Busy women hardly have time for themselves. There are good things about being young and working on your schooling or career. It’s even great to be a mother, but if you don’t take care of yourself it’s hard to feel your best or take care of other people for that matter. Even if you’re able to do it, you most likely won’t have a good mood or a positive mindset. If anybody told you it was going to be easy, they were wrong. We have to mindfully and intentionally make time for ourselves.
I’ve spoken on my YouTube channel about shifting from meat to plant-based diet and covered detox and detox secrets. Working out is a critical part of being fit. Our body needs regular blood flow and oxygen to keep up healthy and at our best. Working out consistently leads to better mental clarity, better mood and better overall health. Check out my 5 secrets and my bonus tip at the end.
Here are the five secrets to getting into gear:
1. You have to know your WHY
This actually applies to anything in your
life. Before you go, you have to know why you’re doing it, because if you don’t
have a strong enough why, you just fall off on days when you’re not mentally
and physically well and you just come up with a list of excuses. You’d
eventually end up with the habit of, “I’ll
do it the next day, the next day, and the next day.” In the end, you
just fall off so much that you start telling yourself to just forget it and go
all negative in that place.
Knowing your why gets you grounded
Let me share my why:
my body is a gift and everything we’re given in our life is a gift from Allah.
Yes, we appreciate things that Allah bestows us, but we don’t really appreciate
if we don’t care for them properly. Not everybody has the gift of health.
Personally, I don’t have any major problems. There should be NO reason I don’t
take care of myself or not value the gift of a healthy body that Allah already
gave me. It’s a promise I make to Allah to maintain it and try to keep it
healthy –as a way of showing my appreciation.
A fundamental why: I love my husband
I love my husband so much that I don’t want
him to have an ugly wife to look at. Let’s be fair; men look at things all day
long, at least when they come home they have something nice to look at. That
said, all in all, I keep in mind that first and foremost, I do it for Allah. I
also do it for myself because it also makes me feel good.
Working together towards something positive in the here and afterlife
My husband also works out for the same
reason. We do it for each other. This is our commitment and promise toward one
another where we workout together as a partner. This also helps us spend time
with each other every day. Having each other as workout buddies helps us in
keeping focused.
2. Stay realistic
One at a time
Another reason to stay realistic is that if
you set impossible goals, you won’t be able to reach them. If you set your
goals too high, they never happen, you get crushed and fall off the wagon like
a weak end. Keep your personal goals realistic and not set them too high so
that you don’t get discouraged. Do one body part at a time, slowly and surely.
3. Schedule actual time in your day and do it every day on the same time.
Allow yourself some slack where there’d be a
day or 2 that you may not be able to work out, but workout every single day
like how you set your alarm and wake up every day. If you’re not consistent
that way, you’ll easily convince yourself to do it another day and then another
day, and so forth. It’s more effective when you put it in on your calendar from
the beginning.
4. Prepare your stuff from the night before.
I cannot tell you how many times I hadn’t
gone to the gym because of something really silly, like I couldn’t find a pair
of socks, or I couldn’t remember where I put my keys. What I do now is I put
everything out. When I do, there’s actually no reason why I can’t workout.
5. Change your diet.
You can work out as much as you want, but I
can’t tell you enough that if you don’t change your diet, you won’t see the
same results, or sometimes any results at all. What you eat is essentially more
important than working out because of the way your body functions and in the
way your system runs. If you’re not mindful with your eating lifestyle and
think you’re just going to work out and see results, it’s not going to work out
well for you.
Food habits can make or break you
I’m not going to go
deeper into diet this time, but I’ll just share one quick tip: you have to
watch that you don’t eat late at night. That’s the number one killer. It
doesn’t matter how hard I work out, if I eat chips or anything after 8PM, it
just kills whatever work I did during the day. Try not to be a night eater
anymore, instead drink more water.
Food really matters
When I shift to a healthier diet, stop
eating at night, and cut down on carbs, chips and sugar, I find I get more
results faster regardless of what I do in other areas. If you did no exercise
and that you’re able to control and have the willpower, these basic things are
going to help you get the fastest results.
Bonus tip:
Exercise buddy
I’d like to share this extra tip in
addition to the 5 I mentioned above. If you have somebody to workout with, it
helps to motivate each other. From experience, there are days when my husband
comes home and says he’s tired. I encourage him to still go with me and tell
him I waited all day. Even if he dragged himself to the gym and didn’t do
something as effective as he would have wanted to, he still went to the gym as
opposed to not going at all. There are days that I’m tired and he helps me as
well. We just push each other along and we help each other to stay healthy.
If you have any comments or tips that have helped you stay motivated in going to the gym, please share. I pray Allah makes it easy for us all to stay in shape, preserve our bodies, take care of it, and feel good.
Check out further self- care advice on my podcast and YouTube channel.
