Elizabeth wishes she could form a more regular exercise habit, but every time she tries she finds herself lacking in motivation. While she describes herself as “not inactive” she wishes she did more “proper exercise” a few days a week.

Sometimes she is able to put together a good streak, but inevitably her efforts are undermined by feeling she isn’t up to the task. If she feels uncomfortable with her body or finds her workouts too hard, she starts to feel like a failure.

This perfectionist streak causes her to negatively judge herself to a point where exercise becomes an unpleasant rather than uplifting experience. As a result she finds herself avoiding exercise completely.

Together we discuss strategies to get out of the judgment loop and back into enjoying being active for its own sake.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week stop avoiding white foods, the secret to exercise motivation, and why eating off the floor isn’t so bad.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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Keli has a great healthstyle, but there are a few lingering bad habits she’d like to break. After lunch and after dinner, she finds herself reaching for more (often not-so-healthy) food even though she is no longer hungry and it makes her feel sick afterward.

While she doesn’t have any particular health or weight loss goals, it bothers her that she maintains this habit even though it is something she doesn’t like. Together we investigate what is triggering her to keep eating and develop strategies to help her choose different activities after meals.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

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Photo by StepanVrany

When I first started grad school I had to adjust to a pretty tight schedule. Classes started at 9am and continued all morning. Immediately after lunch I was expected to show up at my rotation lab and get to work on my experiments. (In the first year each student “rotates” through a new lab every quarter to find a good fit for a thesis project). I’d stay in lab until 5-6pm then head home, make dinner and study.

As a first year student in a new lab this schedule was not negotiable. That meant the only time I would be able workout was in the morning before classes. Factoring in breakfast, a 40+ minute commute and shower, I needed to get up at 5:30am to make it to class comfortably with my coffee.

Waking up in the pitch dark on a cold morning is not fun. And in the first couple of weeks the siren song of my warm, cozy bed kept me from making it to the gym regularly. While staying in bed usually felt like a great idea in the moment, I always regretted it because I could never shake the foggy-headed feeling I had all day if I didn’t get my blood pumping in the morning.

My best intentions weren’t enough. I needed a way to push through my inertia and build a morning workout habit.

It was during this time that I learned to appreciate The Power of One. That is, the value of seeing every repeated event as a new opportunity to experiment with behavior change.

Because I had to wake up and go to class five days a week no matter what, and I was always a little disappointed if I didn’t make it to the gym, every morning was a new chance to get it right.

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Photo by Juanedc

By summer 2005 I had two marathons under my belt, San Francisco and Big Sur. The Big Sur race I finished in April was especially difficult with a couple of notoriously killer hills, but I finished with a respectable time of 4:14:33.

I had been training for long runs for nearly two years in SF and was feeling pretty confident, particularly about my speed on relatively flat courses. So I got this brilliant idea that I should try to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

Back then, to be able to run in the Boston Marathon you had to first finish a race in under 3:40:00 for my age bracket (today it’s 3:35:00 for the same group––one I no longer belong to, alas). So qualifying for Boston would have been a big deal for me, but I was up for the challenge.

In September 2005, I signed up to run for what I thought would be an easy, flat race called the Sacramento CowTown Marathon and gave myself just over a month to get my speed up to qualify. This decision elevated running in my mind from a hobby, to a sport. I have a fierce competitive streak in me, so with only five weeks to train it was game on.

On race day I was pumped. I felt strong and energetic, and the weather was perfect. I was on pace to finish well within the 3:40:00 requirement for Boston––until mile 25, when one slightly awkward step tweaked something in my left knee.

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I hear it all the time.

Whether it’s a friend who is struggling to lose weight or someone I overhear talking in line for coffee, there’s always a hint of desperation in their voice:

“I know WHAT to do to lose weight, I just need to DO it. I need to get more motivated.”

There is a grain of truth to this statement. If you can find the right source of motivation, you’d shock yourself with the things you could accomplish.

But if you’re even thinking this way in the first place, you probably already know how important it is to eat well and stay active. You ARE motivated.

In fact, you might even be motivated enough to sign up with a personal trainer, or pay a nutritionist to overhaul your diet.

So why is it still so hard to follow through on these commitments?

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Linda knows that cooking dinner more often would make her healthier and happier. But it feels like so much work for her to make the effort since she lives alone.

Sometimes she manages to throw something healthy together, but other nights she just sits down with a bag of potato chips and calls it a night.

For Linda one of the big obstacles is that when she does make the effort to cook one of her favorite recipes she ends up with way too many leftovers and gets tired of eating the same thing. Often it ends up going to waste.

To solve this Linda has to reexamine her beliefs about what dinner is supposed to look like so that it is less daunting and easier to do on a regular basis.

Related Links:

Cabbage and Eggs recipe

Home Court Recipes

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Ace Ventura Pet Detective

Foodist Kitchen: Learn to Cook Without Recipes in 30 Days

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Listen:

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Stitcher

Listen on Soundcloud

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. It’s been a few weeks so I went ahead and included 15 excellent articles instead of the usual 10.

This week pilates changes your brain, all your food is fake, and the big problem with people pleasing.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

Photo by lintmachine

Have you ever started a new habit with a lot of enthusiasm and built up some great momentum? Maybe you were able to workout three times a week for an entire month. It feels great, and every day you stick with it you’re strengthened to continue tomorrow.

But then something happens. You have to go away to a wedding on a long weekend, or your kids both get sick at the same time and force you to drop everything to care for them.

Your momentum is broken, and when things settle down you find yourself ordering takeout and skipping your workout to watch the latest episode of The Voice (it’s cool, I won’t tell anyone).

Momentum can be both a blessing and a curse. When it’s on your side you feel amazing and it becomes a catalyst for even more positive behaviors. When it’s against you it somehow saps the motivation out of almost everything you do. I call this lazy couch momentum.

To avoid succumbing to the lazy couch momentum I follow one simple rule:

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Ruediger faces one of the most difficult questions related to weight control, which is how to maintain your weight after achieving significant weight loss as a result of strict dieting.

Although he has already made huge progress finding an exercise regimen he enjoys, food is more difficult for him. He has only ever known subsiding on lots of junk food or restricting his calories to just 500 per day. Switching to a more moderate approach based on Real Food and not counting calories is appealing to him in theory, but he worries that he will not be able to maintain control of his weight without strongly restricting his eating habits.

Another issue Ruediger faces is that he has a very limited palate as a result of eating mostly processed and convenience foods for most of his life. He’s concerned that at the age of 44 he will be restricted to the handful of vegetables he actually enjoys and not have adequate nutrition. He also struggles with finding the motivation to prepare nutritious foods at home, since chopping, cooking and cleaning rarely feel worth the effort.

Together we examine the limiting beliefs that make changing his eating habits seem difficult and come up with strategies to overcome them.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Links for this episode:

The Foodist’s Plate

The Convenience Illusion

Listen:

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