2635: When Life Takes Over: Making Time for Health by Rachel Trotta on Self-Improvement & Healthy Living

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[00:01:00] more. That's wonderfulpistachios.com. This is Optimal Health Daily Episode 2635. When Life Takes Over, Making Time for Health by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. And I'm Dr. Neil, your host and narrator. Hey there, welcome back to another edition of Optimal Health Daily.

[00:01:20] This is where I read to you from some of the best health and fitness blogs on the web, kind of like an ongoing audiobook. Now we have a bunch of shows covering a bunch of different

[00:01:29] topics. Check them all out by searching for Optimal Living Daily wherever you're hearing this. But for now, let's get right to the post and optimize your life. When Life Takes Over, Making Time for Health by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com.

[00:01:50] A struggle for many of my clients is managing the normal or sometimes super stressful obligations and curveballs of life while aspiring to create a healthy lifestyle. I relate to this myself. My availability for working out sharply decreases when an unexpected crisis erupts or when I'm out

[00:02:08] of my usual routine. My website crashes and I have to spend 24 or 48 hours devoting an unparalleled amount of attention to getting it back online. I go on a trip and stay with a friend who doesn't

[00:02:21] share my health goals or lifestyle. I have several evening events in a row and have difficulty taking sufficiently long breaks during the day to focus on exercise. In other words, at those times,

[00:02:32] it's just not happening. How do I deal with these curveballs? How do I keep myself on track? I have a number of strategies for dealing with time limitations, also known as reality. You must accept one principle, however, to get started. Busyness and health are not

[00:02:50] mutually exclusive. This mindset is essential. I have written another blog post in the past about accepting your lifestyle for what it is and working with what you do have, not what you would like to have. But this post is going to be more specific about

[00:03:07] what you can do to create a lifestyle that works, even if you have the busiest job of all time, three kids who need your attention, or a travel schedule that constantly upends your routines, or maybe even all three or more. Strategy number 1 – Use a Sliding Scale Mentality

[00:03:25] Sometimes in your life, you're going to be able to spend literally hours at the gym. Most of us have this memory of college or our early working years, a schedule that had hours-long gaps, free of responsibilities. Remember when you thought you were so busy in college? Ha!

[00:03:41] But for probably 90% of your adult life, those gaping caverns of time are not going to exist. Unfortunately, if you don't prioritize health, life will rush in to fill the void with everything else first, putting you and your needs last in line. Instead, adopt a sliding scale mentality

[00:04:03] to combat all-or-nothing thinking. Much like some medical or mental health professionals will accept a modified version of their usual rate if their client can demonstrate financial hardship, you can create a modified version of your aspirational lifestyle that actually fits

[00:04:19] your time budget. In other words, you may not have hours, but you do have minutes. Adopt this mindset. Strategy number 2 – Use Shorter Workouts More Frequently Using the mindset from the first strategy, shortening your workouts is the practical

[00:04:37] application. Especially for those with unpredictable schedules and lots of work travel, shorter workouts can yield long-term benefits as long as this means that you can do them more frequently. Shorter workouts have the distinct advantage of being more repeatable. It is more

[00:04:52] likely that you will workout for 15 to 20 minutes 5 or 6 times a week versus a 90-minute gym session that's so overwhelming you only do it once. In other words, you need to lower your expectations of the length of your workouts but raise your expectations for the frequency.

[00:05:11] Strategy number 3 – Redefine Exercise This is very important. When you are crunched for time or traveling or busy with kids who need your attention all day every day, you may need to re-evaluate your definition of exercise. If in your mind, you are only exercising

[00:05:29] if you get in gym clothes, go to the gym or the class or the track or the park, spend at least an hour exercising, sweat a lot and feel sore the next day, you will be at a disadvantage during

[00:05:40] busy times of life. You may not always be able to make those classes or run 5 miles consistently. Instead of clinging to the idea of exercise needing to be a formally delineated experience,

[00:05:52] you may need to modify your definition to include a 20-minute walk or bike ride in normal clothes, taking stairs instead of escalators or elevators, staying on your feet as much as possible, taking a plank break in the office, doing quick bodyweight circuits on a fast run,

[00:06:12] or in-home workouts with minimal equipment. Walking a lot, taking the stairs and doing a 20-minute at-home workout can add up. Strategy number 4 – Have realistic expectations of results When you are in a busy period of life,

[00:06:28] you may need to shelve your aspirations of six-pack abs or running a marathon and just focus on staying active and maintaining what you've already accomplished. Heroic, over-the-top fitness goals, whether they are driven by performance or aesthetics, can encourage

[00:06:43] black-and-white thinking, which takes me back to strategies 2 and 3. During busy times, I urge you to release your self-limiting beliefs that only a certain type of exercise counts as exercise and instead focus on consistency and frequency over intensity. Small repeated habits lead to

[00:07:02] big gains, I promise! And, strategy number 5 – Practice dietary moderation on a daily basis Finally, during intensely busy times, it's more important than ever not to rely on food as a crutch to help you manage stress. This goes beyond dieting or macros or weight loss and instead

[00:07:22] focuses on your relationship with stress. If food is the release valve on your stress tank, then you will have great difficulty maintaining progress during busy times. As the saying goes, it is virtually impossible to out-exercise or outrun a bad diet. You simply do not burn as

[00:07:40] many calories exercising as you take in when you overeat. And, when you are quite busy, it's likely that you are exercising even less than you normally do. Look out for stress-related behaviors like having multiple snacks in front of the TV at night and staying up too late,

[00:07:57] indulging in multiple glasses of wine or your adult beverage of choice several times a week or every night, sneaking multiple snacks between meals at the office, and ordering takeout frequently. Replace these with getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night at approximately the same

[00:08:16] time each night, taking some time for yourself every day even if it's 10 minutes to be quiet and unplugged, making time to connect by calling a friend or getting together with a group of people, having a consistent grocery shopping routine that fills your fridge and pantry with healthy

[00:08:33] options, doing nice things for yourself like buying new socks or soap, prepping some foods in advance so that you don't have to rely on willpower so much, bringing snacks to work that

[00:08:45] allow you to decline the office pastries, taking a brisk walk at night to replace part of your evening veg-out routine, learning to say a firm no to food behaviors that you know are motivated by

[00:08:58] boredom, stress, or emotions, and going cold turkey on takeout or fast food that you know is problematic for you. Don't worry, if you pass on a snack and you were truly hungry, you'll know.

[00:09:11] Your body is very good at giving you accurate cues when you are well-rested and not in tunnel vision mode. True hunger should always be heated. Why is it so important to maintain a healthy

[00:09:22] lifestyle? If you have a healthy self-interest and a dose of skepticism, as do many of my smart intuitive clients, you may be asking yourself, why is it so important? My life can't revolve around fitness all the time. My answer would be, you're right. Your life can't revolve around

[00:09:41] fitness and wellness and results all the time. At times, it is wise and appropriate to dedicate your focus to resolving a stressful situation and it can seem like self-care competes with the objective. However, you cannot get that time back. If you are serious about making your life

[00:09:59] better through fitness, progress goes in both directions. If you completely give up and develop a, I'll start over again when all of this calms down mentality, you'll find that starting over is very, very difficult. 60 to 0 and back to 60 is tough. However, 40 to 60, not so bad. In fact,

[00:10:22] you can drop from 60 to 40, it's not a big jump from 40 to 70. That's how lifelong progress works. Plus, the complete cessation of self-care does not mean that you will get through a stressful situation any more easily than if you took time to sleep, exercise and eat nutritious foods.

[00:10:42] The investment in your mental health is minuscule compared to the consequences of burnout. But that's a topic for another day. You just listened to the post titled, When Life Takes Over, Making Time for Health by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com and I'll be

[00:11:01] right back with my commentary. Dr. Neal here for my commentary. Today's article by Rachel Trotta was jam-packed full of amazing suggestions. If you could have watched me as I read this article the first time, you would have seen my head nodding in agreement

[00:11:17] many times. Now, just because Rachel gave us all of these wonderful suggestions does not mean we need to do every single one of them. As I always say, just pick one or two suggestions

[00:11:29] to start with. Now, how do we know which one or two suggestions to start with? It's easy. The ones that, as you were listening, made you stop and say, Ooh, I like that idea, I could do that. That's where you start. Now, it may not lead to the

[00:11:45] exact results we want right away, but that's okay. That isn't the point. The point is to just get us started. Alright, that'll do it for today's episode. I hope you have a great rest of your day

[00:11:57] and I'll be back here tomorrow for our usual Friday Q&A, so I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits!