#54: How to exercise consistently in 2023
Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet?
January is a perfect time to set up new goals and decide what you will focus on in the New Year. Unfortunately, we all have been doing it wrong. In previous years over 50% of people who made their resolution gave up after 30 days and went back to their previous habits.
The truth is that you crave the change because we are “programmed” to grow. There is this saying, “If you don’t grow you die”. You may not literally die, but you feel you have the potential to do more with your life (whatever that means for you) and if that energy is unused, you’ll feel unhappy and frustrated.
Growing isn’t about becoming a new person. I signed up for the @KaisaFit message to ditch “NEW YEAR NEW ME” resolution. It comes from a place of self-doubt or even self-hatred. There is nothing wrong with you, you don’t have change because you’re “broken”. You want to “become a better version of yourself” because you have unlimited potential. You literally need to grow. You have dreams and hopes and you know you can achieve more. There are no limits to who you can become.
Dream big but start with small ACTIONS.
Decide the type of person you want to become
It is more difficult than it sounds. It isn’t about your goals (you still need those) but who you want to become. Let’s say you want to start exercising and be consistent with it. Focusing only on the goal, i.e. exercise two times a week isn’t enough to make things happen. You have to decide who you have to become to achieve this goal.
If you exercise consistently, you become an active person or even an athlete. Changing what you call yourself is a very powerful tool. It allows you to start taking small steps that reinforce your new identity. This will automatically make you think like an active mum and start asking yourself what an active person would do in this situation. For example.
As you’re active and walk more you may wear comfy shoes.
When you go shopping you start choosing a parking spot that is further away from the entrance.
You may even wear sports clothes more often to make it easier for you to do short workouts during the day.
You may carry a water bottle with you to stay hydrated and have the energy.
You may choose snacks that will give you best energy before or after your workout, etc.
When you define who you want to become you’ll start making different choices, choices that a person with your new identity, would make. Remember that you must start small…
2. Redefine what success means to you
People often set goals thinking that by achieving them they will be happy. That achieving those goals is a proof that they are successful. In reality, we are hardly ever satisfied with our results. We don’t even take much time to celebrate our wins. On top of that, there is a lot of stress and overwhelm. The whole process feels like hard work and any failure is a “big deal” that stalls further actions and progress.
Because we follow society rules to define our own success (external criteria) instead of our own (internal criteria) we don’t feel satisfied when we achieve these goals.
Therefore, it is important to define your own criteria for success. To do this try the following exercise. It was created by Dean Jackson, a marketing expert and entrepreneur. Take a short break, grab a pen and a piece of paper and write the second part of this sentence 10 times: “I know I'm being successful when” instead of “I know I'll be successful when”. This allows you to define your own success that makes the journey fun and help you celebrate your wins.
Here are my examples. I love exercising and teaching fitness classes. But because I worked too much, I overtrained, got injured and ended up battling with adrenal fatigue since then. This led to my resentment to my work. I wasn’t healthy and I didn’t have energy. Opposite of what my goals were when I shifted my career and quit my 9-5 job.
After having Freya, I needed to work evenings again, teach and do high intensity classes, despite of how my energy and recovery looked like. I love teaching classes, but I hated my work on those terms. It didn’t feel right to keep on pushing my body like that anymore. I was exhausted and got injured again. I quit my evening classes, but I was extremely uncomfortable and disappointed at first. My body and my family needed that change, but I felt like a failure.
It feels good now. Why? Because I redefined my criteria of success. Here are three examples of how I see success today:
“I know I am being successful when I can choose when I exercise and what type of training I do based on my energy and menstrual cycle to stay healthy and energised”,
“I know I am being successful when I can spend my evenings with my family, laughing, dancing and having fun”,
“I know I am being successful when I can give Freya a goodnight kiss every single night”
It doesn’t mean your goals don’t count anymore and you don’t have to track your progress. It means that achieving your KPIs doesn’t define your success, it only defines your next actions (or direction change) towards your goals.
3. Start with small actions, small wins
When you decide who you want to become you have to start taking small actions to reinforce your new identity. For an active mum it may mean parking the car as far away from the shop entrance to walk more. You may decide you want to do one exercise three times a week. You may want to take stairs instead of escalator or walk up the escalator instead of standing (being active doesn’t mean you have to do three intense workouts a week, at least not at first).
Choose something new, really small that will make it possible for you to do consistently. This way you have a proof of your new identity and confidence you need to continue. When this new habit becomes comfortable and automatic, choose another one.
Remember every change requires time. If you go too fast your brain/body/hormones will stop you. If you want to make a permanent change you have to focus on small actions and build it up over time.
4. Plan in advance
To make any new habit successful you have to know in advance when and where you will perform your new actions.
Sit down, have a look at your schedule and weekly plan and write everything down.
You have to write things down: your goals, who you want to become, your interior criteria of success. Write down everything and keep on writing it down every single day. This will help you create your own “navigation system”, making your brain look for all possible opportunities to help you achieve your goals. If you don’t write it down, you won’t take necessary actions. Without your small wins, you won’t reinforce your new identity and you won’t become the person you were born to become and you’re longing to become.
Plan your week and your day in advance. Write down the time and the place, plus prepare a contingency plan in case “something comes up”. You may plan to go to the gym in the morning while your kid is at the nursery/school, but if they wake up ill, you’ll need a plan B, i.e. home workout. Having that contingency plan will make it more possible for you to get your small win and reduce excuses.
Ps. The beginning of a year, month or week are the best times to take action towards your new goals as our hopes are high, giving us a reason to take action. “A fresh start feels motivating.”[1]
5. Stack your habits
This is a great concept. Humans often decide what to do next, based on the action they have just finished. Each action becomes a cue for the next one, i.e. washing your hands after going to the toilet. If you start combining your current habits with new ones, you create new cues, new triggers that will make new habit easier to create.
For example, drink a pint of water as soon as you wake up (prepare your water the evening before), park your car in the furthest corner of the car park when you shopping so you can do more steps, do a couple low impact exercises when you feel cold, grab a bottle of water when you take your car keys or drink some water when you feel hungry to make sure you’re staying hydrated throughout the day.
5. Have an accountability partner
Being able to report your success to your accountability partner increases your chances of success by 90%. It can be as simple as texting your friend by a certain time of the day that you did what you planned to do that day.
You want that to be someone who will support you and not try to discourage you.
I am guilty of not being a supportive friend. I was the one who would try to convince my friend who didn’t want to drink to have a glass of wine or a pizza instead of her salad. Even three months ago I struggled to support my friend who was doing intermittent fasting (females need a different approach to intermittent fasting than men so instead of supporting her and being there for her I tried to educate her… even though she didn’t ask for that. I tried to help but I was wrong, and it took me a bit of time before I understood that). So, if you know someone, who like me before, would try to discourage you, keep them out of the loop. Choose a person who will help you or at least respect your decision without trying to change it.
If you don’t know anyone who can become your cheerleader, send that text message to yourself but make sure you meet your own deadline (you already know the time and the place when you will take your planned action so it is easy to set the deadline). Having a physical check list that you can literally put a tick after your action of the day is finished will also help.
7. Forget perfection
No one is perfect and you don’t have to be, to be successful. You just need to do the new action more often than not. In his book “Atomic Habits” James Clear compares it to any election. To win elections you don’t have to get 100% of all votes. You only need majority. The same with creating your new identity and sticking to your new habits. You don’t need to be perfect all the time. You just need majority of your actions to match your new identity to reinforce it.
There will be days when you choose your old habits and that is ok. It doesn’t mean you failed, it just proves that change takes time. Some days you will choose not to perform your new action. You may feel so tired that you don’t want to walk more that day or you’re feeling down and need more cosy sofa time watching your favourite show and drinking cocoa. You’re a human, you will have all these different needs that also need to be met. The most important thing is always to get back to your new actions/habits as soon as possible without feeling guilt or regret.
No athlete trains and eats perfectly every single day but that doesn’t mean they’re not athletes anymore. They’re athletes because they work towards their goals the majority of the time.
That is also what you need to create your new identity. You need majority, not perfection.
8. Listen to your body – your hormones talk
As women we have to learn how to listen to our body.
Our hormones influence our rest, nutrition, lifestyle choice, training. There is a reason why you don’t feel like exercising or want to eat more while you’re menstruating. When you’re ovulating you are energised, don’t need so much food and feel like “moving mountains”. If you want to become an active mum, who also does regular exercise, you need to follow your body’s energy (your menstrual phase) when you plan your workout.
Paying attention to your menstrual cycle and learning what type of training is best for each menstrual phase will make it easier for you to be consistent with your workout. You won’t need much motivation because you won’t do HIIT when you have no energy for that or yoga when you feel like dancing.
I find it so freeing to stop forcing myself to train hard every day, not to feel guilt when I skipped a workout (because I was menstruating and didn’t have the energy for it) and be able to try different types of workouts, knowing that it is what’s best for my body and mind.
If you want to learn more about different phases of menstrual cycle and what type of training is best for each phase, click on the button below and I’ll email you a simple guide called “Your Ultimate Guide To Hormone Balancing Workouts”. Follow it for a few months and let me know if this is exactly the workout you wanted to do during each phase of your cycle. This is the best way to build a healthy relationship between your body, mind and exercise.
No more motivation needed.
I would like to hear from you what you think about these steps. This article doesn’t cover all techniques, rules and systems of new habit creation but is a good way to start and enough to become an active person.
PS. When it comes to exercise, I need you to know that there is a special order you need to follow to build strong foundations and stay injury free. You may create new amazing habits that you won’t be able to continue if you get injured. You cannot start with running, please. As a new mum (or any mum) you have to first restore your 1. abdominal strength and function, then work on your 2. flexibility, 3. mobility, 4. stability, 5. strength and 6. power. This order is necessary. Walking is amazing, you can do power walk or a Nordic walk for more intensity, but don’t run, until you are ready to do it safely.
[1] “Atomic Habits” by James Clear