My Journey in Self-Care: Putting an End to the Excuses

I know I'm not the only one so I'm just going to say it:

The reasons I use to justify my poor health and extra pounds are excuses - pure and simple! they are just excuses. I am sure that you know that many of the reasons that you spout out for not exercising, not eating right, not getting enough sleep, etc. are just excuses, too.

And we have to stop.

I have a lot of excuses and I use them all the time. The trouble is, I believe them. The trouble is, no one calls me on them. People admit that many of them are true and so I feel like I can use them all the time.

Here are some of the excuses I use all the time:

"I'm too tired to..."

"I don't have time to..."

"I have too much else to think about..."

"I don't have money for that..."

"So-and-so's needs are more important..."

"I have to do this and this and this first..."

And I'm sure I'm just skimming the surface of excuses that my friends and family have heard from me here. I am positive there are more and I think that if I saw myself better through others' eyes I would recognize them.

But really, we all know that holding on to these excuses are not beneficial for us. In fact, they hurt us more than anything else because they give us the reason to become comfortable in a life that is just not healthy for us.

What are your excuses? Same ones or do you have special ones of your own?

This is the part that baffles me. How the heck do I just stop? I don't know.

I think that making excuses becomes a habit for us - like biting our nails. It's not that stopping is going to hurt or that it is going to be such a painful process. It is just that it is all we know. And so we keep making those excuses.

I think that making excuses has become a very socially acceptable thing to do and if you look carefully at the younger generations (teenagers and those in their twenties and even in their early thirties) you'll see that excuses abound. I've especially seen it in my daughter - an excuse for everything. "It's too hard","It's boring","My teacher doesn't like me" and so on. When I worked at a call center there were a lot of twenty some people that were filled with excuses, too. I think that as those of us in the 30s, 40s and up generations need to set examples to teach younger people that excuses simply aren't ok by not accepting our own excuses!

Anyway, a bit of a rant. So how do I just stop?

Well, since making excuses is just a habit I need to treat it like breaking a bad habit.

1. Understand what you bad habit is.
2. Identify how it messes with your life and why it is something you WANT to stop.
3. Be accountable - tell your family and friends that you want to stop and ask them to call you out when you are engaging in your bad habit.
4. Replace your excuses for why you can't do something with why you can do it.
5. Use visualization. When you go to bed at night instead of stressing about what you can't do picture yourself doing exactly what you want to do. Picture yourself making that phone call or getting up when you want to or preparing that healthy meal. I know it sounds hokey but the more your visualize yourself doing what you want to do the easier it gets to actually do it.

They say that it takes a minimum of two weeks to break a bad habit so I am going to focus on two things for the next two weeks. Everything else gets put on the back burner!

My two biggest excuses are:

1. I don't have time to exercise.
2. I don't have time to eat properly.

So I'm going to focus on these two excuses and NOT using them for two weeks.

My first one:

I don't have time to exercise

How am I going to get around that? Well, one of the reasons I always think I don't have time to exercise is I think that I need to go and workout for an hour. I need to walk for at least 3 miles. but the truth is that walking for even a mile every day will be better than walking nothing.

So I am going to start with smaller time frames. I'm going to find time to walk for twenty minutes each day. I can do that. There is no reason why I can't. I spend that much time playing Farkle or Sims on Facebook! So, I will find 20 minutes each day to go and walk around.

I'm also going to try to do it during the day so that I can soak up some of those Vitamin D rays from the sun that are so important to our well being. Without enough Vitamin D from the sun, we start to feel lethargic and even depressed. Vitamin D is one of the things that has been known to help people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and I have had problems with that in the past. Since it is almost November, I have to pay attention to things like how much time I spend out in the daylight and how much protein I eat because I know that they affect my mood.

I don't have time to eat properly

I know this is an excuse. Everyone has time to eat. I just don't really like eating that much. I don't like prepping a meal. I'd rather order poutine when I go out for coffee in the afternoons.

But I know this is not doing me any good. So, I've opted for a really good meal replacement shake. It is Body by Vi - the shake mix that tastes like cake mix. They do taste really good and they aren't filled with sugar and carbs like most meal replacements. In fact, they are chock full of nutrition. Check out the picture directly below and you'll see just how healthy these shakes really are.

I am hoping this will help me develop a habit of eating regularly (or drinking in this case) and give me some of the energy I seem to be lacking to get things done!

I really need to get my B12 shot so I'm going to phone the doctor tomorrow morning and set up a time to get a shot in. It takes me two minutes to walk to the doctor's office and maybe 10 minutes including waiting to get it done. 2 minutes back home. Maximum of 15 minutes. Not doing this is just plain dumb.

While I'm there I'll make an appointment for my next one in about 10 days.