Is healthy living stressing you out?
Am I Zen yet?
I must admit to being a little bit OCD when it comes to healthy living. A friend posted the above meme the other day and it describes me precisely – the “worrier pose”.
I am the type of person who meditates and the thoughts that interrupt me usually consist of some variation of “Am I Zen yet?” I am your typical all or nothing personality. If I only have 28 out of the 30 ingredients for my green healthy fats smoothie I am likely to have a big slice of chocolate cake for breakfast instead. I don’t compromise and I rarely improvise, and while those may be fantastic personality traits when it comes to some of the achievements I have made in life (and some of the beautiful cakes that I have made), they really suck when it comes to healthy living. And in fact they are one of the biggest reasons that I find healthy living so stressful, which obviously isn’t the best since stress is a huge contributor to ill health.
On my search for an antidote to this, I discovered coaching as a way of working one on one with someone to help integrate practical healthy eating into everyday lifestyle. How I discovered coaching was an interesting journey in itself. Through a series of roundabout "coincidences" (I don't believe in coincidences any more but that is another story for another time) I came across a course that offers a certification in health coaching, The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and decided to take my health coaching certification, as a way to see if I could improve certain chronic health conditions, and increase my general health overall. It was a fantastic, life altering course, and it gave me a new appreciation for the functional medicine approach which I will write a post on some other day but suffice to say that in my personal health journey I learned two important things when I did this course. The first was that I didn't want to be a health coach. The second was that I can't coach myself, and I would need to find a coach to work with to try to make those improvements.
As the saying goes – when the student is ready the teacher appears, and this is true of Renee from REAC fitness. I had been stalking this lady through social media for a while, as she has worked with some friends of mine, and seeing her amazing results, I decided to reach out to her. From the first time I met her, I was impressed by her knowledge and ability to break down the science of health and nutrition into a language that was understandable. Working with her at my own pace to incorporate healthy eating into my everyday lifestyle was enjoyable, and I have definitely picked up a number of tips and tricks along the way to make healthy eating doable. (My favourite question from her – did you yum that?) We made weekly small changes and by the end of the 3 months had transformed how most of my meals looked, while still keeping them tasty and fresh.
In addition, she has a high level of professionalism, and is constantly striving to improve the experience for the client. I have definitely made positive changes to my food prep and eating after working with her, and would recommend her to anyone who wants to work with a great coach.
My next quest is to stay motivated. I related to a friend this morning that when I was younger, I never had a problem staying motivated once I had my sights set on a goal. These days it is harder to get excited about anything, and even harder to stay excited, especially when that thing is spending 6 hours in the kitchen cooking on a Sunday afternoon. So while this particular lesson for me is about taking small steps towards achieving my goal, I can honestly say that the lesson isn't complete because I still need to figure out how to stay motivated to continue those small steps.
Am I still OCD? Pretty much!! I don't think that will ever totally go away, but I will continue to do my research and find ways of making those changes stick.