Define Your Daily Distraction
Posted on Jan 2, 2012 | 10 comments
Is Your New Year’s Resolution List Complete?:
- Lose weight – check!
- Eat healthier (more produce + watch portion sizes) – check!
- Exercise 5 days a week – check!
- Daily distraction – Feel good enough to {fill in the blank} each day – check?
Daily distraction – huh?
A distraction should be just that, something that provides a positive distraction from a more challenging goal. It’s a mini-goal. A goal that’s obtainable – each day – while you achieve the big goal over several months. It’s what you would enjoy – each day – as you benefited from making positive health changes.
Here are some real examples from my clients:
- “I would like to feel good enough to read for even a half hour before bed each night.”
- “I want to start writing again – even just 20 minutes a day to get started again.”
- “I want to have the energy to refinish my deck before the end of summer.”
It’s all about enjoying the journey. I get that a great part (and a huge motivator) of losing weight is to look better. And, yup, you will. But my hope for you is that you find a daily motivator – a distraction – to keep you on that journey for a beautiful, sustainable, long lifetime.
Here’s my offer: Until noon (CST) Tues. Jan. 3rd, I’ll give everyone that shares their distraction by commenting to this post a free meal planning kit. No strings. No further commitment. Just a chance to try something new this year.
To 2012- ~Teri
(Code for free kit will be emailed to email address provided while commenting. Email addresses are not shown as part of the reply below and are never shared.)
I want my body to not hurt anymore when I wake up in the morning and for the stress knots to go away in my shoulders and my neck!! Hopefully by eating more proteins and exercising more, everything will fall into place!
I would like to be better balanced to get a good night’s rest so I can make my little ones a nutritious warm meal in the mornings. Most days I’m so sleepy I trade another half hour of sleep for a bowl of cereal for them!
I’m looking forward to both eating better and exercising more, for the long term. My daily distraction is getting up a little early to have a great start to the day. No more rushing to get ready and go to work. The bed feels so good in the morning, but so does starting the day off right!
I will find time to read at least one book to both of my children before bed. Working full time, making dinner, getting through homework and housework, the evenings are hectic. I will make time for my children, as they are the best distraction!
I’m hoping to have more energy to enjoy more creative pursuits! An hour or so after the kids go to bed to make or do something fun would be so much better for my soul than TV!
I have just started. And if I don’t have my papers with I won’t know what to eat. I need to “just do it” as the old Nike ad said!
I would like to get in some form of exercise every day – even if it is just 10 minutes of stretching at the beginning and/or end of the day!
Thanks to everyone for these great distractions! I wish you all the best of luck and please keep us updated on your progress!
I would like to have energy, I don’t want to rely on multiple cups of coffee everyday. And I’d like to make it to hot yoga once a week! After baby,husband, work, house I drink coffee all day (without gaining very much energy.) and then never have strength left for “me” time. My answer is: energy. Where is the energy?
-Amanda Fair Oaks Ca.
Hi Amanda- Your struggle with coffee is, unfortunately, one that is shared by so many people. And as kids start drinking it earlier and earlier, my suspicion is that this problem will only continue to get worse.
When you drink coffee, you induce the stress flight-or-flight response in your body. That’s what makes you, only temporarily, feel a boost of energy. But once that stimuli is taken away, your cells are even more depleted than before that cup of coffee. This cycle, repeated daily, will lead to greater and greater fatigue.
Here’s the good news: you can break the habit and retrain your cells to produce adequate energy on their own again. The not so great news: this takes time and patience (but so worth it!).
Stay tuned for more posts on the effects of caffeine and stress on our health. It is a topic I am very passionate about.
Thanks for sharing- and please keep me updated on your progress. ~Teri