This battle has been storming for decades (I was going to say centuries but let’s be real, dresses weighed 20 pounds back then and access to junk food was relegated to homemade mince pies. Our ancestors excelled at diet and exercise — walking around in those clothes alone would have me breaking a sweat going from courtyard to courtyard with nothing much else to do. Maybe I’d pick up a racket and try my hand at tennis — clearly, I think in terms of rich socialites when we go back 200 years.
Today, we have copious amounts of junk food to satisfy any craving, driving us to endlessly ponder, while clad in athleisurewear, do I diet or exercise first??? Or is it both? How much do I take on at once and how, HOW do I make sure I stick with it this time?!?!
With so many issues to resolve it would make sense to dive right in and try to fix everything by changing everything. At the same time. No matter how many times that way didn’t work. We’re going to try it again. Vicious. cycle.
Diving in like that — even though it doesn’t seem like much at first — is a recipe and disaster is the only meal you’ll be eating. When the road ahead is filled with carb-less dinners, protein-heavy smoothies, zero comfort foods with a heaping side order of guilt to tide you over, you’re going to get hangry real soon. And if that scale doesn’t tick a notch or two lower each time you stand on it, lord have mercy on its fragile little screen.
None of that sounds fun. And it usually always fails. Instead of repeating the same oldies, here’s what I do, which is exactly what you can do when you’re ready to decide between diet and exercise.
You’re going to:
- Simplify to amplify. Focus on making one change and one change only. Do not become an agent of chaos by tackling too much at once. If you start out by adding in exercise, do it slowly and cautiously as hell. Don’t join a gym or buy a $5,000 treadmill. Start small, like 15 minutes a day small with a program that doesn’t even require you to have any equipment. (I happen to know the perfect one!)
- Schedule in your 15-minutes and treat it like it’s the most important meeting of your day. This is planning for the resistance which you know all too well is that little voice that lives in your head, and it ruins every good intention. Every. single. one.
- Get a qualified accountability partner. You know how your kids would never listen to you but they would always listen to some other rando adult, leaving you standing there like What the…?? I tell you all the time to do something and you don’t, but you listen to this guy?? That’s going to be you and me. You’re you, and I’m the rando guy you’re going to listen to because you don’t know me well enough to blow me off — you’re too nice for that — and I’m a stickler when it comes to being an accountability partner, which is what you get when you sign up for one of my programs. (Me, you get me, not some rando guy!)
Exercise is an easy way to start creating some serious change and the best part is that once you get into the groove, you begin to change other areas of your life (i.e. diet) with more confidence and wins under your belt! THAT’S how you do it! Once you begin to see progress, and you will with one of my programs as many other women have, getting everything else in order becomes a lot easier. A helluva lot easier!
(Psssstt.. I think you need to sign up today for the upcoming challenge! Here’s what you’ll get!)
