Finding Your Mojo Again

Posted on 22 July, 2015

In order for us to find the will and motivation to change we must find a compelling reason.

It’s July. It’s freezing. I’m over it. I don’t want to do anything except stay in my ugg boots all day and eat hot chips with aioli.

But I shouldn’t. I’m a nutritionist and turning into a couch potato would be bad for business. I need to wake up perky, scull my lemon water and burst out of the door with vigour and enthusiasm. I’m sure that’s what people expect me to do. Honestly, I rarely do that. I’m the grumpiest thing alive at 6am and when I do put lemon in my water, I think it’s really gross. So sour!

Over the past six months, The Healthy Eating Hub has grown into a demanding little organisation and I have subsequently turned into this worn out, crazy workaholic mum who hasn’t exercised properly for months and wouldn’t know the meaning of the words ‘consistent diet’ if they hit me in the face. Except for the fact that my job is to help people eat better, so I do actually know what those words mean –that’s just not how I’d describe my diet… Oh you know what I mean…

As my attention was slowly steered away by a growing business, other parts of my life, mainly exercising and eating, started unraveling (there have also been moments when I haven’t showered for days and my husband referred to me as a ’mad scientist’). I actually knew it was happening back in January, but I felt like I had little control over it and thus all my attempts to change were futile.

It’s now July. It’s freezing. I have finally found my mojo.

So what does one do, when you know how to eat well and exercise, but you can’t actually make it work for yourself?

I have some thoughts. They’re the thoughts I had that got me back into the groove of eating well and exercising. I hope they help you find your mojo or groove and get you back in the game.

I want to be healthy when I’m 60.

When I was 21, I worked as a corporate health consultant. One day, whilst at a government department, I saw two women for their individual health checks. They were both 60. They came in one after the other.

The first woman looked 60 to me. She was overweight, with grey hair and slumped shoulders. More than her appearance, however, she seemed miserable. She had back pain, lacked energy and felt like her life was all work and chores. She hadn’t exercised since her twenties. She scored moderate-high on her heart disease risk rating.

When the second woman walked in I had to double-check her birth date. I was expecting another 60-year-old woman and this one didn’t look a day over 45. She was a healthy weight, had her hair neatly presented and walked with immaculate posture. I went on to learn that she rode her bike to work everyday and joined in the workplace yoga three times per week. She loved her work and her family and regularly engaged in a range of recreational activities over the weekend.

I was thinking about that second woman recently and I wanted to be like her.

You’ve got to find a reason to change.

Change is uncomfortable and unknown. Ugg boots, chips and aioli are not unknown. They’re nice. Aioli is actually so nice on everything… Sorry, I’m getting distracted.

In order for us to find the will and motivation to change we must find a compelling reason. Until then, all we have are good intentions but no real desire to move away from the aioli – I mean current situation that we find ourselves in.

For me, the reason was to do with performance. Life performance. I want my business to do well and I want to be a pleasant wife and mother.

I take immense pride in the advice that I provide my clients and I want them to get the 100% best out of me, every single time. I couldn’t give that consistently with the way I was eating. My problem was a new one for me. I’d become so engrossed in my work that I’d completely forget to eat, or eating was seen as a nuisance, because I was on such a roll with getting through my ‘to do’ list.

This was me: “Gah, how annoying that I have to feed myself or I’ll die.”

Going all day without eating meant that by the afternoon I was having difficulty concentrating and making decisions. By about 3pm, I’d crash with low blood sugar and lose the emotional plot in the school car park and then pretty much eat like a bandit till it was time to go to bed. So mature Kate, so mature.

Just knowing that this was not a healthy pattern did not motivate me to change for six whole months. Realising that the quality of my work depended on me eating well and that I also wanted to be cohesive for my family in the evenings and not a disheveled mess by the end of the day, was the catalyst for making me prioritise healthy meals and that the ‘to do’ list would still be there tomorrow.

I can only do what I can do.

Expectation management. This is the best statement that I’ve found to manage my perfectionism and actually be OK with what I’ve achieved within a day. It’s expectation management that has got me exercising again.

When it came to my exercise, this year brought new routines, a commute from Queanbeyan to Gungahlin (I know, that’s commitment right there) and the overarching thought, that it’s all too hard.

The reason it was all too hard was because I was trying to exercise via an old routine when my situation had changed. Last year I was training 8-10 hours per week. This year, with the business being more demanding (as well as the commute), this was just not realistic.

My mum used to say that as you go through different seasons in life you have to renegotiate. You can’t keep doing the old things in a new situation; you’ll just find yourself frustrated. Do a little bit of expectation management and give yourself something realistic to commit to, rather than aiming too high and then not even bothering to even attempt it.

When I realised that I can only do what I can do, and what I could do was three sessions a week in my lunch break, all of a sudden, I felt like I’d set myself something achievable. I’m loving my new workout routine and you can read about it here.

There’s actually research that shows that a persons’ perceived level of control over their situation determines their level of weight loss or other change’s success. If you set yourself a goal that you know you can achieve, you’re more likely to achieve it.

Change only happens in the present.

You can’t change in the past; it’s been and gone. You can’t change in the future; it hasn’t come yet. You can only change in the present moment you find yourself in.

Really think about that for a moment.

We waste so much energy worrying about change in the past and in the future, the two places where it can’t occur, that we miss our moment to change in the present.

We feel guilty about what we ate last night, last weekend and last year. We wish we’d exercised for the past week, the past month, our whole lives.

We then put off change to the future. I’ll exercise tomorrow, or Monday, or next week. I’ll write a meal plan tomorrow, or next week, or next month.

You can only change in the now, so be present in your life. Be in the moment. When I’m in the moment and my lunch break comes up I choose to stop my work, walk away from my desk and go get something nourishing to eat. I do the same for my exercise sessions.

As soon as my brain starts wishing I’d done better last week or putting stuff off till tomorrow, that’s when I know I’m not changing, I’m just letting myself stay in my rut.

No matter what place you find yourself in, remember that you don’t have to stay there forever. You do have the power to choose differently. You might need a bit of oomph to get out of your rut but once you’re out, you’re out!

How have you got your mojo back?

Feature image of Asian girl resting on table from shutterstock.com