On your journey to becoming a Real Strong Mom, a wise thing to do is work on replacing your bad habits with better ones!
This is obvious right?
Wrong!
Many of us get it wrong because we simply try to remove a bad habit without replacing the negative habit with a better one.
Our mindset usually looks something like this:
- Remove all the sugar
- No more alcohol
- No carbs for 7 days
Notice a common theme here?
We get hyper focused on ‘removing’...which leads to a mindset of restriction, emptiness and complete dissatisfaction.
Here's an example: a person that suddenly decides not to eat any carbs. However, in their desperation they end up eating peanut butter (with a spoon) like no tomorrow or start drinking more alcohol than normal. At this point they’ve completely lost sight of the fact that removing carbs was ‘supposed’ to help them drop some body fat and improve their health. Instead, this has backfired and made things worse!!
Okay so what do we do? -- Become a habit swap-er and CUT THE CRAP!
Understand that simply ‘cutting things out’ doesn’t work.
As humans, it feels strange to completely cut something out; our very nature wants to replace a removed habit with another habit in its place. Instead replace the bad habits with better ones.
For example:
● Instead of ordering out for pizza -- make your own or buy a “better” for you frozen pizza
● Walk to work instead of drive or walk on your lunch instead of sit
● Drink diet coke instead of regular coke
The long term game might be to only have the best habits and to rid yourself from harmful foods. But, this is a process and takes us time to get there. It’s far better to make small improvements that you can actually keep up, rather than trying to be perfect and constantly failing!
Keep this in mind next time you want to ‘cut something out’. Instead, ask yourself: "What’s better that I can replace this with?"
Use a good, better, best thought process.
It helps us look at our choices as a slow progression from one end of the spectrum to the other. We want to keep things simple and doable. We can't ALWAYS make the perfect choice, but we can make the good, better, or BEST choice from our options available.
Let's chat about real life examples.. What is a good, better, best choice for:
Wanting to skip your workout?
● BEST -- do it anyway
● Better -- start giving yourself permission to do half
● Good -- take a walk instead
Eating chips and salty snacks each night?
● BEST -- cutting them out
● Better -- choosing popcorn
● Good -- portioning them out and only having them 2 nights a week
Creating a Real Strong Lifestyle is all about making these tiny tweaks to our life, making better choices, and cutting the crap! When you really stick to these good, better, or best choices, you'll find that you'll just be making the BEST choices naturally over time.
You got this, MAMA!
xo, Mel
P.S. In just a few short weeks RSM is hosting a #BackToBasics 3 Day Reset -- you might just wanna mark your calendars for 9/15 -- it's going to be EPIC -- and perfect for back to school and transitioning from summer to Fall! Stay tuned cuz sign ups open 9/5!