00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:00
Speaker 1
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Tina's Arena. Today let's talk about building habits. And this is a very true, real life personal situation that has happened with me over the last six or so months.

00:00:16:02 - 00:00:47:17
Speaker 1
This year I've gotten into running and I was running long distances 21 K, ten K and five K on a weekend on a Spartan Trifecta event. And I didn't train appropriately going up to the events, but I would still force myself to do the whole weekend because I could write two things. One, I think that led to my foot injury, not having enough of a base mileage, and then all of a sudden continuously running 36km on a weekend.

00:00:47:19 - 00:01:08:04
Speaker 1
I did that almost every month for the summer. And second thing was that because I wasn't well trained, the all out, full out effort left me very, very drained. And so after a trifecta weekend where I ran 36km, I wouldn't go to the gym for a week or two.

00:01:08:04 - 00:01:32:00
Speaker 1
I was on this very on off schedule of training where I would train and work out a little bit, take a rest, because you're supposed to do you load before a big event all of a sudden, do 36km in a weekend and then just sit and rest and recover for a week or two afterwards? And this horrible cycle of working out with me earlier this summer.

00:01:32:02 - 00:01:35:00
Speaker 1
And so I knew that this wasn't right.

00:01:35:00 - 00:01:58:22
Speaker 1
I wasn't feeling like I was improving in my run times too much, and just I just knew that my athletic ability wasn't getting better. I felt very, very garbage, actually. After running the 36km and resting for two weeks, that time frame afterwards where I did absolutely nothing did not feel good to me.

00:01:58:22 - 00:02:16:06
Speaker 1
I don't like feeling like I'm too unproductive. I don't like sitting around moping. And I definitely don't like that feeling of being so sore that I can't do anything. I do not aspire to that level of soreness because it actually sets me back further.

00:02:16:06 - 00:02:28:23
Speaker 1
So I like to have a consistent routine of working out and not letting myself get so sore that I can't move, because that is actually demotivating to me. I want to have daily movement, daily life.

00:02:28:23 - 00:02:54:16
Speaker 1
So eventually I started realizing that I needed to train better because I didn't want this weekend event to completely derail me from my habits, and I think I was just feeling unmotivated to work out in June because I was in that slump. And so I knew that I had to change something. And what I decided on was to hire a personal trainer.

00:02:54:18 - 00:03:09:08
Speaker 1
And so initially, I hired the personal trainer twice a week because I felt like I was just getting back into the rhythm of things. And even though I love working out personally, I just wasn't in that mindset yet.

00:03:09:08 - 00:03:31:03
Speaker 1
And as a coach that teaches people habit change and behavioral change, I know that I can't go 0 to 100 because that's going to burn me out. Really quick. And so two times a week felt like it wasn't enough. But I knew in my head that I just needed to take this slowly because I didn't want to rush myself and hate the process.

00:03:31:03 - 00:03:43:02
Speaker 1
The whole idea of starting off in baby steps is that your body gets to adapt along the way, and when you adapt and get stronger and then add more, then your body won't burn out.

00:03:43:02 - 00:03:50:15
Speaker 1
The change becomes lasting and sustainable. And so I worked out twice a week for maybe just a couple of weeks,

00:03:50:15 - 00:03:59:16
Speaker 1
because then I found out that my gym also provided boxing classes, and I took a kickboxing class, earlier in the year, and I really enjoyed it.

00:03:59:16 - 00:04:06:14
Speaker 1
So I was like, hey, I want to do boxing. And then I added on an extra day of boxing. So now I'm at the gym three times a week,

00:04:06:14 - 00:04:15:13
Speaker 1
and it just stayed like that for maybe 2 or 3 months. My boxing was on Monday, my leg day was on Tuesday, and then my

00:04:15:13 - 00:04:18:16
Speaker 1
third full body day was on Thursday.

00:04:18:19 - 00:04:44:10
Speaker 1
So it was three times a week and I didn't even push myself to go to the gym on Friday, Saturday or Sunday by myself. There was no extra expectation for me. Even though I identify as a person that loves the gym. I just knew the mood that I was in and I did not want to push it. I wanted this to be a gradual process, and so eventually I go to the gym three times a week, pretty reliably for about two months.

00:04:44:10 - 00:04:54:20
Speaker 1
And then slowly I started to go on the weekend a little bit, maybe a day on Saturday, or if it wasn't Saturday, then Sunday, but I'd sprinkle in an additional day or two here and there.

00:04:54:20 - 00:05:05:21
Speaker 1
And then eventually my trainer on Thursday messaged me and asked me if I could change my Thursday to Wednesday and instead. So that meant that I was at the gym Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

00:05:05:23 - 00:05:15:16
Speaker 1
And well, now at this point, if I'm going to the gym three days in a row, it feels like it's too much to take four days off after that.

00:05:15:16 - 00:05:25:21
Speaker 1
so as soon as she changed the schedule to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, well then, now I was adding in a gym day on Friday and Saturday, and then I did that for about two weeks.

00:05:25:21 - 00:05:29:00
Speaker 1
And now I'm at the gym almost every day.

00:05:29:00 - 00:05:55:18
Speaker 1
This has been a building process since July, and it's November now, so that's four months of building up this habit where now I'm at the gym almost every day and it's something that I'm enjoying and it's not draining me. It's not taking extra energy for me to get up and go to the gym. It has started to become something that is automatic, which has been the goal, which is amazing and I love that for me.

00:05:55:19 - 00:05:58:07
Speaker 1
Thank you. Thank you.

00:05:58:07 - 00:06:15:00
Speaker 1
In terms of my training, I leave my heavy days for the days with my trainers Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then the rest of the week I'm focusing on cardio mobility, and then I also do maybe an extra leg day on myself, but not quite to the same intensity as I would with my trainer.

00:06:15:00 - 00:06:18:17
Speaker 1
It's just an extra day for some extra volume to continue getting stronger.

00:06:18:17 - 00:06:39:04
Speaker 1
And because I have a lot of joint issues, I love spending the time at the gym to do mobility. It feels different to do mobility at the gym versus at home. I could totally just, you know, like lay on the floor and do my mobility stuff at home. But just being in the environment of the gym really makes me feel like I've accomplished something.

00:06:39:06 - 00:06:58:23
Speaker 1
And then afterwards, I can go for a little bit of cardio on the treadmill or StairMaster just to get that in. And so this has been the whole story of me building up my gym habit again, and my weight is starting to go down because I have started calorie counting.

00:06:59:07 - 00:07:20:22
Speaker 1
And this is what the whole process is supposed to feel like weight loss, fat loss, muscle building, working out. It's supposed to be a slow and gradual process so that your body, your brain, your energy state, your mental state, they can all adapt along the way. Because if you're going from 0 to 100, you will burn out eventually.

00:07:21:02 - 00:07:45:01
Speaker 1
I know because I've done it every single time. I would go from no days at the gym to spending 2 to 3 hours at the gym, and it would feel really good for maybe a couple of months. But after that I would get completely burnt out, exhausted, take the whole month off, and feel horrible about myself because I just lost this great habit that I worked so hard to build, and then I let it all go.

00:07:45:03 - 00:07:48:22
Speaker 1
It's the same thing when you consider nutrition and dieting.

00:07:48:22 - 00:08:07:20
Speaker 1
if you are eating a lot and you all of a sudden cut your calorie intake to whatever your prescribed 1500 calories, that is a huge drop. And you might be able to do that for a week to week, three weeks. But that's going to catch up to you, and it's going to feel pretty awful.

00:08:07:22 - 00:08:10:06
Speaker 1
And so just take it

00:08:10:06 - 00:08:11:17
Speaker 1
slower,

00:08:11:17 - 00:08:18:18
Speaker 1
Make the changes last longer. I really believe that the slower you do all of this, the more

00:08:18:18 - 00:08:31:11
Speaker 1
long lasting the effects will be, because you really have to learn how to change your habits and you really have to embrace that. This is a new lifestyle that you're trying to adopt.

00:08:31:11 - 00:08:44:21
Speaker 1
I was probably eating maybe 2500 calories a day on my normal maintenance calories. And if I all of a sudden drop that to 1500 calories, I would probably feel starving for a long time.

00:08:44:21 - 00:08:51:07
Speaker 1
And let's face it, eating 1500 calories a day isn't a long term solution. You're not going to be able to do that for the rest of your life.

00:08:51:07 - 00:09:02:11
Speaker 1
So why don't we learn how to manipulate the calories a little bit more slowly and really focus on our emotions and our eating behavior and what we can learn to cook this week?

00:09:02:13 - 00:09:03:22
Speaker 1
There's a lot of things that we could do,

00:09:03:22 - 00:09:14:03
Speaker 1
even when I started calorie counting, I'm sure I talked about it last week, but I started calorie counting with just counting what I was eating. I wasn't even trying to get into a calorie deficit.

00:09:14:03 - 00:09:20:07
Speaker 1
I just wanted to know what my normal eating pattern resulted in, in terms of how many calories that I was eating,

00:09:20:07 - 00:09:21:10
Speaker 1
I just

00:09:21:10 - 00:09:42:04
Speaker 1
absorbed that information I didn't restrict at all. It wasn't until I tracked for two weeks, without any restriction, that I decided to set a calorie goal, which I think I set to 2200 ish. And try to stick to that for two weeks, and I haven't changed it since then.

00:09:42:04 - 00:09:48:18
Speaker 1
I'm just that's where I'm at right now, and we're just going to see how that keeps going. So I hope this is helpful.

00:09:48:18 - 00:09:55:23
Speaker 1
I hope that puts it in perspective a little bit. How slowly you should be taking things in order to have the effects be really long lasting.

00:09:55:23 - 00:10:11:11
Speaker 1
if you need help, call me, because this is what I do. I help people with habit change behavior change, and how to adopt a healthy lifestyle and learn how to feed themselves appropriately. So my name is Tina, this is Tina's arena and I will see you next week. Bye.