Episode 8 Tips to build habits towards a healthy lifestyle

Today’s episode I cover some of my tips and tricks to building micro habits towards a healthy lifestyle. I share some of my personal experiences and what I did to get to this point in my life. These are the tips and tricks that led me to losing 200 pounds and getting in the best shape of my life. Including how I got into spin, running, and strength training to manage my new lifestyle and health.

Thanks for listening! Feel free to reach out at links below

• Follow me for cooking ideas at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parachuteadvice/
• Find links to my favorite items and recipes at linktree: https://linktr.ee/Parachuteadvice
• Check out my website for all episodes: https://parachuteadvice.buzzsprout.com
• Email me at: parachuteadvicepodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

0:00

Hi I'm Thomas welcome to the parachute advice. My life has taken a lot of twists and turns and on this podcast I will dive into those. The goal is to help everyone listening learn from my experiences and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes I've made hi welcome to today's episode of the parachute advice podcast. I'm your host Thomas so over the last season and a half through many topics I've talked about how important habits and routine can be. But something that I think is, it is often not talked about and an interesting concept is the idea of micro habits are very small habits so see no podcast on habits where they told the story about how an individual who was overweight and had never been to the gym. Set a goal of going to the gym everyday after work all this person did was drive to the gym go in lift the dumbbell put it down and leave but over time doing that built a habit a habit that turned into going to the gym regularly and working out, is that kind of an extreme example is that kind of a crazy thought process absolutely but it's those little habits that can build into greatness for example like I talked about in the episode of of working out in the episode on going to the gym I make it a habit of laying out my clothes and pre-packing my gym bag the night before I'm going to go work out it's that little habit that kind of sets the tone and puts me in a mindset of what I'm about to do another thing is tracking. And keeping track of your progress so for example when I bought my spin bike two years ago. What am I goals was to get to the point where I had done so many rides that Bine, thousand dollars in Equipment Plus a membership to an online spinning class was cheaper than having joined a gym locally so what did I do I built an Excel file and I put every right in there and I tracked it and I got it to the point where candidly I have made it so affordable if my spin bike were to break now. I would feel okay which is thrown in the dumpster and buying a new one what I try to fix it yeah because I'm cheap but ignoring that part. I've got my money's worth I've tracked it I've also been able to track my progress and set little goals way back two years ago when I started spin. One of the goals I set was I was going to do 100 classes in 100 days to build a habit I was going to force myself to do that what did that mean if there was a day I didn't feel good or something came up and I wasn't able to work out that day it meant the next day I was doing two classes I'll tell you right now there were Saturday's where I would get up in the morning and do a spin class and do another spin class in the afternoon just so that I could hit that goal but having those little things to track is vital it's a great way to build a habit repetition is the key to building habits also understand and identify things that that caused you to have bad habits or not go through with your good habits for example when you get home from work do you immediately plop down and turn on the TV well maybe instead you should go to the gym right after work that's what I do so now that I have a gym at my office, I make it a goal I don't come home I don't go anywhere else I go straight for my desk if I'm working at that facility of the gyms at straight to the gym to work out and if I'm at our other facility I drive straight to the facility with the gym I go straight to the gym and I work out. I don't do anything in between that could distract me or take me away from my goal if I need to run errands I run errands after the gym same thing with doing spin at home I don't come home from work and turn on the TV and sit down for a little bit I immediately go and workout to avoid. The bad habits of sitting down and just zoning out next, think about what you're trying to achieve what is your goal what are you what are you striving for for example since I started running I've decided that I want to at the very least run a half-marathon I've already on my own run a 5K and 10K I want to run a half marathon so I have found a training plan and I have worked that into my routine and I am following that to the T I'm building endurance focusing on the process to get to the point where I can run a half marathon that's something I want to achieve. I joke with people I have a feeling that someday I'm gonna I'm gonna even run a full Marathon one of my employees who works for me, currently he started a year ago running a full marathon and he just got done it Disney doing the Dopey run that's doing a 5k a 10K a half marathon and a full marathon back to back to back to back and it all started with him wanting to run a full marathon and that's where he is now. Figure out what you're trying to achieve with my weightlifting recently it's trying to rebuild muscle mass that I lost when I was dieting. Like I said I kind of crashed I'd it I didn't focus on I'm preserving muscle and frankly if he does see me with my shirt off you could tell so that's been my focus now building back muscle mass getting strength and feeling healthier so remind yourself of what you're trying to achieve and focus on that. Next if you get bored easily find ways to fill that time for example I have Saturday's R I have nothing going on and I find myself just sitting around the house with nothing to do. What will I do on those days. I work out or I work on the podcast hell I've had Saturday's where I get up and I go to the gym in the morning I do some things and I realize. I'm bored and I have nothing going on this afternoon and I'm going to get another I'm going to get another workout in and I might fill it fill in that time with some reading may be working on the podcast just generally trying to improve, like I said in my episode about routine working things like reading meditating and working out into your data fill that boredom, is far better I'll also tell you it eliminates the desire to boredom eat, and if you do still do some board immediate boredom eating it's fine because you went to the gym twice I'm not saying to replace healthy eating with working out. But if you have an extra snack on that Saturday but you wanted the gym twice you'll be fine trust me so experiment with things like that I know like I think I've mentioned in other episodes if I'm feeling down depressed or genuinely stressed out I also find it a really good workout helps with that it gives me something else to focus on breaking that mental Loop second of all you get that workout higher the runner's high and I can tell you that really does wonders to your mental health think about doing things that are easy wins don't try to do it all at once I've learned this the hard way multiple times in my runny I try to set a new personal best on a time or I try to run the fastest I've ever run. And I have now successfully gotten injured three separate times that had to take a week or more off of working out because of that start with easy wins and focus on slow and steady progress when I look back to when I first started running that's where I was at. That was the right approach the simple easy wins for example after a week of doing run walks. Getting home and being able to say that I ran for 20 minutes straight. That was a phenomenal win for me was it a slow pace yeah but guess what I've seen this by multiple Instagram people. If you're out running you're a runner it doesn't matter how fast you're going a mile at 13 minutes or a mile at six minutes is still a mile, so look for those little wins maybe it's how long you're on the spin bike or maybe it's how hard you work or what your heart rate is or maybe it's something like how low you can get your resting heart rate by working out consistently and being able to see those trends. Look for look for those little easy wins to help you stay motivated also focus on your game. Not what you're losing yeah working out can be tough it's time-consuming it's not always fun but I always remind myself what am I gaining. Wow I'm gaining health I'm getting endurance I'm gaining looking better and most importantly I'm getting feeling better and I'll take that any day of the week. You know I spent all of those years as just talking just talking to a friend who also lost a ton of weight I was just talking about the fact that you know for years I didn't realize that I felt bad I just thought I was getting older. Now that I know what great feels like that's what I like to focus on that's what I'm gaining. Also when it comes to working out or it comes to reading or comes to anything hard in your life I like to remind myself I'm doing something hard because I can there's a lot of people out there. Who would love to do what you are doing and struggling to do I can tell you right now I am sure a person who is paralyzed in a wheelchair. I would be happy to run a slow pace run. So think about that one of the things I think about when I work out is I love working out because I have the body to work out I have the ability to do the activity. Something I think about a lot to be honest I'm lucky to be in the shape I'm in and I'm lucky to have this opportunity to be as healthy and do all these things. So like I said focus on what you're gaining not on what you're losing I hope a lot of these thoughts I've shared with you today I kind of helped like I said from the beginning. I can't tell you how important building small tiny micro habits is talked about reading. Maybe it's reading a page at a book for example I started my reading habit over a year ago. With the book The Daily stoic by Ryan holiday it's a simple two pages on average that I was reading every day and I found myself wanting to read more so I started picking up other books and I would find authors that were on podcast whether it was authors he interviewed or authors that were interviewed on other podcast and I started reading their books and then co-workers would give me books and friends and give me book recommendations, and those little habits of reading a page or two here or there. Turn into sitting down and reading for a half hour an hour pretty much Daily Now same thing with with other aspects of my routine whether it's eating healthy planning my week doing meal prep on Sundays they're all little habits that build up over time that's how I lost the 200 pounds it wasn't all at once it was lots of little habits doing little things here and there right. They always talk about the 80/20 rule if you get it right 80% of the time that other 20% won't matter. You had a bad day you ate on healthy you didn't work out that's fine if you're doing it right 80% of the time now I assure you be careful on that 20% time because I am a prime example of somebody who can undo a lot of work in that twenty percent but if you're focused on the little habits you will be successful so sit back look at that and try to find a way to be successful through those habits thank you for listening today I hope all of this helped and I hope some of this advice will help you on your journey, that's my goal with all of this thank you for listening please join me again for future episodes. You can contact me at parachute advice podcast at gmail.com again that's all one word parachute advice podcast at gmail.com. You can also follow me on Instagram at parachute advice again thank you for listening and please like And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Music.