This is more of a personal article today on some quite profound (yet subtle) changes I’ve been through in the last few weeks. Hopefully, with sharing my story, it will help you to also push through any limiting beliefs you may have with your nutrition and training.
Why is it so important to prioritise your health with great nutrition and daily exercise? Well, according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the body (physiological) being at the bottom of the pyramid, is the foundation that everything else in your life is built on – health is wealth! When you get this area of your life working properly it has huge knock-on benefits for the rest of your life. In Jim Rohn’s words “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”
I had had a pretty active summer and managed to completely exhaust myself (again!), a combo of lots of sporty, outdoor activities, not enough sleep, neglecting to take my supplements and not taking any time out to just relax. Post-Summer, apart from the bare minimum of work with my clients I had to down tools – no training and very little social activities for 3-4 weeks. I came back up and was training again but just ticking over.
Then recently, I attended a mindset seminar with the Academy of the Body (AB) and during that weekend, came to the realisation I was still ‘living the story’ of adrenal fatigue (that I’ve suffered with previously for 2 years) and a chronic neck issue (that can cause tension headaches and occasional bad crick). There was a light-bulb moment of knowing that I had been limiting myself as a protective mechanism, with the ramifications being that I wasn’t pushing myself enough to achieve my goals. So I made the decision there and then, that it was now time to step up my self-care – to then be able to play a bigger game and help more people live healthier, happier and longer lives.
I decided first off that I wanted to get in a bit better shape than I was (walk the talk even more) and really start to push forward with my life and business goals too. Now, I live a healthy lifestyle already and was in pretty good shape but I realised if I wanted to make changes to my body then I had to change some of what I was doing.
Admittedly I had two good reasons why to make changes. The first was signing up to the AB Foundation course where I knew that we would be doing a push-ups test and due to neck/shoulder issues I had barely done any for quite some time – I needed to up my game to not be embarrassed in front of my peers! The second reason was to be in great shape for a photo-shoot in November to update my images and branding for 2017.
I made small, seemingly insignificant changes and so much has changed! I’ve been able to train harder than I’ve been able to for at least a couple of years – even more importantly, without my body falling apart with exhaustion and neck “going”. Which has then got me excited that I may be able to pick up training modalities and exercise I haven’t been able to do for years (i.e. Boxing, Olympic lifts, Climbing, Chin-ups). Energy-wise, I’ve been (mostly) off the scale, super-busy at the gym with my clients and attending seminars, working really hard at the moment on lots of things – and really handling it!
What changes did I make? Read Part 2 next week to see the small daily habits I implemented that have made such a big difference over time.
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