Are you at your wits end where your health is concerned?
I know that many get discouraged by setbacks in your health journey. Illness strikes, bad weather hits, house renovations disrupt your life, the gym closes, the basement floods, company arrives and never leaves…on and on…
There’s no shortage of things that can get in the way of our health and fitness. And if we give in, we will always have a LEGITIMATE excuse to take our eyes off our goals.
No matter how legitimate our excuse is though, our health will suffer. And when we are feeling over weight or unfit or even on our death bed, will we be comforted by the fact that we had a legitimate excuse to let our health slide?
Probably not.
So my advice to you is this:
Do what you can with what you have where you are…
We can acknowledge that we all have challenges but then we need to find creative solutions if we’re really motivated to reach our health goals.
Will our solutions be perfect? Likely not. They will be a compromise at best, but doing ‘something’ to take care of your health is better than throwing in the towel and doing nothing.
Let’s take an example.
Let’s say your in-laws are visiting and staying in your extra bedroom that you use as a fitness room. Your home workouts in your fitness area are now curtailed. You have no opportunity to go to a gym given that you have company to entertain. Your extra time is spent entertaining and cooking special meals to accommodate their dietary restrictions.
Seems like your workouts are just ‘over’ until your company leaves, right?
Not so fast. This is where the theory of ‘Do what you can with what you have where you are…’ comes in. It’s time to brainstorm some options for movement – even though the options WON’T BE IDEAL, they will help move you in the direction of your goals more so than giving in completely.
You could consider these options:
- Explain your health goals to your company
- Offer to include your company in some kind of exercise
- Get up 15 minutes earlier and do a body weight workout in the living room
- Take a 10 minute break some time in the day to go outside to do something active
- When your company is on an errand, blast in a quick workout at home
- Do 20 squats every time you walk into a new room
- Do 10 push ups before you fall into bed
*Sit down for 5-10 minutes to do a brain dump. WRITE DOWN every single idea. What might seem un-doable at first, might turn out to be your best idea yet, so don’t dismiss anything at first. You’re likely to come up with ‘something’.
This is a silly but realistic road block that many of you have come up against. Similar ones with fitness or nutrition come up all the time. The fact is, you likely have a solution at your finger tips if you’re a little creative.
Just know that health and wellness does NOT have to be 100% perfect ‘all or nothing’.
It’s important to accept less than perfect condition and that compromise is what will get you further to your goals than just putting those goals on the shelf to be accomplished when circumstances change.
There will always be challenging circumstances. The challenge is to stay the course when things aren’t perfect.
Do what you can with what you have where you are…
You’ll be pleasantly surprised that the baby steps you’re able to take with this attitude will take you miles…
Call to Action:
If you need some support, I’m here for you. Let’s have a conversation about the SPECIFICS of what can be done with what you have where you are that will take you the furthest.
We can get on a call, but first tell me a little about yourself here.