.png)
It's November (where did this year go?!) and lots of people are going to jump onto the most cliche bandwagon ever. It's me. I'm people.
Let's talk gratitude.
Before you roll your eyes and stop reading, please let me preface this with: No, I'm not advocating for toxic positivity. As a matter of fact, I'm the last person who will tell you to be ridiculously positive when you're going through some shit. Trust me, I know life can really suck sometimes and it's hard to see the good in the straight up bad.
What I am talking about is reframing the way we speak to ourselves. This is extremely relevant with the holidays coming up.
Allow me to explain...
Halloween was yesterday, there was lots of partying and there is a giant bag of candy currently sitting in my kitchen. While I haven't taken my Mom Tax in candy yet, it will be happening soon. There are days when all I want is a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and so I have one (or 4 if I'm being honest). But you know what I don't do? I don't obsess about how many minutes of cardio I'm going to have to do tomorrow to "work it off."
It'll be the same with all the holiday foods I'll be stuffing my face with over the coming months.
Here's where the gratitude part comes in: I'm grateful that I can eat good food with family and friends, and I'm also grateful to have extra energy for my workouts. The focus of my gym time lately has been to make strength and hypertrophy gains, and eating plenty of food is key to doing just that.
That was the switch that made all the difference for me this year. Having body dysmorphia and OCD can cause a lot of unhealthy habits around nutrition and exercise. It's easy to fall into a spiral of guilt and shame, nitpicking the macros and punishing myself because I've overindulged. Changing how I approach extra calories, or some foods that are less nutritional, is allowing me to see all the good things I am actually doing and not stressing about the extra mashed potatoes on my plate. Less stress, more gains. Ya feel me?
So maybe this year instead of thinking, "Oh, I ate too much pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, I have to work all this off tomorrow," maybe you can start changing that to, "Oh wow, I got to have some really great food today, I bet I'm going to have extra energy for a great workout tomorrow!"
See the difference?
<3 Your Friend, Katy
Comments