How to Organize your Health in 30 minutes

I am so excited to be writing this new series about 10 places you can organize in 30 minutes, or less. I wrestled on which space to begin the series with, because there are so many good ones, but I finally decided that I wanted to start it off talking about something that has been so important, and so valuable to me over the last 4 months.

Working out and staying on top of my health has been something that I’ve wrestled with over the years. I’ve always been a small person, and I thank my dad for those genes, but it doesn’t mean I’ve always been healthy. It’s easy to skate by on good genetics but this summer I decided I’d had enough because I wasn’t feeling good, I knew that for my body, I wasn’t looking good and the combination was affecting other areas of my life.

I believe when we don’t feel good about ourselves we take that out on other things in life, whether that’s our kids, our friends, etc. Which is why today I want to talk about how you can organize your health in just 30 minutes (and maybe plus or minus a few). 🙂

It’s so hard to find time to workout, even as a work from home mom, I wrestle with finding time because there are always 100 other things I could/should be doing! So when time is money, or something else valuable, you have to look for a solution that meets all your needs – less time commitment but more healthy. I decided to commit 30 minutes a day for myself to get healthy. I knew that my health, mentally and physically, was worth spending at least 30 minutes a day.

I did some research, and talked to a friend, whose health journey had inspired me over the last year, and I ordered 21 Day Fix.

21 Day Fix is from Beachbody and it’s 7, 30 minute workouts that are physically challenging but not hard. I say not hard because the movements themselves aren’t hard but you can push yourself as hard as you want to with the amount of weight you use. I had a friend of mine with a back injury and one that had just had a c-section try them and both of them felt great after doing the workouts. On top of adding the workouts to my life, I also started watching what I eat because I knew if I started making healthier choices that I’d see faster results.

Eating healthy doesn’t take any extra time and it’s so worth it. When you invest 30 minutes of your day to working out and you make healthier choices at the grocery store, you will notice faster results, which will only inspire you to keep going.

Here are my 6 tips for how to organize your health in 30 minutes –

• Time. Decide how much time you are willing to commit to your health. I recommend a small number, like 30 minutes, because it will be much easier to stick to it! It’s a lot harder for me to talk myself out of doing a workout when it’s only 30 minutes, because it’s only 30 minutes!
• Meal plan. Meal planning will help you make healthier choices at the grocery store. This might sound like a daunting task but it’s actually really easy and in the long run it will save you time and money! You can read exactly how I meal plan by reading this post.
• Decide on a workout. Some people enjoy going to the gym but for me that’s just not practical because I can’t commit that amount of time. I chose a workout that was short, but gave/gives me great results, and I like the instructor. It’s so important to like the instructor, no matter what workout you chose, because if you don’t like listening to the person then you’re less likely to turn on the workout.
• Get accountability. When I first started working out I would call my friend every day to let her know what I had done, how I’d been eating that day, etc. If I didn’t call her, she’d call me and ask if I’d done my workout, or ask why she hadn’t heard from me. This was HUGE for me. There were days I totally wanted to back out but I knew that if I didn’t call her, she’d call me, and even if I didn’t care about letting myself down that day, I did not want to let her down. Accountability is so important, without it you will probably end up quitting. Since August we have inspired enough of our friends to start going after their health, that we have a private Facebook group where we all post our sweaty pictures every day, or seek motivation, get encouragement from one another, etc. Here’s a recent post of mine, to our Facebook group.

• Take pictures. This might seem like a silly thing but trust me, snapping a few before pictures will be exactly the motivation you need to keep pushing some days. I actually took before pictures and sent them to my accountability friend, so that she would have a good reason to motivate me, and when I sent her my first set of “results” pictures, after my first 21 days, it #1 made me feel so proud of myself to see the difference, and #2 felt amazing to hear her praise me for how hard I had worked and how much better I looked. Obviously I still had a ways to go but I take new pictures each month and it continues to motivate me seeing how far I’ve come. It’s also motivating to look at others’ before and after pictures. If you Google “21 day fix before and after pictures”, you’ll see hundreds of people, in all shapes and sizes, that have transformed their lives.
• Treat yourself. It’s important to workout and eat healthy but you also only live once so it’s good to treat yourself once in awhile. This doesn’t mean take a day off and eat everything in site, but it’s good to not “cheat”, but to treat yourself every once in awhile. For example, I’ve cut out carbs out of my daily diet because they really bloat me up, but on Sunday nights for the last 11+ years we’ve hosted Pizza Night with our friends, so even though I won’t eat bread all week, Sunday night I treat myself to a piece of pizza (or two). Once you start working out and organizing your health you’ll work hard all week so it’s good to treat yourself from time to time. 🙂

Since I started working out at the end of August I have noticed a huge difference in my body. I couldn’t tell you the difference my weight (because I think scales are every woman’s enemy) but I can tell you that I’ve gone down 2 pants sizes and I had to buy a new belt because I was having to make new holes in my old one. Aside from the physical changes, I also feel healthier, I feel strong (which I’ve never really felt), and I feel confident because I’ve worked really hard to get to where I’m at. Here are my “after pictures” after completing 1 round of 21 Day Fix and 1 1/2 rounds of 21 Day Fix Extreme. I’m still not at my goal but I look and feel way healthier than I ever have!

Organizing your health isn’t hard, and it can literally take you only 30 minutes, the hardest part is deciding to make the commitment. I know I don’t know most of you personally but there’s something I do know, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter how far you’ve let yourself go, YOU ARE WORTH IT! You deserve the best things in life, and that includes being the best you possible. There’s no better time than now, and there’s no better reason, than you’re worth it.

Please message me on Facebook or Instagram and let me know how much time you’re committing to yourself, what workout you’re going to do, and if you have an accountability person! I can’t wait to hear about your health journey and how you organized it in just 30 minutes!

There are lots of fun organizing posts coming up this month! As each one goes live I’ll list them at the end of all the posts, so you don’t have to miss a single one! If you missed the intro, click on the link below.

• Intro

 

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