So often, when all your health plans are going just fine, suddenly, they seem to fall apart when we get busy, distracted or stressed. When life is going smoothly, we can easily make healthy eating decisions. But, our body has certain limitations and if stress and tension increases, it is natural to lose energy and motivation.
One way to deal with this is to be aware of what’s happening. Understand that when you’re mentally drained, you’ll be stressed, which ruins your motivation and willingness to bounce back. Awareness and acknowledgment help you find new ways to reverse this effect and take control of the situation. Don’t allow stress or other issues affect the way you want to feel. These six easy methods can help you stay healthy even when you’re stressed and demotivated.
1. Focus On Staying Healthy
When you’re mentally preoccupied, it is hard to make healthy decisions. Fast-paced stressful lives often interfere with your eating habits and health choices. Stressful situations occupy your mental space and make you ignore healthier eating options. Researchers at Oxford University have found that there is a close relationship between mental stressors and food choices.1
The study found that some foods that are emotionally rewarding had a smaller effect on cognitive stimulation. Whereas, foods that were emotionally less rewarding was observed to stimulate cognition much more effectively. Practicing a holistic lifestyle enables you to make rational and healthy decisions that promote your well-being. Train your mind to focus on your health aspect and not succumb to stress or lack of motivation.
2. Write Down Your Positives
When you’re feeling stressed and demotivated, it is common to feel as if you’re worthless and incompetent. This is when most people focus on their negative aspects, lose the drive to achieve and end up feeling miserable. So, what you need are motivation and encouragement. And, who can do that to yourself better than you? Everyone has their own positive points and these are exactly what you must identify and note them down.
Reading these positive features about yourself reaffirms your faith in yourself and reminds you that you can achieve what you want. Whenever you lose motivation, just read them and revive the motivation.
3. Identify Your Excuses
More often than not, you’ll have perfect excuses for not making healthy decisions. For instance, you may cite the lack of time and indulge in unhealthy fast food. Or you may feign ill health and skip going to the gym. These excuses conveniently prevent you from attaining your health objective.
For starters, identify the excuses that come in the way of your health routine. Again, note them down and find ways to convert them into productive responses. Resist the urge to give into excuses and steadfastly, stick to your original health plan, be it eating, fitness or general well-being.
4. Leverage Your Health With Your Thoughts
Your thoughts make you the person you are. Your thoughts are so powerful that they can influence you to change your outlook completely, in just an instant. By focusing your thoughts on your weaknesses, you feel small and powerless. Try thinking about the times that you aced a test or think of the occasions where you excelled. Think of wins instead of losses. This should help you get back your lost motivation and energy and enable you to stay healthy.
5. Connect Internally
It may sound philosophical, but it works. Deep down, you’re truly limitless and you can achieve more than you think you can. The best way to connect to your inner self is by practicing meditation. When you shut the world outside of you, a whole new world opens up within. Connecting to your inner-self helps you see beyond vanity and insignificant aspects of life.
For instance, you must understand that your happiness and well-being is more important than your weight. So, gaining a few pounds should not matter as long as you can think of a contingency plan to burn those pounds. But, if you’re stressed, unhappy and demotivated, you feel incapable of making healthy choices or for that matter, even think clearly.
6. Remember, Being Healthy Is Fun
When something becomes monotonous, you can be easily bored and lose the drive. Let’s say you start gymming with brimming enthusiasm and over time, you begin to feel that it is a part of your routine. This makes even fun activities seem like work. So, we may have to remind ourselves from time-to-time that we’re having fun.
This is not limited to just exercising or work. It even holds good for your health choices. For example, don’t think of a weight-loss diet as a punishment; think of it as fun and you’ll be surprised how easily you start enjoying it. The fun factor is a crucial ingredient of any activity if you want to enjoy what you’re doing.
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