You're Not Fine

Is your automatic answer to someone asking how you are “I’m fine,” despite really being tired, overwhelmed, and on and on?

You’re totally normal. We women tend to brush aside our feelings, stress, and health concerns in favor of politeness and continually putting others before ourselves. You might be thinking, "Okay, well I'm not a mom. I'm single, and you're talking about women at a different point in their lives." This is about you, too, because we put our health aside, not only to care for other people, but to start achieving other things in our careers. Maybe it’s to go to grad school, to save up for a home, to move to a new city. Whatever it may be, I find that many women are so focused on all of these other things in their lives that they just keep putting off their health,

Even when you're not focused on other people there's also just keeping your own life together. I’m talking about your work, social life, volunteering, all these other things that are important to you.

When was the last time you felt amazing?

There's been a time in all of our lives where we've been really healthy. We've really been fine, for real. We've all had that success before, so we know it's possible. Maybe you’ve been putting getting back to that feeling aside because you’re in your 20s, 30s, or 40s, and you keep telling yourself, "Oh, I don't have any health concerns. I'm still young."

As you stop taking care of yourself to take care of everything else in life, you make it a little bit more difficult to get back to what you deserve. You know, feeling great. You deserve that energy. You deserve to be feeling awesome.

Take stock of the last time you felt really good. Think about the last time you felt like you were really in charge, because that also means that you had everything going right, you felt well, you had the energy. Then think about what was going on. Usually it means that you were happy, you were well-rested, you were eating well, you were moving around. Taking stock of exactly what that feeling was and when that was, you then can have that end point for, "What are we working toward?"

How do we get back to feeling that way?

The version of you when you last felt great is your goal. Now, take a look at your current lifestyle and find some places you can make little tweaks. Can you maybe add some vegetables to dinner or have one night that you don't get takeout? Baby steps. See what sticks and keep going. Maybe add something else on. And then just keep adding on, seeing what sticks until you feel like you did when you imagined that time when you felt great.

Pick one thing that could get you toward that feeling again. Set your alarm earlier or you could pack some carrot sticks or you could take five minutes where everybody has to leave you alone. Whatever it is, take one baby step toward that feeling so you can match up your current reality with that healthier version of you.

Not only is your likelihood of success higher if you focus on just one thing, but because you're experimenting, you can see what works first and then you add something else on.

But big sweeping changes don't work. I've done it, it doesn't work. I promise. You will fail and I don't want you to fail - I want you to feel awesome.

You deserve to feel great!

Seriously. Your body is just dying to feel great. In fact, being healthy is not complicated - you don't have to be on a special diet, you don't have to do a certain workout routine. What you need to do is whatever it is that fits in your crazy life, because your most of your life is not going to change. Your lifestyle is your lifestyle - whether it's force of habit, necessity, or you just like it that way. Don't assume that making some change to your health, whatever that may be, requires that you need to change the rest of your life, because you're not going to. It isn’t realistic.