The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
The Simplicity of Wellness podcast is about learning how to bring your body into balance so that you get leaner, stronger and healthier as you age. Each week I'll share thoughts and ideas that help my clients build the self-awareness, self-confidence and self-reliance to lose weight, shed inches, manage muscle mass and master their mind so that they can stop dieting and enjoy living at their healthy weight with optimal wellness.
The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
Finding Time: The Truth About Priorities
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Ever felt like you're constantly juggling family and work but still feel like you're dropping the ball? I have a story that will resonate with you. In this episode, we shatter the myth of "I don't have time" by exploring the power of owning our choices and understanding the consequences. I'll share my personal struggle with balancing family time and business responsibilities, shedding light on how self-judgment often clouds our ability to make conscious decisions. By recognizing the choices we have and accepting their outcomes, we can alleviate frustration and realign our actions with our true priorities.
This episode also highlights the rejuvenating power of prioritizing family time. Reflecting on my summer spent with my grandkids at the cottage, I'll illustrate how stepping away from work can bring both personal joy and professional benefits. We'll dive into how taking a mental break can reignite your enthusiasm for work and help you to identify any conflicts between your current priorities and what you truly value. Tune in to uncover the secrets of making choices that bring fulfillment to both your personal and professional life.
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Welcome to the Simplicity of Wellness podcast. I'm your host, board-certified holistic nutritionist and professional life coach, amy White. The purpose of this podcast is to share information that you can use to become leaner, stronger and healthier by losing weight, shedding inches, maintaining muscle and managing your mind, all while living your normal busy life in this modern, sugar-filled world. Hello simplifiers, today I'm going to talk about feeling overwhelmed, having no time and being frustrated and upset because it feels like we don't have control. Setting goals and moving toward those goals feels impossible, like the world is working against us. To make this more clear, what I'm talking about is that frustration of having a plan, but then that plan blowing up because something changed. Life got in the way. I had the best week last week. We were at our cottage in the mountains, the kids came up for the week. It was chaos and so fun, but there was a piece of my brain that was keeping me from being totally present and 100% enjoying my time. There was this part of my brain that kept thinking I'm not getting anything done. It's a work week. I run a small business. If I'm not attending to my business, nothing is happening. There was a lot of self judgment and frustration. I kept telling myself I needed to write emails and be on social media talking about my coaching program, but that I didn't have time or the space to do those things. My grandkids wanted my attention and I couldn't do both. Here's the thing. Self judgment isn't useful, and there was a lot of negative self-judgment going on in my head. That self-judgment was keeping me from being fully present with my family. So then I had self-judgment about that.
Speaker 1:This story has a happy ending, so let's get to that. First, I'm going to call us all out, myself included, for thinking and or saying I don't have time. This is not a true statement. There is always time and there's always a choice. Self-judgment lives in indecision. When I was thinking I'm getting nothing done, I don't have time to work on my business, I wasn't being honest with myself. The truer statement was, in fact, I am choosing to prioritize other things. Again, there's always time, the same amount of time every day, and every day we decide, knowingly or unknowingly, to prioritize our time in specific ways. When we unknowingly prioritize our time, we feel frustrated because there appears to be a lack of control, but in reality, we chose to do what we did. I was choosing not to work on my business and instead play with my family. At any point last week I could have looked at the kids and said I need to go in my office, shut the door and spend a half an hour working. After that we can do anything you want for the rest of the day. I absolutely could have chosen to prioritize a specific amount of time to do work-related things. Without realizing it, I was choosing to prioritize my family time and not carve out time for work. Until I truly owned that choice, I was wallowing in self-judgment and feeling frustrated because in my head, I felt like things were out of my control. I believed I didn't have the choice to do work because I was being controlled by my circumstances. Not true. As soon as I realized I was actually doing what I wanted to be doing, I felt this huge sense of relief. I was choosing to prioritize family time. We can always make time for the things we want to prioritize.
Speaker 1:Your choices are your power. But here's the thing about choices what you choose isn't just about the choice in the moment. It's about the consequences of that choice. Prioritizing my family and not working on my business last week was my choice and I have no regrets. But as a consequence of that choice, I don't have any new consults scheduled on my calendar this week, and that's okay. I knew that was a likely consequence and I was fine with it.
Speaker 1:Your choices aren't about what's right or wrong, good or bad. It's about understanding and accepting what your choice means for you. The consequences you'll deal with as a result of the choice. Those consequences are not always bad. They can be very good, but there's always a consequence with a choice. Those consequences are not always bad. They can be very good, but there's always a consequence with a choice. A common argument that comes up with the idea of always having choices is paying rent. People will say well, I have to pay my rent, I don't have a choice. You do have a choice. You don't have to pay your rent. But if you choose not to pay your rent, you will then have to deal with the consequences of not paying your rent.
Speaker 1:Many of you were probably at 4th of July parties last week. Choices were made at those parties To drink alcohol or not drink alcohol, to eat potato salad and ice cream or not eat potato salad and ice cream. There's no right or wrong choice. The most important thing you can do is decide and commit to your choice. Decide, make the choice, acknowledge the choice. I've decided to prioritize this thing in this moment. There's no guilt or regret. Own the choice. Be prepared for how that choice will impact you beyond the moment. If you're actively trying to lose weight and you made the choice to eat potato salad, eat ice cream and drink alcohol, then enjoy. Own your choice, but understand the consequences. May be that the scale doesn't move over the next week, and that's okay. Now, if you continue to repeatedly make choices that stop you from moving toward a goal you've set for yourself, it's probably time to re-evaluate what it is you think you want versus what you truly want.
Speaker 1:Often, without knowing it, people prioritize avoiding discomfort. They want to lose weight or stop drinking, but they don't want to feel the discomfort of not having the food or the drink. So what they're actually doing is prioritizing the food and the drink in order to avoid discomfort, rather than prioritizing what needs to happen in order to lose the weight. This actually brings me to a great client story. I had a consult yesterday with a client who'd been away on vacation for a week. They traveled across the country, spent time with their family, and she came home and told me that her husband had gained seven pounds and she had lost two pounds, which meant she'd lost a total of 10 pounds in a month, even with that vacation travel week in there. What she said that was so interesting was that she was so aware of her choices. She said it was so interesting because I was so aware of what I was choosing to eat and not eat and I realized that if I didn't have that awareness and I wasn't thinking about it, she said she was shocked by all the things that she knows she would have been eating over the last week. She said I would have come home and she would have been eating over the last week. She said I would have come home and I would have gained 10 pounds, but instead she was thrilled about the fact that she was actively making decisions and choices, prioritizing this one goal that she has right now, which is to lose some weight. And it worked. It was effective.
Speaker 1:She actually went away on vacation during a holiday week and was presented with all kinds of cakes and ice cream and other fun party foods, but didn't indulge. She did say she had. I did have a bite of ice cream and I did have a bite of this, but I didn't eat the whole thing. I didn't have seconds and she lost two pounds. The choices that she made didn't eat the whole thing, I didn't have seconds and she lost two pounds. The choices that she made didn't create consequences that would have impacted her main goal negatively. She only had small pieces or tastes of things, rather than eating the entire thing. If she had chosen to eat all of the ice cream and to have the pie and potato salad and all of the things, then those consequences would have slowed down her progress. So she was able to make choices. Considering the consequences of those choices. She knew that having a bite of ice cream wasn't going to slow her progress.
Speaker 1:Let's wrap this up by bringing this idea of not having time into real life situations. I don't have time to shop. I don't have time to cook. I don't have time to prep a lunch. I don't have time to track my food. I don't have time to exercise. I can't get to bed before 10 pm. None of this is true. The truth is you're prioritizing other things. Your homework for the week is to make a list of the things you are prioritizing. This is why coaching is so important. It's hard for us all of us to get out of our own way. We spin and feel overwhelmed but don't realize it's because we have conflicting priorities. We think we want one thing but without realizing it we're prioritizing choices and time to create something different.
Speaker 1:With weight loss, I like to talk about testing, evaluating and course correcting. Testing means you make a decision, a choice to try something specific. You evaluate the consequences of that choice and then, based on the information you've gained from that evaluation, you then make another decision Keep doing what you're doing or adjust with a new choice. There's no self-judgment, only determination. You're figuring it out. This is what my client did. She came to me, she got on a plan, she made a choice. I'm going to make these dietary changes based on Amy's recommendation and I'm going to see how this goes. We're going to evaluate it and we're going to course correct as needed. At this point, it's been a month and we have not needed to do any course correcting because she has consistently lost weight a total of 10 pounds Now.
Speaker 1:While she was on vacation, she was testing and evaluating. She was making choices to avoid the foods, mostly that were not on her list. However, her test was what? If I have a little bit of this indulgent food. How is that going to impact my progress? Her assumption was I don't think the consequence is going to be a problem, and through testing and evaluating, she discovered that she was correct. She lost two pounds even though she was able to have those small indulgences and enjoy her time and her food. Now, perhaps she would have lost even more weight if she hadn't made the choice to have the small indulgences. However, there's a lifestyle component here and we all want to enjoy ourselves. We are living our real life, and so I think her choice was fantastic. She looked at it, she thought I'm going to evaluate you know how this works in my life, how it feels for me, and that's what she did, and it was successful. So again, at this point, there's no reason to course correct. Everything she's doing is working, but we will continue to test and evaluate and course correct as needed. Evaluate and course correct as needed.
Speaker 1:Without making choices about how you want to prioritize your time, you lose all control. You feel overwhelmed and frustrated, you become a victim of your circumstances and live in self-judgment. If the idea of making a choice scares you, I want you to think about your reasons for making the choice. Do you like your reasons? If yes, then there's no feeling bad about the choice. Like your reasons?
Speaker 1:My grandkids are six and three. I am unsure if they'll be able to come and spend more time with us at the cottage this summer. I knew this was my chance to really enjoy them. My reasons for making the choice to prioritize family time were they're here now and I want to take advantage of this time with them. They'll never be six and three again. I am so lucky that they want to spend time with me. A mental break from work is actually healthy. I'll be more excited to dive back into work after this fun break. I liked my reasons and I still do. It was a great choice.
Speaker 1:Let me know how this idea of prioritizing choices feels to you. I know when I wrapped my head around what I was doing last week and the fact that when I made a clear choice to prioritize family time over business activities, it felt like a huge relief. I wasn't doing anything wrong. It was so freeing. That's it for today.
Speaker 1:As always, if you have any questions or comments, click the message link below in the show notes. Enjoy your week and prioritize some time to make a list of the things you want to be prioritizing versus the things you're actually prioritizing. See if they match up. See where there's conflict. All right, I'll be back next week with a new episode. Do you like the idea of eating for the body you want? Is there a piece of you that's eager to learn how to become leaner, stronger and healthier without having to overhaul your entire life? If this is you, then you're in luck because this is what I do. If this is you, then you're in luck because this is what I do. I can help you reconnect and work with your body so that you can enjoy the body, comfort and confidence you deserve, eating foods you love. Click the free consult link in the show notes. Let's talk about where you are, what you want and how you can get there. Music.
