Extrinsic motivation can very often elicit a knee jerk reaction of restriction, especially if our go to for “fixing” things has always been through calories restriction or excessive exercise. Old habit lead us straight to dieting behaviours and set us up to inevitably fail.
We head straight into restriction before ever looking at other factors of health. Why don’t we automatically aim to get more sleep or to eat more fruit and veg? We could argue that we have been conditioned by the diet industry that changing our bodies is the key to health.
What I would suggest is to look at everything else going on in your life. How is your sleep? Lack of sleep has a big impact on our hormone levels and can adversely affect our hunger signals. Lack of sleep also impacts energy levels which could have a knock on effect on our motivation to exercise.
How’s your fruit and veg intake? How’s your fluid intake? How much are you moving your body? Do you have a job or lifestyle where you are sitting down a lot? How about stress levels? Do you smoke? Do you drink more than the recommended amounts of alcohol?.
There are so many factors to health and so many ways we can improve our health and none of them have to include diet and restriction and punishment
#health #exerciseandhealth #lifestyle #wellbeing #nondiet #antidiet #wellness #wellbeing #sleep #movement #stress #nutrition #exercise
Karen Preene 