Here we are in MARCH. Can you believe it? Where did the last two months go? Seems like time flew by. Now is an excellent time to review your fitness goals and see what changes you need. I wrote several blog posts regarding fitness habits for your reference:

Fitness Goal Setting

Creating Fitness Habits

Keeping up your goals

Easy Health and Fitness Goals

These posts are a great reference if you want to begin creating new fitness goals. But if you are in the same boat as me and want to revive your goals and motivation from the beginning of the year. I know exactly what I need to do (obviously, I wrote posts on creating goals with my own examples), but I have not been doing what I know needs to be done to achieve those fitness goals.

Getting motivation has been minimal for me for the last few months. But I am not going to let that get me down. I am ready to Get back into my fitness routine. This post will be more about what I am doing to revive my motivation and create habits to help me work toward my goals. This will be a real and honest review of how it has been for the past few months and my plans going forward.

Background

So first off, Let me explain a few things regarding my overall mental health. I have depression and anxiety that surrounds my cycle, called PMDD. I also have painful cysts. Both things have been a struggle for several years, but I finally got diagnosed in the past two years.

Two years ago, I decided to go off the birth control pill I had been on for 10 years. I felt like it was making my anxiety so much worse. Then over the course of two years, my cycle regulated, and I learned that 3 of 4 weeks of the month, I struggle horribly with mental health in addition to significant pain from ovarian cysts. I wouldn’t have learned these things about my body had I not gone off of birth control.

After about nine months, the first thing I did was see my Dr. regarding my mental struggles. From there, I got a low-dose prescription for an anti-depressant, which helped my overall mental clarity. I had an increase in things that I love doing, and my anxiety and depression levels were lower, which was so good. I was finally happy. But I was still in a ton of pain.

Then after about a year, I went to the Dr. regarding the pain I was experiencing for at least 3 weeks a month. I thought maybe I had endometriosis or PCOS, but after an ultrasound, it turns out I have neither of those. My OBGYN determined that my body creates cysts more often during my cycle. If you did not know, every woman creates cysts during their cycle and burst naturally to be absorbed into the body, which often goes unnoticed. Whereas mine form but take longer to burst and continue to grow before naturally bursting, which causes pain throughout my cycle. So my OBGYN recommended I get back on BC pill with a low estrogen dose, which may commonly affect mental health in women when they take BC. Birth control controls an egg's release and decreases cyst production. So my pain is gone.

Over the last few months, I have struggled a little with my mental health. I almost feel like I did before I left BC three years ago. I do feel quite a bit better than I did then. I do not have any pain due to the current BC. My depression has been okay, but my anxiety has not been great. So my motivation for fitness has been so low.

I know, I know. I preach that you cannot rely on motivation. But that is the thing that gets you started; discipline and commitment keep you going. I struggled significantly over the past several months. I KILLED it for the month of November. But once December hit, I lost it all. At that point, I had been on BC for a month.

Any workout I had planned did not sound great, so I settled with getting some runs in. I would get roughly 2 treadmill runs weekly, which was all my mental health could handle. I want to note that during this time, I was in limbo between starting a new job and finishing my old one. With my old job, I was gone 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, significantly affecting my motivation. So combined with mental health and limited free time at home, I have been STRUGGLING HARD.

March 2023

I began my new job. I can work fewer hours and make more money than in my previous job. This has helped my motivation significantly. I am still struggling with my anxiety, which I think has to do with needing an adjustment on my anti-depressant. But I need to go to the doctor for an update. I have a cold I have been fighting for the past two weeks, so I am letting my body recover. I have been focusing on my nutrition the past week and only doing a treadmill run as I have had the energy. I am still not 100% over this cold, but enough that this week I plan to get back onto my workout plan. I will continue to focus on my nutrition. Below I will list all of the things that are my current motivation.

Physical Health

First off, I am not too happy with how my body looks. It is not horrible, but I have other physique goals that I want to achieve, and I feel like I am going in the opposite direction. So that is one factor that is motivating me right now. I am uncomfortable and need to do the work needed to make those changes. So right now, this is my number one motivation.

Mental Health

Taking care of my body and physical activity positively improves my mental health, so proper nutrition and daily workouts are goals I am working to improve. I also want to take my dog Lyla for a walk daily to get myself outside more and add more steps to my day, even if it is a 20 min walk.

Another few things I want to work on for myself may be super simple, but they significantly help my mental health. Mostly, these are part of my daily morning/evening routines.

• Keep up on skin care morning/evening.

• Brush teeth morning/evening (IYKYK)

• Shower daily (only wash hair once a week, I have trained my hair to be okay with only once a week, and it is so much healthier)

• Hair & makeup before work

• Journal every night

• On non-work days change clothes, so I am not wearing clothes I slept in, even if it’s just clean comfy clothes.

• Read nightly - reading on my Nook before bed helps me fall asleep. I read a few pages and then fall asleep with my book. I don’t lose my place and can read in the dark since it has a backlight.

• Listen to audiobooks daily - a lot of my day is spent driving & working by myself.

• Listen to podcasts daily - a lot of my day is spent driving & working by myself.

• Do something creative - my hobbies daily.

• Having some alone time for myself - ideally at home alone. But if schedules with Tyler and I do not allow this, then I need to get out of the house and do some stuff alone that is non-work related.

My ‘Why’

Overall longevity. I want to be healthy and mobile well into old age to continue to do the things I love.

• Proper nutrition and consistent workouts are helpful for my overall physical health. I want to be healthy long-term, so I really want to take care of my body.

• Doing things for me is helpful for my overall mental health. I want to continue caring for myself and working on my hobbies. Skincare and proper hygiene are going to be helpful for my future self.

Things to Help Keep me Accountable

• Track nutrition in MyFitnessPal

• Share on my Instagram Stories workouts, nutrition, etc.

• Give me some slack - no one is perfect, so how can I expect myself to be perfect?

Please keep in mind that these are my personal motivating factors right now. What works for me may not work for you. These are my motivation for RIGHT now and may change over time. It is important to review your motivating factors to help revive your motivation. There are tons of factors that may affect your motivation, such as my background story above. It is okay to recognize those things and give yourself a break if you lose motivation. Getting a professional opinion and recommendation is okay if you struggle with mental health.

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If you are here and reading this, that means you have an interest in your health and fitness. That is so good; I am so excited for you! Taking care of your body is literally the best thing you can do for yourself in the present and the long term.

“Do something today that your future self will thank you for”

— unknown

I find that quote so inspiring. Hard work will pay off in the future, but you also have to live in the moment, and I feel like taking care of yourself is doing both. You are doing good for yourself now as well as for your future self.

Thank you so much for reading! If you want to learn more about health and fitness, follow me on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram @myactivelife_stacey. I am now offering nutrition and personal training online coaching programs. These six-week programs are designed to help you create lifelong healthy habits with nutrition and fitness. Click here to learn more!

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