The Establishment of Habits

It only takes 21 days to establish a habit right? Or now is it 66 days? Or 2 weeks? Whats the rule? How long do I have to force myself to do something I hate before I will learn to love it and do it naturally?

These are questions that I hear regularly and I also ask myself. But I think sometimes, if we look at our experience, we already have the answers.

Take a habit that hopefully we all do regularly, like brushing our teeth. Although when we were younger, we may have been forced to do this by our parents, as adults most of us just naturally do this at least twice a day, if not more. Do we make those decisions twice per day to avoid gum disease or cavities? Probably not. We do it probably because our mouth feels gross or we wouldn't want to worry about bad breath if we didn't. We do it for the immediate gains we get, not the long-term impacts of the habit. 

What about exercise? As I've posted, over the past 10 months, I've been exercising at least 5 days per week for 30 minutes, in the mornings. What keeps me doing this? Well, at first, I was just trying to get through the program for the feeling of accomplishment it brought. I was able to stop associating it with weight loss, which was very helpful for me and I just felt good and proud of myself for getting it done each morning, I felt strong. But I'm getting up at 5:30am, which is not at ALL natural for me. I could sleep until 8-9am on pretty much any day, even if I go to bed early. So getting up has never been easy. Well this past week for the first time in 10 months, I just chose not to get up. I reset my alarm and convinced myself that I needed a break. I had also been eating poorly, like a lot of ice cream and Digiorno pizza. I even had Garrett go get it for me Thurs night and I made and ate it at like 9:30pm. Oh yeah, and I made him get me cookie dough ice cream. This was after a week of eating things such as salami and cheese for dinner since he was out of town. Who said women can't eat like they are bachelorettes when their husbands are gone?!

It didn't feel out of control, but I felt a little guilt for a few reasons. I knew the more I ate like this day after day (I did this for about 5 days, although I typically still had healthy-ish breakfasts and lunches) my body wouldn't feel good and I would just generally feel worse energy wise. But I still did it. I sort of enjoyed it I guess, but not totally, at least not after the first bowl and first few pizza slices... 

Anyway, the point of all this is that I think it would be excellent if we could just do a habit for 9 months and then it would become natural for the rest of our life. But I don't think that is real life. I think no matter what, unless the habit is SO reinforcing naturally, or the person is SO good at remembering their reasons for doing it (if I were able to remind myself EVERY DAY at 5:30am that its important I get up because I feel so accomplished and more productive and healthy after my workouts), then there will be days when its hard still, and when its tempting to just go back to our old ways. So essentially, in my experience, it isn't about the length of time you do a habit, but learning to really focus on the immediate benefits you can get in terms of mood improvement, sense of accomplishment and pride, or other more short-term benefits. That being said, I also think some days, its just about keeping yourself accountable and doing it even when you don't 100% feel like it. Side note: I still feel this way about brushing my teeth sometimes! Anyone else??

Part of this is important for me to write down, because I need to understand it for myself. However, I feel fairly good about my ability to get back on track. I have excellent support, and I already had a healthy breakfast and worked out this morning (Saturday). But I also work with people on these exact issues. I am very cautious to not assume that my experience is other's experience. But at the same time, we are all human and have similar struggles. I used to have significant disordered eating, but I've been free of that (with minor lapses) for essentially 4 years now. Yet, behavior change and health can still be a struggle in our modern world. I would love if we all had ways to make it easier on us. And I think we can do that by making our environment more healthy, and subsidizing healthy foods instead of junk, etc etc. I also think that we can focus on health instead of just the number on the scale. But I think regardless, healthy eating and exercise will always take some work and dedication to forming different habits. 

For me, the way I'm going to continue to work on this, is to use my support system to keep me accountable. I'm going to keep sharing my goals and focus on improvements in ways I can cook at home, make healthy tasty meals, and continue to make time for exercise, and ideally make all of these things as enjoyable as possible. For me, that support comes from my husband and also my Beachbody community, but I think there are lots of places you can get this type of support. I also think that social communities and social change are essential and intimately related to our health improvement goals. Its just about finding the place or places where you feel safe to show up, be seen, and continue to work on your goals without judgment, but also without being able to slink away into the background.

Just my two cents on this fine Sat morning. 

Adjustments to my new lifestyle

For my job, I talk to people about the importance of listening to your body. I talk about the fact that diet programs often get people out of touch with their bodies true needs, and instead listening to someone else about whatever prescription for eating is recommended, typically for weight loss. 

I completely buy into this, and I think it's essential for long-term weight control. I also know that it's very hard. 

I had gotten to a point after moving to Grand Rapids, where I was truly eating intuitively much of the time. I was eating when hungry, stopping when full, and it felt great. I was actually exercising less than I had in a while, which was weird for me. But after years of struggle with disordered eating, I was feeling at peace with my body and with food, and I was pretty close to the lowest weight I had ever been since college. 

Then, as I mentioned in my previous post, I became a Beachbody coach and started exercising regularly. I started working out 5-6 days per week, which I had never done since probably high school, if that. I was, and still am, excited about how I have made changes, and I definitely feel stronger than I've felt in a long time. 

Problem is, instead of losing any weight, I ended up gaining about 4-6 lbs since I started. So right now, I am now actually closer to the weight before I got in touch with my body and felt true peace with food. Shoot.

My best guess about what is going on is this: I think a small amount of the gain is due to muscle gain, maybe 2-4 lbs at most. But I am quite convinced after thinking about this for several weeks, that at least 2-4 lbs is also due to eating more, and actual fat gain. Again, shoot. 

Despite getting in touch with my hunger and feeling pretty intuitive about my eating, I noticed something as I started to exercise more regularly. As a Beachbody coach, I am connected with a group of people who are also working on health and fitness goals. It's super cool and inspiring 95% of the time. However, I realized that about 5% of the time, I was comparing myself to their progress, and feeling the pressure to "eat better" and show the most amazing results. For me and my history, this backfired. I found myself getting stressed about the length of time I had to show my "after" picture. I also found myself getting stressed about seeing people I had not seen in a while due to concerns that I would not look enough like I had been working out as much as I had.

This experience led to about 1-2 weeks of what I would call the diet mentality and some binge eating. Not huge amounts of eating, just overeating most nights by, say, 1-2 bowls of cereal or a granola bar or 2. Or just ordering pizza and eating that for days straight. By the end I realized that I was not only feeling physically crappy, but I had somewhat reverted back to a mental state I had not been in in a LONG time. 

Luckily, I have a super supportive fiance who helped me by allowing me to talk about it. Through that, we realized that me weighing myself on Saturday morning was becoming more of a stressor than anything else. So since that day, about 2 weeks ago now. I haven't weighed myself and I do feel better. I'm still struggling a tiny bit with feeling that need to hurry up and "eat really well" so I can lose weight and feel better more quickly. I'm back from vacation and planning to do meal prep today and go for a walk in the park with our dog. 

My blog today is really just free writing about my experience. Maybe I'll come back and clean it up someday. But I want to document it, because it's so easy to forget how you felt in the struggle moments, and I do not believe I am at all alone in this experience. I fully plan to get back to my intuitive eating self, and feeling good in my body on a consistent basis, by feeding my body with good foods. 

My goals for the week are to plan healthy meals, and listen to my body, and continue to avoid that scale. At least for now... 

The Power Of Habits

I'm baaaaack, b****es!

I've been doing a lot of Shaun T related workouts now as new Beachbody coach, and that is one of Shaun T's one liners that cracks me up.

So, I'm back on here and writing because I have writer's block, and I'm hoping that just getting into the habit of writing more regularly will help me break that. I think that writing about habits makes a lot of sense, since I've been changing up a ton of my regular habits in the past 3-4 months.

I became a Beachbody coach in late January of this year, and its been amazing the positive impact it has had on my life so far. I did it only for the accountability and getting into shape to teach my Cize Live classes, but its become SO. MUCH. MORE. It has been great. Frankly its been great for a ton of reasons, but lets start with the habit changes first.

So, prior to doing a challenge group in August, I was working out about 1-2 times per week. Usually this would consist of me walking my dog Teddy, maybe doing a short 1-3 mile jog, or doing T25 (a 25 minute workout) once or twice a month. Needless to say, when I went to my Cize Live certification (I loved the workout so much I had to keep doing it, and there wasn't anyone teaching it) I was SOOOO tired and out a breath. The idea of cueing and yelling for 60 minutes while I was that out of shape, not good. So, I signed up as a coach to get the discount, and the accountability for Shaun T's Insanity Max 30 program, an 8 week program.

I started it with the intention that no matter what, I was going to at least stand in front of the TV and watch the 30 minute workouts, and do as much as I could, as close as possible to how it was laid out.

The first week, I had to skip Friday due to being EXTREMELY SORE, BUT I did all 5 workouts. I did them all between 5:30pm and 9:00pm. Oh, I should note that at this point I HATED working out in the morning, and did not think it was possible for me to enjoy it.

Second week I did the same. Mon-Fri, no workouts skipped. Amazed with myself. Pumped. I found myself naturally drinking less beer in the evenings (I was known to have a beer or two while I watched Dance Moms on DVR), and just overall eating better, without following any specific plan.

Third week, I had plans with someone on Thurs evening, so I got up and did my workout Thursday morning. It was HARD to do, but I did it. I got up, drank a bunch of coffee, had a Clif bar, and watched inspirational videos on YouTube about goals and dreams. No joke, I needed the inspiration badly. I made it through the workout, and felt pretty good. Tired as my body was not at all used to it, but tolerable. Then Friday morning I did the same, because it was really nice to not have to workout after your day is over.

The following week, I posted in my challenge group, that I was doing AM workouts Weds-Fri. My AM exercisers in the group were looking for me, and they would know if I didn't show up. That was HUGE. I also laid out my clothes, put the timer on the coffee maker so it was ready when I got up, and again took a full 30 minutes to mentally prepare to workout. Got up at 5:30am, workout began at 6:00am.

After that week, I was excited and gaining some momentum. I told my challenge group I was going to go for it. All 5 days getting up at 5:30am and working out. At this point it was week 5, and I was feeling stronger and more confident, but still pretty out of shape. But I made the commitment, got through each 30 minutes, and felt really proud. The belief, "I could never like working out in the morning" had started to shift. I was starting to actually like it. Even more, I loved the fact that I felt like I actually had time to make something decent in the evening. I have not yet consistently done so, but one habit at a time, folks.

So, I'm still somewhat amazed that in the past 3.5 months, I have worked out 5 days per week in the morning (for 25-30 minutes), and taught my class on the 6th day for 60 minutes. Who am I? is a frequent question I ask myself. 

Oh yeah, and now, I get up at 5:30am still but only drink Energize (no coffee or food) before, and I am usually ready to start by 5:45am. No inspirational videos needed, I just check some email and get going with it.

I want to capture how things changed, and here's what I think:
1) I made the change gradually, not all at once. I did the workouts at night first, then gradually shifted to the morning as I felt ready.
2) I very much set up lots of factors that would help me be successful. I set my alarm, I set out my clothes, and had coffee ready. 
3) I told all my friends what I was doing and knew they would keep me accountable and know if I showed up or not. 
4) I kept an open mind, allowing me to try it. I know logically that beliefs and habits can be changed, but I had fully accepted I would never been an AM exerciser. But MAN, its soooo much more convenient and know I believe after just 3 months, that I will workout in the morning for the rest of my life. 

We ALL have beliefs that limit us, but habit change is absolutely possible, it just takes time, persistence, realistic goals, and the appropriate environmental and social support. After my experience, I have to open myself up to the fact that truly no change if off limits.