00:00:00
Welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your fitness journey, if not the biggest mistake in my opinion. And shockingly, I still see it over and over and over again. So I am going to break it down in detail of why this mindset is killing you. And lots of parts of this episode are actually a repeat of an episode I did over two years ago.
00:00:26
But I think it is so important for us to understand why this is killing our progress. Not only our progress, but our relationship with fitness and with food and why we need to adjust it. So it's going to be short and sweet today. A little intense, but I'm hoping you kick out the concept of starting over in your fitness journey and a simple way that you can start working on stopping the start over mindset now, especially as we get into summer and nutrition becomes a little trickier, is adding athletic greens to your nutritional intake. I started taking Athletic greens about, I want to say six months ago because I noticed I just felt like I wasn't getting all the nutrients I needed every day on busy days.
00:01:15
I wasn't getting some of my vitamins and minerals that I wanted and it was an easy drink that I could quickly shake up in the morning and have every day and know that it was going to help with my gut health. It helped me make sure I was getting plenty of multivitamins minerals, pre and probiotics and so much more for me. I honestly have noticed a boost in energy since I started it and more. So it's just made it a little bit mindless for me to be able to make sure I'm getting some of those basic nutrients that truly are going to help me have a lifestyle and be a little bit more long lasting as I work on my health journey. So I truly love them.
00:01:52
And the best part is athletic greens is giving you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs for with your first purchase. It's summertime, you need those travel packs and you better believe when I go to the beach in about a week from now that I will have my travel packs with me because they are a game changer. Go to Athleticgreens.com Simple again, that is Athleticgreens.com Simple and check it out. I promise it's going to make it a little bit easier for you to get some of those basic vitamins and minerals. My name is Andrea Allen and I am a mother of four girls under seven, a wifey to a mountain man, a personal trainer and a nutrition coach.
00:02:32
I love all things in women's health and fitness, but let's face it, the fitness industry is complicated and it's not built for the everyday mom. There's so much conflicting information and you're busy and you don't have time to figure it out. I hate feeling confused and overwhelmed. So I have made it my mission to simplify health and fitness while creating a welcoming, realistic and empowering home for like minded women. I'm happy you're here and I hope you stay awhile.
00:03:01
So if I could count the amount of times I have had clients, friends, overheard people at the gym say, you know what? I just had a bad weekend. I'm just going to start over on my diet, or I didn't get my workouts in, or I didn't work out at all, or I ate things I didn't plan on, so I'm just going to start over. Literally. I could be a bajillionaire.
00:03:25
I don't even know if that's a word, but I'm going to go with it because that is how often people say this, and it makes no sense at all. We have a bad day or a bad week or even just a couple of things we didn't plan on having. And all of a sudden we tell ourselves, you know what? I'm just failing at this. I'm just going to start over.
00:03:46
You don't start over. That doesn't even make sense. If you were running a marathon and you tripped, there's no way that you'd be like, oh man, I tripped. Let me go back to the first mile when I'm on mile 15. We watch professional athletes play sports and they are professionals and they're amazing and they rarely make mistakes.
00:04:07
But when they do make a mistake, have you ever seen a ref blow his whistle, pause the game, shame the athlete, and then start the quarter over? No, that doesn't even make sense yet. We do it constantly in our fitness journeys. And often these athletes that make these mistakes in games, they can still win the game and become like professional champions and be amazing even with mistakes along the way, because they keep playing the game. They don't just say, I made a mistake, put me on the bench.
00:04:37
They keep going and they still win. And we often in our fitness journey, don't do that. We make a mistake. We have a bad week, we miss a workout, and we basically tap ourselves out and say, you lost. Start over.
00:04:51
And it makes zero, zero sense. Obviously, you can tell I'm super intense about this because I feel like it's setting people up for failure because then it's creating so much guilt that we were so bad that we need to start over. A baby, when a baby learns to walk, we help the baby. The baby might fall over, and there's no way when that baby falls over that we're going to be like, up. You failed at walking.
00:05:15
Climb back in the womb. You got to start over. And we are constantly doing that. So the reason this is happening, and the truth is you are not viewing your fitness and health as a lifestyle. You are viewing it as a race or a short term experience, which is why you think you need to start over.
00:05:37
And I want you to shift your mind and start viewing your fitness journey as a journey, as exactly what it is, that it is long, it is step by step, and it is a lifestyle because it's going to shift the way you react when you make mistakes. Because it's not all or nothing. It's not an overnight challenge, it's not a quick fix, it's a lifestyle. And mistakes are normal and common. What the startover method is in reality is the all or nothing mindset.
00:06:08
That's what you're doing. You're just not realizing it because you're thinking, oh, I want to get this right, I want to do it right, so I'm going to start over. But there is no starting over in fitness because it is a journey. And when we focus on doing things perfectly, we actually start tripping over our own feet rather than allowing ourselves to learn to first walk and stumble while we're walking and then jog and maybe trip while we're jogging and eventually get to running because we keep starting back at the finish line. The concept of starting over is also breeding feelings of failure, low self esteem, shame, and it's actually hindering your success.
00:06:49
The truth is, health and fitness is a journey, as I mentioned, and there's bumps and missteps and that is totally normal. What is not normal is telling yourself that you basically suck and making yourself start over and banishing yourself to the start line for the millionth time. Instead, I need you to rephrase it and say, keep going. Insinuates that sometimes making mistakes is okay. Sometimes missing workouts is okay.
00:07:16
Sometimes eating cake at a birthday party is totally normal. There is no reason to beat yourself up and feel like a failure and start over. You need to keep going. I need you to kick, I'm going to start at the beginning out of your mind forever and ever. You never ever need to start your fitness and health journey over.
00:07:35
You need to just keep going. And the truth is, if you are doing something where you feel like there's a finish date or like it's a short challenge and that makes you obsessive, then maybe you don't belong in challenges. Maybe they're actually not good for your mind because it makes you feel like a failure. I know for some people they love doing these short four week, six week challenges because it keeps them motivated. They have support with a group and they can be empowering.
00:08:03
But for some people, they just make them feel like failures because they feel like there's a time limit. And I know for me, I don't like to feel like there's a time limit. I like to feel like I'm constantly progressing. If you are feeling like a failure when you are doing challenges and you need to start over. If I were you, I would steer clear of challenges and maybe find a fitness coach or a program that is continual.
00:08:27
That isn't like a cut off date where you have to weigh by this certain date or you have to do something by a certain date. If that is not empowering to you. If it is and you like making goals that way, that's totally cool. But you need to assess that for yourself and decide, is doing a short term challenge helping me for a long term success in my fitness journey or hurting me? And truly, if you do love challenges, stick with them.
00:08:51
But during the challenge, I want you to think about how can I make this a lifestyle? How can I shift what I'm currently doing and adjust to be able to continue to make a good experience with fitness and health? A lot of times people are doing things that are so extreme that it burns them out so they can't make it a lifestyle and then it ends up backfiring and they gain it all back because it was so intense. If you have no freedom in your plan, I can tell you right now you're going to fail and you're going to feel that and you're going to feel worse about it. So while I'm not telling you not to do a challenge, if you love them and they motivate you, go for it.
00:09:31
But the entire time I don't want you thinking about, oh fu, this is over on May 31. I want you to think, okay, how am I going to shift this into a lifestyle? How am I going to adjust my food intake? How am I going to make sure that this is a process that I can keep going with? No matter what you're doing for health and fitness, I honestly always believe that you can shift what you're doing into something else.
00:09:54
Just because maybe you were doing one program and you fell off track or you stopped eating well doesn't mean you can't shift into something else. That doesn't mean you need to start over. It just means you need to change your focus. Maybe you want to try a new coach, a new workout plan, a new fitness routine, or nutrition diet or macros or whatever it is. Instead of looking at as each little segment is a start over, look at it as I am continuing to learn and grow and build on my experience.
00:10:23
That again, is positive. Phrasing. If you have listened to my podcast at all, you realize I am huge on making things positive, on the way that we spin the thoughts. We have to make them positive because that's going to make us feel empowered about our journey and our fitness experience. Kick out, start over and start saying, I'm going to keep going.
00:10:44
I don't necessarily like what I'm doing or this isn't a fit for me. So I'm going to keep going in this other direction or I'm going to keep going by changing my macros to go here or I'm going to keep going by changing up my workouts and doing it this way because the other ones just didn't seem like a fit for me. Or I'm going to keep going by setting a goal. Since last week, I only got one workout in, I'm going to get three workouts in, something like that. Anything like that makes it positive.
00:11:11
This is a journey. I know that this podcast episode is a little bit of a rant, but that's because I feel so strongly about this and I've just seen so many people feel like failures. And so I am going to beg you with all of my heart, mind and soul to stop starting over, to stop shaming yourself for every single mistake you make. Start focusing on the small little things you did right. Start realizing this is a journey.
00:11:36
Shift your wording to saying keep going instead of starting over. The middle of the journey is messy. It's totally messy. When we see before and after photos, the middle is crazy. We're just seeing the beginning and the end.
00:11:51
If you watch a game, you could say, yeah, they started at zero points and then they ended one point apart. One team had 98 points and one team had 101 points. You don't even see the chaos that happened in the middle. And that is the same thing with our journey. So we need to keep going.
00:12:05
And honestly, even at the end of the game, there's still always a lifestyle. They're still always continuing and maintaining and being healthy and happy. So stop the start over because that is actually hurting you mentally, which is hurting you physically. I know this episode was short and sweet, but I hope it was helpful. I hope that you will kick out I am going to start over.
00:12:26
I'm going to start new on Monday. I did so bad. I'm going to never eat sweets again and start new and do everything crazy on this day. I hope you will kick that out of your life for the rest of your life and just say, I'm going to keep going and I'm going to just slowly improve and I'm going to slowly take baby steps and keep going in the right direction. If this episode was helpful for you, I would love if you would take a screenshot of what you're listening to and share it to your social media.
00:12:53
It helps the podcast grow and I always appreciate reviews and comments or anything. It really does make a difference for me and it pumps me up for recording and I do really appreciate that. I love you. I honestly think you are doing better than you think you are. And until next time, our channel.