Five reasons why we are not achieving our goals

On a previous post when I asked you what we're going to focus on for your health in 2021, it’s not surprising that many of you said very similar things.

It’s not surprising because many of us face the same challenges. In my coaching practice, I find that many of my clients want to weigh less, move more, sleep more and stress less.

These goals continue to be the ones that many of you come back to, why is that?

Five reasons we are not achieving our goals

I’m not surprised that year after year we return to the same goals. Here’s why:

1 We eat conveniently, not on purpose

2 We put ourselves last, we actually put the needs of our occupation/organisation we work for above the needs of our bodies

3 We allow our day to be dictated by other demands without carving out time for our own maintenance

4 The devices that were supposed to enhance our efficiency actually are robbing us of our self-care time

5 We feel we should make a change without realizing that we must make a change.

You see friends if we don’t change, nothing will change. There are so many different ways to say this…

- Nothing changes until something changes

- What you did to get you here can’t get you there

- The problems you have cannot be solved with the same approach that created them

- If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got

So many times I hear

‘I don’t like (blank) fill this in with anything, water, vegetables, exercise’, or ‘I don’t have time to (blank) this could be exercise, cook, meditate’.

There have been times even that I’ve heard ‘(Blank) is so expensive (normally this is eating healthy)’. So if nothing’s going to change how do you expect to weigh less, sleep more, stress less?

The guidelines that I recommend for many people are variations of the following relatively simple steps. Eat lots of vegetables, aim for five cups a day.

- Eat less carbohydrates

- Eat less processed foods, more natural foods, more real foods

- Drink lots of water. Aim for three litres a day while avoiding juice and soda

- Exercise four times a week with a mixture of cardio weights and just plain stretching

- Sleep eight hours each night

What all this takes is planning. But my dear readers until your ‘shoulds’ becomes your ‘musts’ I fear you won’t do what it takes ...you won’t change.

Why won’t you change?

Change is hard, scary, ugly, and painful. Change hurts. Plus life is not set up to encourage your desired changes. Life is set up for you to continue with what is easy and convenient.

If you look a little further down the road though you’re going to see that what is convenient today and easy now, will most likely be hard and painful later.

What you think of expensive now will pale in comparison to the cost of getting sick. If you think you don’t have time to take care of yourself now, just wait and see how life will demand your time and make you stop.

Don’t let this be you!

Chronic non-communicable diseases are not fun, they come with real pain. As do the regrets that arise at that stage. Regrets like: If only I knew… if only I was stronger… if only I made the time.

I implore to you! Make the time and make the changes now versus later.

Originally published on the Loop