The not-so-popular ways to REALLY achieve your fitness & nutrition goals this year pt. 2

6 ways to make the process merely frictionless

1. Make time for things you enjoy

It’s important to include things of enjoyment into a routine so you don’t get burnt out on doing what you have to do but don’t really like to. Not everything in life that is necessary is enjoyable. I don’t enjoy having to wait in line to check out with my groceries (thank you Sam’s Club scan & go feature!!). I don’t enjoy having to look through my mail and separate junk from important information. I don’t enjoy having to mow my yard every two weeks or else the Florida sun will quickly turn it into a jungle with all sorts of creepy crawlies. Not everything in life is going to be fun but what makes life more enjoyable is being able to put time aside for the things that do bring joy to your life. Having a healthy routine doesn’t mean you can’t still do things that make you happy and recenter you. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You should include these things so you will stick with your routine, whatever that looks like for you.

2. 80/20 rule

You may have heard of the 80/20 rule when it comes to nutrition but it also applies to much more than just food. If we want to create a balanced and productive routine, we want to make the most of our time and be efficient by having the majority of our results come from the least amount of our effort. The 80/20 rule, also known as the Perato Principle, depicts that 20% of our efforts should get us 80% of our results. It originated from Italian economist Vilfredo Perato finding that 20% of the population owned 80% of the land and wealth in the nation.

We should be concentrating on the most productive inputs to get us our desired results. It’s not always about how much we do something, but the quality in which it is done that will reap the biggest benefit.

3. Stay organized

This could mean taking a trip to the container store, labeling your clothes drawers, using a calendar as my previous newsletter had mentioned, or just having a place for everything. Being organized looks different for everyone and everyone has their own system to keep track of the most important things to them. However, I think we can all agree that staying organized will lessen stress and increase productivity resulting in a more happy and more balanced relationship with time and time management. This, in turn, will make more time for the things we enjoy doing and bring this whole thing full circle!

4. It starts the night before

I used to think the start of my day started when I woke up (duh), but as I’ve evolved my routine, I’ve realized it actually starts the night before. Preparing for the next day the night before allows you to utilize every hour of the next day and make the most out of your time rather than spending a quarter of that day trying to figure out what you have time for. Having a to-do list written a day prior allows you to start on it immediately the next day so you can complete it and work on brainstorming the next day’s chores. It sounds like a never-ending cycle but that’s because it is. You have to do today what will set yourself up for success tomorrow. If you wait, you’ll find that you continuously push things off or never make the time for them.

Some small steps you can take to start getting ahead on your day the night prior are:

Laying out your workout clothes

This will save you time in the morning when you’re tired, maybe hit the snooze button five times, and are now running late to your workout class.

Writing down a to-do list

This will give you direction in the morning when you’re trying to figure out what has be to completed.

Prep your food

If batching food for a few days sounds gross to you, try cooking it the day or night prior. It’s essentially reheating leftovers. This will allow you to grab your food, stick it in your lunchbox, and head out the door without needing to worry about having time to cook. Put your non-perishable in your lunchbox so they’re already in there and then throw in your refrigerated things the morning of. It may sound like a lot of prep work up front, but I never regret doing this.

Washing the dishes (especially the ones you need first thing the next morning)

I had talked about how I wash the dishes before I go to bed because I like waking up to a clean kitchen. However, I understand that you may be dog tired and need to get the kids to bed and you tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow. We can’t always be on top of everything, but I urge you to at least wash the dishes you know you will need first thing in the morning. Whether that is a pan, your coffee mug, or a single fork so you can eat breakfast. This is a good tip because if you wake up and don’t have time to wash all the dishes (I’m talking to you, the one who is chronically late and running behind on everything all the time), then at the bare minimum you have everything you need for that morning clean and ready to be used.

5. Do what’s best for YOU

Raise your hand if you’ve typed into Youtube “morning routine”, “nighttime routine”, or “healthy daily habits” and watched a twelve-minute video of a 20-something young woman who appears to not have a job but is able to afford to live in a modern apartment in NYC with her small dog, has avocado toast every morning with everything but the bagel seasoning, meditates for an hour, reads for two hours, works out at her pilates class, and has brunch with a friend and you thought to yourself: how??? Because it’s not her normal routine - that was just for the likes. Every day is usually not so aesthetic and is boring and mundane and that’s ok. That is normal. We all have different lives and many of you probably have children that require most of your attention and time. We have to figure out what works best for us and not compare our lives or our routines to someone whose lives are nothing like our own.

6. Understand that not every day will be the same and allow for some flexibility

Life gets crazy sometimes. Some days we forget to brush our teeth. Some days we hope and pray our car doesn’t run out of gas on our way to work because we kept putting off getting gas for three days and now it’s screaming at us that we have zero miles until empty but we’re already running behind and don’t have time to stop. Some days we order takeout three times a day because we couldn’t be bothered to cook or we didn’t go grocery shopping when we should have so we have literally nothing in the fridge. It happens. We can’t live in this chaos forever, though. Eventually, we have to take control of our time and create some rules and boundaries that allow us to be in charge of how our life is handled.

Progress is not always linear

We will have setbacks and it will suck but we have to get back up and continue to push toward what we really want. If you come to terms with the fact that things won’t always go according to plan or the way you want them to, you’ll feel better about the train getting off track because you’ll know that it won’t be hard to get it back on.

I hope these tips were helpful for those of you trying to figure out what things fit into your routine and how you’re supposed to get everything you’re supposed to get done in a day’s time. Life doesn’t have to be so complicated, especially when it comes to living a wholesome lifestyle. We just have to figure out what works best for us and stick with it.

I have found that all twelve of these tips have really helped me create a plan and routine pertaining to my training and nutrition. You have to make the process essentially seamless or as frictionless as possible and these not-so-popular out-of-the-box ways of thinking have allowed me to become successful in this area of my life and hopefully will help you too.