having the healthy lifestyle you want.

Helpful Hint: Reciting daily affirmations out loud is highly effective. It might sound silly to some, but after you start repeating them for so long, you really start to believe them because that belief begins to manifest inside of you. Some of my favorites are: I am enough, I am worthy of the life I want, I deserve to be happy.

Controlling the Urge

After developing the right mindset and believing you're worthy, you must understand that the single most-determining factor to success in developing a healthy lifestyle is self-discipline. Because you'll be tempted to veer off course several times during the process, it's important to know how to navigate all the feelings associated with these temptations. So, practicing self-discipline before you tackle a large health goal is extremely important.

Looking back on all the roadblocks I encountered in the beginning of my journey makes me cringe at my total lack of self-control. Sweets in the break room, restaurant menu items and portions, and my comfy couch after a long day at work are just a few things that I found extremely hard to avoid some days. And when I gave in, I felt guilty afterwards because I knew I didn't choose the path that would take me in the direction I wanted to go. But, nevertheless, I kept working on developing this habit of self-discipline as I went along and my drive became avoiding that feeling of guilt. I knew I had to somehow break the cycle - I finally stayed mindful of how terrible these unhealthy choices made me feel and delibrately chose wisely from then on out. It was hard, but I did it and lived to tell the tale. Developing discipline beforehand would have been a total game-changer for me.

Helpful Hint: To practice self-discipline, find small, attainable habits to work on that are worthwhile. For example, if you feel like you're disconnected with your significant other or friends when you eat a meal together, make an effort to put your phone away for the entirety of the time you're with them. Practicing this is worth the effort but what issues might you face during this time? You may feel a vibration and be tempted to look at the notification. So, how would you remedy this in the future? You can put your phone on silent, leave it in your car, or give it to someone else at the table for safe keeping until you can get used to the absence of your phone in your hand during dinner.

The main thing is to stand firm on your decision until you no longer yearn for whatever it is that has a hold on you. Practicing this and achieving it is absolutely crucial to succeed at your health goals because if you think longing to look at your phone is bad, imagine all the temptations you'll have during your journey to be healthy!

"By Failing to Prepare, You are Preparing to Fail"

- Benjamin Franklin

As I continue my work with clients, I'm realizing more and more that most are not sufficiently prepared, actually...some are not prepared at all, for the changes that are coming their way. And what I really love about health coaching (and what I hope people start to understand about it) is that coaches are trained to identify where their clients are in the contemplation stage of readiness. So, if someone isn't quite ready to jump in head first, we help to lay the foundation in preparation for what's to come. Now, this isn't to say that there won't be mental work to do along way but having prep work done beforehand will give you a better shot at being successful.

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