Everyone has heard one, everyone has used one, everyone can think of one.

Excuses are ways to justify or rationalize your poor behaviors and keep you from feeling bad about what you did or didn’t do. In particular, I’m talking about the excuses you keep making in regard to why you can’t seem to find time to exercise or eat right.

You can find time to wait in a drive-thru line, sit on your phone and doom scroll, and certainly find time to “Netflix and chill,” so why can’t we find time to do the things that really matter, like taking care of our health? ~Coach Ame

Well, if you are like most people, you work or run a business, you go to school, or you have a family you have to take care of and a household to run. All of those things are important, but YOU should come before all of those things. You hear it all the time these days, “Self-care.” It’s the new buzzword in the health and fitness world. If you think about it, though, when was the last time you did something like that? And no, Netflix isn’t productive, doom scrolling on social media isn’t really that likely to benefit you positively, and you know fast food isn’t that good for you – yet you find yourself going right back to them. So while it’s nice to have the downtime, it’s not really self-care at all when you think about it.

Things that are likely to improve your overall health and well being, on the other hand, that’s self-care! And when you take care of yourself first, you can take care of others better, too. You didn’t think about that did ya!

So you want to start your health and fitness journey and here you are making excuses as to why you cant follow thru. You tell yourself you just aren’t motivated enough. Your brain is gonna help you justify the situation you are most comfortable with and that’s where you are right now, and where did that get you? If you want to change and stop with the excuses you have to really think about what you want and most importantly why you want that.

If you are looking to lose some weight, ask yourself why?

Not just because you want to fit into that pair of pants, but really, why do you feel you need to lose weight?

Do you want to set a better example for your kids? Do you want to lower your cholesterol, limit health issues in the future, or get stronger? Maybe you don’t want to follow in a relative’s footsteps, or perhaps you are a caregiver of sorts and people are literally depending you for their survival. Get deep and really think about it. I can assure you that if you sit and think on this one, some deep stuff will come up for you.

Once you find your why, get a short term goal that you can see yourself following thru on. “I’m gonna eat a healthy dinner every day for 2 weeks.” or maybe, ” I’m going to walk 15 minutes after lunch at least 5 days a week for 30 days”. When you start small and start hitting those small goals day after day and week after week your excuses will start to become non-existent. You look at these little changes positively and look for more ways to improve your life. You start to build new, healthier habits than your old ones, and before you know it, you have created an entirely new lifestyle.

I know you can do this because I’ve done it too.

I had every excuse in the book, but through small changes and short—and long-term goals, I grew into a whole new person and almost didn’t even notice it was happening! So next time you try to make an excuse and talk yourself out of anything, maybe just give it a go this one time and see what happens. Your future self will thank you!

Stay Strong 🧡

~ Coach Ame