3 Strategies to Increase Inner Strength and Motivation

You know when you are super excited about the possibility of a life change? You fantasize about this better version of yourself in your daydreams. You know you want this change to happen whether it is exercising more, eating healthier, doing more relaxation or meditating regularly-- or anything else you say and believe you want to do! You may start out with a ton of energy and enthusiasm! You’ve purchased a new exercise apparatus, cooking apparatus, meditation cushion, you feel set to make it happen…until…

One day the motivation is just zapped, it’s gone. Whether it’s when you are about to start moving forward towards this change or you’ve already begun making some progress and then suddenly you can’t seem to find the same energy you just had two weeks ago. Haven’t we all been there? What happens? Why does motivation go away?

I know for me it’s a negative space in my mind that tells me super mean things that zap my energy and motivation by appealing to my inner critic. These mean thoughts might be something like: “Why bother? What’s the point? You’ll never really stick with this because you never stick with anything.”  If this mean approach doesn’t work, my mind takes on a different tone…enter the self-saboteur…

The self-sabotage mode thoughts are more sneaky, they make it look like they are looking out for me and using my own words against me—they say things like, “You are too tired today.” “You deserve a rest day.” ”You will do ____________ later because you really should ______________ right now.” “You need some self-care time.” Any of these sound familiar? You are not alone!

In my personal wellness journey, my current goal is to sweat more. When given the option between walking and jogging, I usually choose to take a walk. When given the option between a power yoga class and a restorative yoga class, I tend to choose restorative yoga. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking and restorative yoga--they are wonderful sources of moving the body in a positive way. But they don’t cause me to break a sweat and my goal is to sweat for at least 30 minutes, 3-5 times per week!

I have allowed myself to ease into it slowly so I don’t shock my body and cause an injury. I have experienced the benefits--like feeling healthier, stronger, and less stressed. Then one day--it showed up—you know that part of yourself that works super hard to sabotage your progress. I call this part of myself the Deal Maker. It always has a deal, and it is super convincing.

My internal Deal Maker works super hard to get me off track! The thing is, when I fall for it and think I will take this great deal (exercise later today, exercise longer tomorrow…) with the Deal Maker, there is always another deal…

This is where developing the internal voice of your Inner Strength is absolutely essential for motivation. You need to have convincing comebacks prepared for your Deal Maker. Knowing what your Deal Maker looks and sounds like is key. Knowing what helps to get you out of your funk—or your Deal Maker thinking--will help you move through and past your resistance to change so you can continue to show up for yourself, your goals and your life consistently. 

Here are 3 useful strategies to help you increase your Inner Strength. These strategies will help you build motivation, get you out of a funk, reassess your goals and get you back into consistent action mode! 

1.    Set a Specific, Doable and Desirable Goal with Action Steps

When you set a goal, you want it to be something specific, meaning measurable. You want it to be something that is doable within your daily life so you can make it happen. You want it to be desirable, you have to actually WANT to achieve the goal. The action steps are the little steps you take that move you in the direction of your goals. These steps are necessary to the process of creating the change you desire and to remaining motivated. They can also be simplified so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.

2.    Have A Comeback Prepared!

Having a specific comeback prepared for your Deal Maker will allow you to be armed and ready when it strikes! If your Deal Maker often uses the excuse, you DESERVE _________________, because ___________________. These deserving statements can be quite convincing and send you into a space of not following through on an action step- guised as “self-care.” This will inevitably be discouraging because you will not make progress if you do not follow through with your action steps. In order to stop these inner negotiations, you need to have a phrase or comeback prepared! Something like, “I DESERVE to reach my goals,” “I DESERVE to feel healthy,” “I DESERVE to feel successful.” When you have these prepared you are more likely to tap into your Inner Strength which will create the progress you truly desire.

3.    Make Decisions Based on How You Want to Feel

How do you want to feel? Motivated? Strong? Confident? Healthy? When you make choices that align with how you want to feel, you are more likely to follow the action steps you’ve created to reach your goals. Action creates positive feelings, action alleviates fear, action makes change happen! If you want to feel healthy, you have to actively choose to make healthy choices. If you want to feel strong, you have to choose to access your Inner Strength. Try setting an intention each morning. Ask yourself, “How do I want to feel today?” and let your actions, choices and decisions be based on this specific feeling. Notice the impact on your choices throughout the day.

These three strategies, when implemented together consistently is how you can make change happen. These three strategies will help you remain motivated and deal with any inner negativity that may arise, your inner saboteur, your inner fears. Action is the cure for fear. When you take consistent action, you will reach your goals. 

Try these three ways to increase your Inner Strength and let me know how they work for you!

3 Strategies to Manage Emotional Eating During the Holiday Season

 

If you are one of the many people who struggle with emotional and stress eating, then you may be dreading the holiday season. Whether because the holidays themselves are stressful or just the addition of holiday treats being everywhere all the time is stressful—or both, stress and emotional eating can become especially rampant this time of year.

It starts with the Halloween candy. You might think to yourself, “I’ll have just one piece---you know---as a treat.” The next thing you know you have an empty bag of Reese’s Cups and you are at the store purchasing two more bags of Reese’s—because now they’re on sale, 2-for-1! 

This triggers an attitude of, “forget it, I’ll just start over in the New Year”—an attitude of eat whatever, whenever. In the back of your mind, you know this is NOT what you want. You really want to END this cycle of gaining and losing the same amount of weight every year. You want to stop this negative, damaging cycle of emotional eating. But the leftover Halloween candy is just the beginning, enter Thanksgiving…

Now, there’s pumpkin pie, apple pie, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole and more to contend with! We essentially dive into a sea of sugary foods from Halloween all the way through December! By January you may have put on some weight and feel frustrated and down on yourself. You may feel overwhelmed by how to start all over—yet again…

You do not have to spend another holiday season fighting yourself! Here are three simple and highly useful strategies to help you manage your sugar intake, be more mindful with your choices, and make it through this holiday season feeling empowered, healthy and strong rather than disappointed, frustrated and hopeless.

1. Give Yourself a Sugar Quota

According to the American Heart Association, women should have no more than 24 grams of added sugar per day and men no more than 36 grams of added sugar per day. For example, a Pumpkin Latte from a certain coffee spot has 49 grams of sugar! When you begin to pay attention to how many grams of sugar are in certain foods, you can make more empowered decisions about what to eat and how to “spend” your sugar grams each day.

During the holiday season you might choose to increase your daily sugar quota by a bit more than 24 grams, or you might make certain days exceptions, but just not every single day—which is where the trouble lies during this season! When you predetermine how much sugar you will take in daily, you are more likely to pay attention to the amount of sugar in foods and more likely to make informed decisions. This allows to you to feel strong and in control rather than weak, shameful and deprived. 

2. Make Choices Based on How You Want to Feel

When you make decisions based on how you want to feel, you are more likely to make an empowered and positive choice in the moment. Start each day with asking yourself “How do I want to feel today?” If you want to feel strong, ask yourself with each decision you make around food and in general, “does this choice support how I want to feel?”  If not, you have an opportunity to make an empowered choice to say NO to that particular food while choosing to say YES to yourself, YES to how you want to feel. There is no better feeling than showing up for yourself and making empowered choices!  This stops the feeling of deprivation and builds inner strength.

3. Focus on Vegetables

At holiday meals, (and all throughout the year!) aim for at least 50% of your plate to be loaded with vegetables. When you do this, you are not only getting in the nutrition you need, the fiber in vegetables helps to fill you up and create a feeling of satiation. This leaves less space for the sugary foods—both on your plate and in your belly! Vegetables are where “it is at” nutritionally! When you are taking in more nutrients you feel better. This sets you up to manage your stress more effectively, which helps you curb the stress-eating! When you are well nourished you tend to have fewer cravings which allows you to resist the second helping of pie at the holiday table!

Use these three strategies during this holiday season and notice how they impact your choices, your ability to manage your craving and how you feel about yourself. When you try these strategies, let me know how they work for you! 



Why Eating Well Is a Form of Self-Respect

Food is tricky. There are so many enticing foods out there. Food is often used as a motivator, a treat, and a reward. So how do we tease out eating well, intuitive eating, and being our best and healthiest versions of ourselves? This is super complicated and that’s what I am going to talk about here, so read on!

When you respect yourself and your body, you consider what you eat a part of the process of respecting yourself. While I DO NOT recommend food restrictions (dieting mindset) or withholding foods that you enjoy. This only causes feeling of deprivation, however, there are some useful guidelines that can help you make the best choice possible in the moment for your mind, your body, and for your future self—when the decision relates to what you are about to eat.

Here are a series of questions that you can ask yourself about the foods you are choosing to eat:

• Before you eat, ask your food: “what do you have to offer me?” Ideally, we want our food to offer nutrients: fiber, vitamins, minerals, protein, health fat, and carbohydrates in order to give our bodies the nourishment it needs to build healthy cells and tissues. Nutrients are the ideal answer to this question!

• Next, ask your food, “are you desirable and enjoyable to eat?” This is super important as well because if your food does not offer some form of pleasure, that may be placing you at risk of feeling unsatisfied. When you are feeling unsatisfied by a meal, you may end up mindlessly grazing other foods in order to feel a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. This contributes to the negative cycle of emotional eating.

• Next, ask yourself, “am I actually hungry for this food?” If the answer is yes, you will most likely eat the food! If the answer is no, you can ask yourself “do I want to eat this food for any reason other than taste and nutrition?” If the answer is yes, ask yourself, “why do I want to eat this food?” This is where it may get interesting. If you want to eat this food for comfort, to avoid feelings, to fill the time or to fill any other void you may be experiencing in your life, this is indicative of emotional eating.

Emotional eating is eating for the purpose of numbing out or disconnecting from uncomfortable emotions. This creates a disconnect between our bodies and our emotions. Here are some common examples of emotional eating:

• Eating when lonely which causes food to become your friend,

• Eating when you are bored which causes food to become something to do to fill your time

• Eating when you are anxious which causes food to become a way to calm yourself down

• Eating when you are tired which causes a sugar rush for energy

• Eating when you are sad which uses food to help escape the discomfort of sadness and to temporarily feel happy

• You can read more about how to heal emotional eating on my post: 6 steps to finding freedom from emotional eating.

These examples of emotional eating are not healthy reasons to eat. When you eat emotionally, you are essentially demonstrating a sense of lack of self-respect or honoring your emotions and your internal experiences.

Offering yourself empowerment when it comes to your food choices allows you to move away from a deprivation mindset. A deprivation mindset is: “I can’t have that” while an empowered, Inner Strength based mindset is: “I choose not to have that because it does not serve my health and wellness goals.” This mindset demonstrates a form of self-respect.

This is how you build your Inner Strength over time and prepare yourself to manage your emotions in another, healthier more empowered manner. You can read about this on my blog post: 5 Stages of Awareness. Emotions offer incredibly valuable information about your experience of the present moment. When you learn to become present with them, food can be just food, and this is where your power lies!

One way to begin practicing healthy eating as a form of self-respect is to go through these questions each time you make a choice surrounding food. Allow yourself to make empowered choices, listen to your intuition and your body and you will feel uplifted by your food choices.

If you are in need of support for your emotional eating, know that you are not alone. I encourage you to reach out. I have a workbook and expressive journal titled Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food. It is place to explore your relationship with food, emotional eating patterns, while offering exercises and practices to help heal and create a healthy and peaceful relationship with food. I also created the online course, Freedom from Emotional Eating, which is also designed to help you get to the root of your emotional eating and offers a step-by-step approach to heal your relationship with food as well as yourself.