You’ve made it through January – a month for New Year intentions, healthy resolutions, and inspiration. To all of those that completed our Group Cleanse – hooray! To those who started incorporating more Clean-approved meals, like this delicious chocolate mint smoothie or egg-free chickpea scramble – good work!
Whatever your unique path, you’ve made some amazing progress. Cheers to that! So now we are in February. Perhaps the weather is more harsh and we’ve been working hard for a month. How do we keep this positive momentum going strong? How do we muster up the motivation to continue these healthy habits, despite the cold, dark and dreary weather?
Our top tips for maintaining the motivation
CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF
You’ve had a really positive start to the new year. There is something incredible about new beginnings. Check in with yourself – how are you feeling? We often overlook the good things going on in our lives. Yet when something goes wrong, our entire world is consumed. How do we feel when things go right?
How were your symptoms before you started your new year intentions? How are they now? Maybe after a month of clean living, you have less bloating, acne, insomnia, or even anxiety. Take a moment to notice the positive outcomes that your hard work has manifested. You have made this happen. This momentum is worth keeping up. Don’t throw away all of that hard work.
REDISCOVER YOUR WHY
This is the foundation of everything we do. What made you want to be healthier in this new year? Maybe you want more energy to play with your kids. Maybe you received some bad news from your doctor and had to make a change. Maybe you are carrying extra weight that just isn’t serving you and you decided it was time to get rid of it. Rediscover your unique why. Let this why carry you through this next month, and even throughout the rest of the year.
AUTOMATE SOME STAPLES
Truth is, we can’t rely on motivation and willpower alone. If these were our only tools to get where we want to be in life, we would be exhausted! It helps to “automate” a few consistent things in our lives that we know support our goals – we’ve tested them out, we enjoy them, they work. Hello, morning routine!
We can all suffer from decision fatigue, especially surrounding food. We have to decide what to eat every single day, multiple times a day. We can decrease energy expenditure and brain power by simply automating some of these things, decreasing the number of conscious decisions we have to make daily. So think about it, what should you automate?
For us at Clean, a Daily Shake is a staple in our diets. This shake provides our bodies with essential nutrients, tastes delicious, is easily digested, and can be jazzed up with multiple different ingredients – it just works! Making this a daily routine supports our goals, and we don’t need motivation to make a healthy decision here. What else can you automate? Maybe it’s attending the same workout class every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Maybe it’s going to bed every weeknight at 10pm. Maybe it’s drinking a big glass of water first thing in the morning. Identify your non-negotiables, things that you will do routinely without much thought, that support your goals. Don’t budge on these unless absolutely necessary. Prioritize yourself.
UTILIZE COMMUNITY
Community is powerful. It is often easier to show up for others than for ourselves. Connect with friends that share your same values. Make plans to go to yoga, try a new workout class, or cook a delicious healthy dinner together. Host a clean dinner party with tons of veggies, good music, and mocktails. Create the kind of fun that makes you feel good. Grab an accountability partner, a friend, co-worker, virtual pen pal, and watch your success grow. Connect with other members of the Clean community on Facebook and Instagram. There is strength in numbers.
GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK
We are often much harder on ourselves than we would ever be on others. It is so easy to engage in that negative self-talk, in a space where no one else can hear us. Sometimes it is nice to take a step back and think, would I expect this from anyone else that I love and admire? We can set unrealistic expectations for ourselves. The truth is, we are human. There is only so much that we can do. We are not perfect, and trying to be is a lose-lose game. So give yourself a pat on the back for trying. Appreciate the work that you have already done to better yourself. Now, hop back on that horse and keep moving. You are powerful, beautiful, and totally capable of accomplishing your dreams.
VISUALIZE IT
Take a moment and get quiet. Sit down, close your eyes, and take a few deep belly breaths. Visualize yourself having a healthy, happy and vibrant year. Get really detailed with it and break it down into individual actions. What do you do each day to end this month feeling just as good as you do now? Take your time here. Now feel it. What does it feel like? How does reaching your health goals make you feel – confident, happy, energetic, loved, accomplished? If you can feel it now, you can make it happen. Visualization is an incredibly powerful tool for accomplishing new goals.
Know this: You are worth it. You are worth the meal prep time. You are worth the ten minutes that it takes to meditate. You are worth a night staying in to recover from a long week. These things allow you to be the best version of yourself for those around you and for yourself.
Written by Hannah Aylward
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