1 Accidental habit you do every day that’s sabotaging your health goals
Mama, I know that you want to hit your health goals. You want to lose weight, get stronger and feel better in your skin. I also know that you’re crazy busy! That life doesn’t slow down for a second and it feels like you can’t catch up. Sometimes you’re too tired to wake up early and go to the gym. Maybe you’re so busy running your kids around that you don’t have time to cook a healthy meal. Trust me, I get it. But those rationalizations are the accidental habit that is stopping you from reaching your health goals.
Did that make you feel a little defensive?
Maybe you thought, “Well, that’s easy for her to say, she’s just naturally fit.” or “Yeah, I want to lose weight but I have three under three and it’s just too hard for me right now.”
Rationalizing is such a sneaky habit. Most of the time we don’t even realize that we’re doing it because it’s our brain’s defense mechanism. Acknowledging that we’re not doing what we “should” be doing can cause guilt and our brains and bodies don’t like that feeling! So your brain kicks in and comes up with an excuse to protect you.
Most of the reasons and rationalizations you come up with will be justifiable. Your brain has to make up a believable excuse to make the guilt go away.
However, when it comes down to it, justifications and rationalizations only get in the way of achieving your goals. They provide temporary relief but long-term they end up hurting you!
I want to help you replace the habit of rationalization with recognition and accountability so that you can reach your health goals and live the happy, healthy life you’re striving for!
Start recognizing your rationalizations.
If there is only one skill you learn from me, I want it to be recognizing your thoughts. Thoughts are the most powerful instinct we have as humans.
Our thoughts control our feelings. Our feelings control our actions. And our actions control our results.
But most people don’t realize that thoughts can be controlled. We have a thought and believe we have to act on it. When in reality you can dismiss thoughts and replace them with ones that serve you better.
For example, say Wednesday night is crazy for you. You are running around dropping your kids off and picking them up from all their activities. You might think to yourself, “Man, it’s going to be really hard to make dinner on Wednesday. We should probably eat out.”
“We should probably eat out” is just a thought. You can choose to follow that thought and turn it into an action. Or you can choose a new thought.
The brain has two places where thoughts come from. The first is the primitive brain, or as I like to call it, the toddler brain. The toddler brain looks for the easiest road. It doesn’t care if you reach your goals, as long as it’s comfortable and happy. All rationalizations come from your toddler brain.
On the other hand, your pre-frontal cortex, or adult brain, weighs pros and cons and then makes logical decisions. Like an adult, it looks down the road, weighs the consequences of an action and then makes a decision.
Your toddler brain is usually the loudest and the quickest to respond. So when you have a thought that isn’t going to serve you long-term, that’s your toddler brain trying to tell you what to do. If you let a toddler run your life, would you get the things done you need to? Probably not.
However, when those toddler brain thoughts show up, you can choose to reject them. It just takes activating your adult brain. Which isn’t as hard as it sounds. You just have to come up with a new thought that can serve you short-term and long-term/
In our example, your adult brain could choose this thought instead, “Man, it’s going to be really hard to make dinner on Wednesday, I should prep something ahead of time.”
That new thought serves you long-term and short-term. It solves the problem of a busy night and it helps you stick to your health goals. It’s a small adjustment that can lead to huge rewards!
Simply recognizing toddler brain thoughts and replacing them with adult brain thoughts will make a huge difference in your health and your life. It’s amazing the changes we can make when we start recognizing where our thoughts are coming from.
Accountability is the key to overcoming rationalization.
Rationalizing things is a problem because it becomes a pattern. Sometimes, learning to recognize your rationalizations is enough to break the pattern. But other times, even when we know better we can still choose to do what’s easiest.
That’s where accountability comes in.
It’s easy to rationalize a decision to yourself in your head, but sometimes when you have to explain your rationalization to someone else it starts to fall apart. Especially when you have someone who is holding you to your word.
I know that a lot of mamas don’t want to hire a coach to help them reach their goals, but mama, if you’ve been setting the same goals year after year and you still haven’t hit them, then it’s time to get help.
Take a quick second, and recognize the thoughts you had when I said that.
Did you think,
I don’t need to hire a coach, I know how to lose weight.
I can’t afford to hire a coach, we have vacations this summer that we need to pay for.
I want to lose weight but now isn’t a good time because my birthday/anniversary/vacation is coming up.
Mama, let’s recognize those thoughts as rationalizations. If I hadn’t pointed that out to you, would you have caught them?
This is what a coach can do for you! I talk to women every week who unknowingly create excuses, justifications and rationalizations for why they didn’t hit their goals. They feel like their situation is unique or different and that their excuses are justified. And if they were on their own and didn’t have anyone to lovingly push back, they would stay stuck.
But these mamas asked me for help, and I’m not going to sit by and let them sabotage their results. Not when I can help them achieve their goals.
So I hold them accountable. I work with them to recognize their mistakes in the last week and then encourage them to make the next week better by giving them tools or resources for success. If you’re left on your own, it’s going to be so, so hard to pull yourself out of your excuses and make a plan for success. So, let me help you.
Schedule a free discovery call if you’re ready to give up rationalizing and start achieving your health goals. Inside the Macros Made Easy program, you will learn all the tools, tips and tricks not only to lose weight but to live your healthiest life.
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