How to restart your weight loss and fitness journey when you feel stuck

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Organifi.

Organifi is a line of organic superfood blends that offers plant based nutrition made with high quality ingredients. Each Organifi blend is science backed to craft the most effective doses with ingredients that are organic, free of fillers and contain less than 3g of sugar per serving. They won’t take you out of ketosis, if that’s your way of eating.

Your body is an amazing organic machine. The food we eat and drink is information for that machine. This includes adaptagens. These are compounds that balance hormones and help you deal with stress in a healthier way. If you’re feeling tired, these compounds give you a boost of energy. If you’re stressed, they help you return to a natural state of calm. They literally help you adapt to the stress of life.

This is why I’m a big fan of Organifi Green juice with essential superfoods and a clinical dose of Ashwaganda. It helps reduce stress and support healthy cortisol levels. It mixes well with water or your beverage of choice and it tastes awesome! This has become a part of my morning ritual.

Organifi offers the best tasting, high quality superfood beverages without breaking the bank. Each serving costs less than $3 per day. Easy, convenient, and cost effective.

Go to www.organifi.com/40plus and use code 40plus for 20% off your order. That's O R G A N I F I dot com forward slash 40plus and use code 40plus  for 20% off any item.

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Unidragon.

As the holidays approach, you might be looking for a unique gift that will entertain and delight. Unidragon has you covered. They make high-quality wooden puzzles. But these aren’t like regular puzzles with the standard style pieces. Their unique design is something I’ve never seen before. They’re works of art.

We all know that as we age, we risk a loss of cognitive strength. But with neuroplasticity, we can train our brain and slow decline. Puzzles do just that. Plus these beautiful puzzles are something you can do with the whole family, be it your significant other or your grandchildren.

Each month, Unidragon comes out with a new design. And most of them have multiple levels of depth and difficulty. These make great gifts, but you might just enjoy buying them for yourself.

I received the medium-sized Playful Parrots puzzle. It came a beautiful wooden box. You should have seen my wife’s eyes light up when she saw it. I fully expect to buy more of the Unidragon puzzles for ourselves and our guests.

You have to check them out at unidragon.com and use the promo code 40plus to get 10% off your order. Gift giving problem solved. That’s U N I D R A G O N dot COM and 4 0 P L U S for 10% off.

Let's Say Hello

Rachel was out this week, so we don't have a pre-show hello. She will be back next week.

Episode

Every once in a while, you might find yourself flat-footed without intending to. You've stopped moving. In fact, you might be letting some old habits return. Now this is a little different than a plateau. In a plateau, you're still doing the things that were working. They've just stopped working. But now you're standing there flat-footed and maybe not doing everything that you were doing. And it becomes sort of this feeling of inertia. It seems really hard to push forward and you just feel stuck.

So now this term inertia that I'm using is a kind of a term out of motion. It means motion, and it means no motion. So it's Newton's first law, and it basically says an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. And you probably feel this when you're in a car. If you hit the brakes in the car, you don't just stop there's. This tendency for the car to go forward a little bit further until it finally comes to a stop.

And the same is true. If you're sitting still, you have to give it a little more gas, a little bit more RPMs revolutions per minute to get the car moving. Now, once it gets up to a cruising speed, the rpm is dropped back down and you find a comfortable thing because you're not trying to accelerate with the gas and you're not trying to decelerate with the brakes. So realize the braking and the accelerating are kind of giving you the concepts of inertia. And then there's just sometimes you just feel like you're just parked.

You may not put your car in park. You may not think you're in park, but you're basically either in neutral sitting there or you're in park. In either case, you're not going anywhere. So I want to talk about today three things that you can do to get moving again to get going again. These are don't wait, start small and then lean into your strengths. So let's start with the first one. Don't wait. So I want to show of hands who's ever said I will start my diet or I will start my workout program on Monday, or I'll start my program on the first of next month.

It's a fairly common thing, and we see people doing it with New Year's resolutions all the time. I'll start my diet on January 1. I'll start getting in shape on January 1. It's a very common thing. So how many days are there between now and then? What you may be doing is not only that you're going to be sitting still for those number of days you might actually be creating inertia because you start moving backwards, and it's the same problem. An object in motion going backwards tends to stay in motion.

So the longer you wait, the less likely you are to be successful waiting till Monday. Waiting till the first never a good strategy. Now, a lot of times we do this because we think we need to go big. We think I'm going to have to completely cut out everything and do everything at once and that holds us back. That puts that procrastination in there because we want to steal ourselves and it will be easier for me to steal myself on Monday and do this. It will be easier for me to motivate myself over the weekend and through the rest of the month and then start on the first.

We approach them that way because we think we need this huge change, which takes me to the second point.

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Organifi.

Organifi is a line of organic superfood blends that offers plant based nutrition made with high quality ingredients. Each Organifi blend is science backed to craft the most effective doses with ingredients that are organic, free of fillers and contain less than 3g of sugar per serving.

In our 24/7 always on world, going without sleep seems to carry a badge of honor. But that’s not how your body sees it. Sleep is when all the wonderful things happen inside your body. Hormones reset, and healing and restoration happens. You know how much better you feel after a good night’s sleep. Getting good quality sleep is a priority for me

This is why I’m a big fan of Organifi Gold juice with ingredients like Tumeric, Reishi Mushroom, and ginger, it’s designed to support rest, relaxation, recovery, and repair. It’s a delicious and nutritious warm, golden tea. I use water, but you can also use milk or a milk alternative. This has become a part of my evening wind-down.

Organifi offers the best tasting, high quality superfood beverages without breaking the bank. Each serving costs less than $3 per day. Easy, convenient, and cost effective.

Go to www.organifi.com/40plus and use code 40plus for 20% off your order. That's O R G A N I F I dot com forward slash 40plus and use code 40plus  for 20% off any item.

Okay. The same works for rock slides. One single rock moves and that one single rock starts the rock slide. That can be huge. So which rock is it for you? What is one small thing that you can do today? Or better yet, right now that will get things moving. Perhaps you just need to stand up and walk around for a few minutes right now. If you can do it, you're listening to this and you're not already moving. Consider it. Stand up and walk around. It's one small thing.

Maybe you can get yourself a glass of water next time you want to go for a soft drink. So you go to the machine. You're like, I should really just get a glass of water and you get a glass of water and you cut out one small thing, that's soft drink, which was probably 39 grams of sugar and calories you didn't need because they're not nutritious. They're not helping you. Or maybe when you go out instead of going out to eat or getting your lunch, you can pick up at the grocery store.

So you give them a call and say, okay, I want to order a rotisserie chicken, some veggies, a prerossed salad. And rather than doing pizza night or calling a restaurant or going to a restaurant, I'm going to go buy the grocery store and pick up those things. And that's going to be our dinner. This is not like you're trying to completely change the world at once. You're just trying to make one small movement. That small movement, though, creates the next movement. That glass of water becomes the habit of drinking enough water every day where you stay hydrated and you're not always maybe confusing thirst with hunger.

Perhaps that getting up and walking around gets you more comfortable to say, I can walk a lot more while I'm trying to do other things like listen to a podcast or take a phone call or whatever, and then the picking the food and saying, no, I'm not going to go to the restaurant because it's easy because I didn't do what I needed to do. I'm going to go do a better choice. When I go in, I'm going to go to the deli. I'm going to find better food.

I'm going to go to the produce section, find better food, and I'm going to make better decisions as I go so that I'm not backtracking so that I'm not stuck. So it's this little small thing that can get the ball rolling or the rock sliding that's going to have a big payoff later. So look for the little things just to get the ball rolling later on. You can take that big leap of your big rocks and say, okay, now we're moving now. I can take on a big rock.

Okay. And then the third thing that I want to talk about here is leaning into your strengths. Most of us have this idea that improving our health and fitness involves eliminating something. I have to get rid of sweets. I have to get rid of soft drinks. I have to stop my sedentary lifestyle and not be watching Netflix all the time and doing those other things. And I'm not going to say that can't be a part of your solution. But if you're finding yourself flat footed, that might not be the best strategy.

The easiest and quickest way to get things moving is to do something you know you can do and that you enjoy. So it's a strength and maybe even a superpower, because if you know you enjoy walking and you can do it, just blocking out a little bit of time each day to take a short walk. Okay. We talked about in Tip two something little. It can be a short walk, but just something to get you started. And if you enjoy it all the better. Another example is maybe you enjoy dancing.

And so you say, okay, I really enjoy dancing, but I don't want to go out to the clubs and bars or whatever and do the dancing there, because then there's the alcohol and the friends and everything else. So maybe you go ahead and take a dance class so you can learn more complex techniques in your two step. I don't know. Or you just find some fitness class, like maybe a Zumba class or something like that that incorporates dance and music and you're moving. And so you know, you enjoy it.

You know, you're going to enjoy doing it and you're getting the fitness benefits, the health benefits of doing something or then another one. And this one fits me to a tea. Is I really like cooking. I like cooking big meals. I like cooking things and putting them together. So just sitting down and having a batch cooking session, invite a friend over, say, okay, look, you bring park the groceries, I bring park the groceries. We do a huge batch cooking together. You take half of it, I take half of it, and we've got meals for days.

Okay. It's tying into something that you enjoy, it's tying into something you're good at, it's tying into something that you know you can do. And so it's a strength, maybe even a superpower. And you're just going to lean into that.

SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness Podcast is sponsored by Unidragon.

As the holidays approach, you might be looking for a unique gift that will entertain and delight. Unidragon has you covered. They make high quality wooden puzzles. But these aren’t like regular puzzles with the standard style pieces. Their unique design is something I’ve never seen before. They’re works of art.

We all know that as we age, we risk a loss of cognitive strength. But with neuro-plasticity, we can train our brain and slow decline. Puzzles do just that. Plus these beautiful puzzles are something you can do with the whole family, be it your significant other or your grandchildren.

Each month, Unidragon comes out with a new design. And most of them have multiple levels of depth and difficulty. These make great gifts, but you might just enjoy buying them for yourself.

I received the medium-sized Playful Parrots puzzle. It came a beautiful wooden box. You should have seen my wife’s eyes light up when she saw it. I fully expect to buy more of the Unidragon puzzles for ourselves and our guests.

You have to check them out at unidragon.com and use the promo code 40plus to get 10% off your order. Gift giving problem solved. That’s U N I D R A G O N dot COM and 4 0 P L U S for 10% off.

So I know this is a relatively short episode, but this is not a hard thing.

If you can get your mindset around it is that being stuck doesn't mean you're always stuck. Notice that Newton didn't say an object at rest can never be moved, or an object moving can never be stopped. It's just a function that it feels harder. There's an inertia. There's something pulling it or keeping it. And so what you can do within your power today is one start, two, start small, and three start with something. Do something that you enjoy and that you're good at because it'll be easier.

All those little, easy things gets the first rock going, gets the little bit going. And so if you find yourself flat-footed, you've lost your momentum. You feel like you're standing up. Don't beat yourself up. We all get into this place. This happens to every one of us. Every one of us will find ourselves at one point or another, not making the progress that we think we should make. And when we really are honest with ourselves, we know we're not putting in the same effort the same time, the same everything we were doing before we've let some things creep back in, and that's what slowed us down.

That's what eventually left us in this flat footed place. So don't beat yourself up. But know that this is within your power to stop, to start, not stop because you did stop. Let's start. Don't wait. Start small and lean into your strengths. Find something that will get you jumpstarted. Just that one little thing. Do it. Do it now and enjoy it. And that's going to be the thing that gets things rolling. Once you get them rolling, it's easier to keep them rolling. And that's what you do next.

But the first step is the first little rock. Just get it going.

Post Show/Recap

[00:18:30.090] – Allan

Hey, Raz.

[00:18:31.180] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I really feel the inertia a lot, because sometimes it is hard to get going. And I've been stuck at a plateau. I feel like I've spun my wheels. It's just hard to make a pivot to get moving again. I really feel for people that have this issue.

[00:18:53.730] – Allan

Yeah. And I do want to go back and just kind of delineate the difference between a plateau because the plateau is hugely frustrating because you're saying I was eating this, my TEE says this and that and I'm logging everything and I'm measuring everything. And I'm doing the exercise and every day the numbers on the computer, the app I'm using are saying I should be losing 1 pound a week and I get to the end of the week and I didn't lose anything. And then I got to the end of the next week and I didn't lose anything and you're like, but I'm doing everything right.

[00:19:30.310] – Allan

And it was working so well. And now it's not. And that's just homeostasis. That's just our bodies adapting to what we're doing. So that's a very different thing to be hugely frustrating. And I've talked about plateaus before, so you can go back and you can kind of search and see if there's some shows there. Obviously, I will keep talking about plateaus because we all face them.

[00:19:54.400] – Allan

This is something slightly different. This is where you kind of just get a funk and, you know, you let up, you know, you're not putting on the gas as we talked to Delatoro. You know, you put the car in park or maybe now even into reverse. And so as you're making these decisions and you're doing these things now you have a harder start because you've put yourself in a stopped position.

[00:20:24.160] – Rachel

Yeah. Well, it's hard not to give up. It's hard not to see that progress and get so frustrated that you just what else are you going to do? Obviously, it is what it is and you just want to quit. But it's important that you don't. And it's important that you keep trying and do something different.

[00:20:44.830] – Rachel

But like the three tips that you offered to get out of this funk and to get out of this stopped/parked space. I think the first one is don't wait like you had mentioned. And don't wait till January 1 or Monday, but just do something get started somehow.

[00:21:02.150] – Allan

Yeah. I mean, this episode comes out on a Monday. This episode comes out on Monday 29th. If you're going to wait until Monday, that's a whole week if you're going to wait until January 1, that's 33 days.

[00:21:15.310] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:21:16.060] – Allan

If you're listing this on the Monday it came out. And so you're just going to give away a month now if you think about it. Yeah. We have 70 years, maybe on average or maybe 80 years on average on this Earth. And then there's twelve times that. So it seems like a lot of months. But the distance between you right now and that 80 years is not that far, not as far, times twelve still seems like a relatively big number. But why give away an entire month?

[00:21:50.010] – Allan

Start something now and the easiest way to start something now is based on the other two tips of something small.

[00:21:57.770] – Rachel

Yes. Like you had mentioned replacing one glass of pop with a glass of water. I mean, you don't have to throw out your whole pantry.

[00:22:06.090] 

I didn't call it pop, but…

[00:22:14.350] – Rachel

I'm a pop girl. So we stayed up here in Michigan. But if you just make that one change, some people just want to go cold turkey, throw out all the junk food out of the pantry in the refrigerator, which breaks my financial heart a little bit. But instead of just going cold turkey and just revamping everything and making it such a drastic situation, just start with one thing. I think baby steps are far more effective than going cold turkey and making some drastic change.

[00:22:45.570] – Allan

Yeah. And those little habits stack pretty quickly, you realize? Okay. I went a couple of days without my Pepsi or without my Coke or Mountain Dew or Doctor Pepper or whatever. Your thing is a monster drink.

[00:23:02.110] – Rachel

No. Please don't.

[00:23:04.810] – Allan

So you do without that, you cut out 39 grams of sugar or maybe more per day. That's a big deal. And if you're drinking more than one and now you're drinking none, that's even bigger. And so you start moving down that trail, and then the next step is like, okay, what else? And that's where, again, leaning into something you're really strong at.

[00:23:35.120] – Allan

It's like, I really like playing tennis. Now, maybe at this point, you don't feel confident that you can go get on the tennis court and play. But you could get your tennis racket out and you could go and typically by tennis courts they have the practice walls with the line straw on the concrete. And you literally just sit there and just take the racket, take the ball and just start hitting the ball and jogging around a little bit, hitting the ball and just get into the act of moving. And it feels good. And it's something you love and it's coming back.

[00:24:07.740] – Allan

And now, you know, okay. If I can build up my stamina, then I'm going to be able to get back on the court. If I build up some strength, I'm going to get better. If I build up my speed, I'm going to get even better. If I help build my agility, I'm going to be able to play this sport. And you see it. You go out there and it's like a lot of younger people do play singles. And then some of the older people I noticed they tend to move to doubles or mixed doubles. And then as they get a little bit older, there's pickleball. So I've never played pickleball.

[00:24:42.250] – Rachel

I haven't either. But it does look very fun.

[00:24:44.970] – Allan

Yeah. And it was sort of when I was a kid, they had a golf team on the high school. And it's like, Why would I play an old man sport? Because to me, golf was an old man sport. When I was in high school, I'm like, I'm going to play football, baseball, whatever, and run track and tennis. And so I felt like I'm going to play these more aggressive sports. And then, yeah, now if we had a golf course, I would probably be playing a lot of golf.

[00:25:11.530] – Allan

But it's just one of those things of saying if there's something you really enjoy doing, you might not be doing it at the level you did 20 years ago, but doesn't mean you can't do it at some level, right? Even again, if it's just going out there and doing some practice serves and hitting the ball against the wall and just getting out and being active. Doing something you really enjoy doin

[00:25:35.770] – Rachel

That's exactly it you hit it right on the nose is finding what you love to do and embracing that and finding ways to do it. You had mentioned dancing and cooking, and I know that at my local YMCA, there are drop in classes where you could just take some yoga class or a cardio kickboxing class or something crazy.

[00:25:57.870] – Rachel

Why not try something new? Why not try something you've never done before because you might like it. And then on the other days, you had mentioned walking, if all you do is walk around your block, make it two times around the block or take a walking trip up to the grocery store or the coffee shop like I like to do almost every day.

[00:26:16.990] – Rachel

But as long as you're out moving, that is such a huge thing. And if you start moving now, you're 30 days or so ahead of the game, when New Year's resolutions roll around.

[00:26:28.750] – Allan

And if you're just not feeling it because there's a reason why you probably feel this inertia, there's a reason why you got held back. And now you're in park and to get past that is sometimes as a mental game, but just say, give it five minutes, put on your tennis shoes, put on some comfortable clothes, get out there and just go for five minutes. After five minutes, you're not feeling it. Then come back, shower and you're done even if you didn't bother to sweat. But shower and move on.

[00:27:00.760] – Allan

But most people will find five minutes is easily ten minutes is easily 15. And then you feel like you've actually accomplished something. And then the next day it's easy 15, and then it's 20. Then it's 30, and then you're out 45 minutes, and that's kind of the allotted time you have. So now you're walking a little bit further, a little bit faster. And those are the kind of things that snowball, the rock slide. It's just to get something small going, even if it's just the five minutes, walking is easy. Do it someplace that you love. So you're kind of doing all three.

[00:27:34.500] – Allan

You're not doing it. Now you're doing something small and you're doing something you enjoy, and that just builds on itself.

[00:27:40.960] – Rachel

I think that's absolutely perfect. Those are great tips.

[00:27:44.650] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, I will see you and everybody else next week.

[00:27:49.640] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:27:50.690] – Allan

You too.

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Deb Scarlett	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
– Debbie Ralston	– Judy Murphy	– Melissa Ball
– Eliza Lamb		– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau

Less...