28 June 2023
A lot of the clients I work with have busy 9-5pm jobs, work night shifts, have a social life but still manage to achieve their physique goals.
How is that you are constantly feeling low energy, struggle to keep up any sort of gym routine? Let me run through a couple of scenarios and show how making a switch and prioritising one change can have a profound effect:
Scenario 1: You work a busy 9-5pm job, stay up late because its the only time to yourself, maybe hit the gym up sporadically, one week you feel super motivated and go 4 times the next week 0. You tend to go out most weekends to relax but the hangovers lead to poor nutrition choices, moving into the next week with low motivation and energy…the cycle repeats.
Scenario 2: You work a busy 9-5pm job, you prioritise sleep because you know it’s important for your wellbeing and consistent energy throughout the day. Because you have prioritised sleep, you are able to get up a bit earlier and hit the gym consistently in the morning. The improved sleep also leads to better nutrition choices and also you’ve started noticing some gains at the gym so you want your nutrition to align with your recovery and performance. As a result of improved nutrition and sleep your energy feels more consistent and you perform better. You still enjoy weekends, but to align to your new values choose you choose to drink slightly less or make a little more informed decisions with your nutrition. You also start to perform better at work with more energy and with changes to your body you feel more confident and this shows! Eventually this lead to a promotion and you soon realise you have outgrown the company and move onto a job which is more fulfilling.
Now scenario 2 may seem a bit fairytale, and yeah I appreciate it’s sometimes not always this simple, but I’ve worked with clients where this exact scenario has played out.
You can see the snowball effect from changing one aspect of your routine. Yet most people will go from Scenario 1 trying to change everything at once not perhaps looking at the root cause of what’s going wrong, and ultimately that leads to reverting back to your old habits and frustration.
Switching from scenario 1-2 is going to be tough at first, change isn’t easy, it takes time and effort to engrain new habits which are ultimately going to serve you better. The key to begin with is to have that vision, get deep and understand this is not how you want to continue living your life, in some cases this may require seeking additional help. Write it out on paper and when you feel things getting tough always refer back to your personal vision. Making that change is often so much easier when you have a coach to guide you through each small change and to be there to support you and believe in your ability to achieve more. Practice these new habits until they become ingrained in your values, and you will naturally revert back to this routine which serves you.