Your boss gave you too much to do, so you have to work late and can’t exercise today. Your alarm didn’t go off (stupid phone!) so you didn’t have time to make a healthy lunch and had to get takeaway. You have to do school drop offs because nobody else can, plus mountains of laundry, you don’t have time to research diets. Your husband will just bring home junk food if you try to eat healthy so what’s the point? You can’t afford a gym membership because everything is so expensive these days.

See a common theme here?

In every one of these statements, you aren’t able to do something, because of someone or something external to you. It’s out of your control. But what if, just for a week, we set ourselves the challenge to take responsibility for everything in our lives.

Shifting from blaming to being a problem solver

If your boss gave you too much to do, how can we shift the blame from them to ourselves. Could we have gotten up early to do our workout, so that our workload through the day didn’t affect whether we exercised or not? Did we not communicate effectively with our boss about how much we had on our plate already? Was the work they gave you something you could have predicted and planned for?

So your alarm didn’t go off. Could you have packed your lunch the night before? Do you have a list of places nearby that make healthy lunches? Could you keep healthy leftovers in the freezer at work?

You’re busy with your family and responsibilities. Do you actually need to do mountains of research on the perfect diet? Could you make an effort to just start eating healthier and at your next grocery shop to buy more whole unprocessed healthy foods and less junk?

If your husband brings home junk food, why does that mean YOU have to eat it? Could you stock your pantry and fridge with convenient and healthy snacks that you can choose instead?

Do you need a gym membership? Could you go for a walk? Could you pull out those old exercise DVD’s, or borrow a book from the library on basic exercises and just do them?

Here’s your challenge

 For this week, live your life as normal, but notice every time you fall back into the habit of shifting the blame elsewhere for something that you do/don’t do. Then work out what you could have done, or could do in the future so that this is back in your control.

You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish when you get control of your life back. You don’t have to be perfect, but you should at least be conscious of what you are doing. You want that chocolate? Go for it. But eat it because you want it, enjoy it, and are consciously choosing it as part of a balanced diet…. because you’re responsible for your own life.

Is it really that easy?

 The associations we have with food, exercise, and the barriers we have to following a healthy lifestyle are incredibly complex and have built up over years, if not decades. They can be seriously difficult to change.

This is why we offer “mindset” seminars at our weight loss retreats, which help you realise how you may be taking part in self sabotage without realising it, using food to deal with emotions or stress, and why motivation itself doesn’t last in the long run.

If you’ve tried every diet, and have never been able to successfully lose weight and keep it off, chances are your mindset is what has gotten in the way. Learn how to change this with our proven weight loss program, and say goodbye to self sabotage and excuses forever.

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