Daily Dose #3 Flip The Script

Flip the script on your mind. Why don’t you have time to exercise? How many reasons can you come up with for not tracking your food? If you constantly repeat these reasons every day, weekly, monthly, and over the past decades, this shouldn’t be a hard task. We all are what we repeatedly do, and what we repeatedly do comes from what we repeatedly say and think to ourselves daily.

Look back on your life. How easy has it become over the years to end a diet, stop tracking your food, binge on the weekend, or stop working out for weeks and months? Why is this? It’s actually simple. Consistency makes everything easy to the point where it becomes a habit, to the point where it becomes our default. We don’t even have to try to miss the gym or forget to track because we’ve done it so much it has become a reflex.

Now let’s flip the script. We know all the reasons why we don’t have time to work out and track our food. Now let’s think of all the reasons why we can’t afford not to.

Health Risks: Heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease, arthritis, metabolic syndrome.
Opportunity Risks: Social interactions, career advancement, increased health costs, ability to travel comfortably.
Mindset Risks: Depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and lack of confidence.

Now think of everything you have to gain by working out and tracking your food consistently:

disease prevention, stronger bones and muscles, better sleep, improved digestion, healthier joints, reduced stress, enhanced mood, improved cognitive function, increased self-esteem, mental clarity, stamina, flexibility (both physically and in your eating habits), more mobility, stronger immune system, quality family time, increased productivity, resilience, overall quality of life, reduced health costs, independence in your old age, and so much more.

If you read this list a few times, you will see that it’s not that you don’t have time to work out and track your food. The truth is you don’t have time not to. How old will you be next year? How would your body feel being 20-50 pounds lighter by next year? How much would your confidence and sense of accomplishment rise? What type of example would you be setting for your family, friends, kids, and coworkers? How many more dates would you go on? You can’t change your life if you keep coming up with reasons to stay the same. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.

Understand this clearly: you’re not going to get more time in life. You will never be as young as you are today. So many people think they have more time. We don’t. Remember when you were 18, graduating high school? Feels like yesterday, doesn’t it? Now look in the mirror. Look at how much time has passed by. Now reflect on what you have done with that time. Now try to say you don’t have time to work out and track your food. I’ll say it one last time: you don’t have time not to. Obesity has risen every year for more than five decades, meaning the people who were overweight 20 years ago are still overweight today. This does not have to be your story. The changes you make today will change your tomorrow. The excuses you make today will seal your fate of looking and living the same next year.

Let’s flip the script. From this day forward, let’s focus on all the reasons we have to make time to exercise and track our food and why we can’t afford not to. God bless. Let’s work.