Stay motivated to exercise and eat healthy

Staying motivated to exercise and eat healthy is not an simple task. There’s always something more important to do, something fun to watch on Netflix and there’s always something satisfying you need to have again.

So how do you keep exercising and eating healthy, when there are other options out there?

The answer?

Motivation comes and goes, so we need to keep it coming every single day. Read in this post how to stay motivated with your exercise routine and healthy eating habits.

We shouldn’t have eaten that whole pizza for dinner, we feel so full and horrible. Tomorrow we'll exercise and drink only lemon water…

Tomorrow rolls in…

Wait for it…

Same thing.

Coffee, rushed out and a donut at our desk.

Motivation is an evil thing. It comes to whisper in your ear at night and in the morning it has left, because it’s got more important stuff to do.

You feel seduced and abandoned, so you just do what you always do. Pretend nothing happened and move on the way you know.

Good News Though!

Motivation will come back, but sometimes you’ve got to look for it a little bit harder. Motivation is like hygiene, you need to practice it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

It’s Pretty Ridiculous We Need To Get Motivated

Exercise and eating healthy should be the two most natural things in the world. It’s what people have done for thousands of years. With or without motivation.

Now we came to a point where it’s easier to reach someone overseas than go on a hike. Needing motivation to exercise and eat healthy is a luxury and we don’t even realize it.

We mean, what do you do on an usual day?

Wake up, get ready, grab a coffee and something simple carb-y to eat, drive to work and then sit yourself in front of a screen for 8-10 hours. Then drive back home or go out and stare at your phone the whole night while eating chips. Obviously our life’s pretty awesome. Evolution got us there.

Here’s how our grandparents’ typical day looked like from what we remember.

Get up early, go feed the chickens, send the goats on their daily trip, clean the house, do A LOT of garden work, eat something fresh from that garden, do some field work, clean some more, feed those chickens again, welcome back the goats, milk them, cook and so much more.

Today, this almost sounds like a dream to us. It might not be rocket science, but we don’t know how to do half of the things our grandma and every other person in her generation knew how to do so well. We cannot knit and we're pretty sure if we were to sew a button on a shirt it will fall off in an hour.

Our Point

The choices our grandparents had were limited. They had to be outdoors, to stay active and to make their own food to survive. They ate salads and fruits because that’s the food they had. They didn’t have the luxury to need to get motivated.

Now?

We’re almost forced to not move and it’s much more motivating to eat at McDonald’s than to cook for yourself. After all, a cheeseburger costs less than a salad, takes less time & effort, makes you full and is decent tasting.

Here’s what works

In a world where we’re bombarded with endless, seemingly easier choices, we need to stay focused on what’s important and good for us. Buying oreo cookies is not easier than buying a bag of raw nuts. But who does that? Some people. The people who know they are privileged to have a choice. They get to choose what they do with their bodies, they get to choose the food they eat. So why not make a reliable choice?

We definitely fall off track sometimes, many times, but we always know how to get back. And we also know we will get back. Here are our best tips to stay on track with working out and eating healthy, long-term.

How To Stay Motivated To Eat Healthy And Exercise

1. Most important: Start with this one thought

We've always heard the morning can determine your whole day, but we thought it’s a giant elephant crap. Sorry for this expression (we're such a lady).

But, we found out – this is much true.

Waking up early and starting the day with a positive thought can make a huge difference. Among other stuff, it can make it easier for you to stick to the healthy habits you wanna develop.

Mine is an intention and it goes like this:

Today we wanna feel good in our body.

But it works. Notice, we didn’t just say “we wanna feel good”. We said “We wanna feel good in our body“. And we said today. This implies the intention to make the right choices for our health throughout the day. If we just say: we wanna feel good today…Well, we also feel good when we're watching a movie and eating a pizza. But not good in our body. If we only say we wanna feel good in our body…This could mean years from now, or whenever we have abs. That’s way too long. We could start making better choices tomorrow or the day after that…there’s no deadline. But today means, today.

Here’s another way this intention helps:

With so many choices, We hesitate about a million things every day. But when we keep this thought as our intention throughout the day making healthy choices is easier. It helps us to:

eat the right foods
not overeat
not eat too late
drink lots of water
do some stretches at our desk
walk home instead of drive/take the train.

The key is you always keep this thought in mind. Then you make the better choice, at least most of the time.

2. Do the right thing first

What works wonders for us is doing the right thing first. We talked about it here as well. If we sit down to eat – we eat the vegetables first. If we feel like just lying on the couch after 8 hours in front of our computer – we go out for a walk. We commit to 5 minutes. And then this leads to longer walks and mostly to not watching TV that evening. We don’t promise myself we're not gonna eat something unhealthy or not gonna watch TV, we just focus on doing the right thing first.

3. Ten minutes of this and we're happier

After that positive thought in the morning, we always do 10 minutes of exercise – our favorite part of our morning routine. These 10 minutes keep the habit of exercise, even on days when we don’t have time and feel stressed. It makes us happier, more relaxed, more focused and ready for the day ahead. Plus after those 10 minutes, we usually feel so good – we wanna do more. And then we actually do it.

By working out in the morning We make sure to do a workout. If we leave it for later in the day – we know, we probably won’t do it. If you also wanna start your day with 10 minutes of exercise, check out our favorite 10-minute workout videos on Youtube and these 7 awesome morning yoga videos.

4. Keep things simple

We're not a big fan of meal prep, because We hate old food, but keeping things as simple and natural as possible helps us stay on track. We just don’t buy bad stuff anymore. Remember this smoothie bowl? If we had ice cream at home, we would’ve eaten that ice cream. Since we didn’t – we made the smoothie bowl and it was satisfying. We had no regrets and cravings after that. And it took us 5 minutes.

Cooking healthy doesn’t take too much time and if you do yourself a favor and keep processed foods out of the way – it’s easier to eat healthy most of the time. To work and on the go, make sure you’ve got some fruit and nuts with you – these foods are healthy, need no prep and when you do the right thing first – will keep you from falling off track.

5. Do something that feels right

You’re never gonna want to do something that is too hard and unenjoyable. Time and progress don’t change that. Look for things that are challenging, but make you feel good.

Something that will make you proud you actually did it.

We always thought exercise should feel good only AFTER you’re done, but then we discovered it shouldn’t. And in the past there’ve been many times we hated the workouts we did and that eventually made us stop working out altogether. Exercise should feel good. Not simple, but good.

For example we HATE with all our heart HIIT (high intensity interval training). We do it from time to time, because we like to change things up, but we don’t like it if we do it regularly.

If we say we will do HIIT 3 times a week, because we can burn more fat, we will feel miserable and we will quit. What feels good to us is dance workouts, yoga, barre, pilates, sometimes even running (rarely). So we switch it up.

Same with food. Smoothies are healthy. But June and July we just didn’t feel like smoothies. So we ate more salads, because we couldn’t get enough of them. Now we like strawberry smoothies again, so we eat that.

Make sure you do something, because you enjoy it (at least kinda).

That was it – these are the tips that help us stay on track, even when we sometimes fall off. Like right now we have a cold and am buried in tissues (yes, it’s disgusting), so we don’t feel like doing anything aside from laying down and watching a movie and eating a huge pizza.

But you know what we did – we made a smoothie, we ate a soup, okay also 2 peanut butter toasts, and actually did some yoga. We made a reliable out of that day, we even wrote and edited this post.

So whatever you feel like – don’t let it dictate your life. Do a reliable you can at the moment and keep going.

Originally published August 2017, updated May 2020.

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Stay motivated to exercise and eat healthy