Hi Butterfly88, totally get you on this. The hardest thing about diets and exercise isn't actually doing them, it's making the decision to actually do them. Exercise and diet is 90% mental and only 10% actually doing it. But getting over that first hurdle of actually making the decision and then maintaining that motivation is the hardest thing in the world!
The trouble is we try and make that decision when we have little willpower to do so. For example, today we say that we are going to start tomorrow, and we really mean it. We want to lose weight, we want to get fit and look great. We really want to. But then tomorrow comes and we're a bit stressed out, tired and quite frankly we're going to get more pleasure from eating cake than exercising!
But there's some really simple tactics you can try out to get past this. One thing I've learned (and honestly, give this a go!) is to make the decision when your willpower is high the day before, so all you have to do the following day is just act. What I mean by this is that if you want to eat a healthy lunch tomorrow, then make it the night before, stick it in the fridge. So when you come to eat lunch tomorrow and you haven't got the willpower to make something healthy, you don't have to, you already did it! Now, you've just got to take action and eat it.
If you want to go out for a run in the morning or do a workout, then lay out your workout clothes and trainers before you go to bed. You've effectively made the decision there and then so in the morning all you have to do is put on the clothes you've already laid out and exercise. You already did 90% of the work the night before.
One last one, I regularly snack at work, buying chocolates from the vending machines. So I stopped taking change with me to work and stuck an apple in my bag instead. I ate the apple and still wanted chocolate but now I didn't have any change to get chocolate. I made that decision before I went to work not to eat chocolate by removing my ability to buy it.
Little things like this can go a long way. We shouldn't worry about completely changing our lifestyle from day one, but little tweaks like this can add up. Once we've made one and stuck to one small tweak then we can make another and then another. And they all stack up eventually!
I hope this helps and I would love to know how you get on!
