Monday, 16 October, 2023

This Week: Intro to community and website, creating healthy habits by starting small and progressing slowly

Linda Eskin — Personal Trainer, Behavior Change Coach, Martial Artist, and Author at GoYouFitness.com

Happy Monday, Reader!

This is our first-ever weekly newsletter. Thank you so much for being here from the beginning!

• Today we'll look at how to build strong and lasting habits by starting small. There's a habit-building challenge for the week, if you'd like to give it a try.
• We have a fun new article on the website, too.
• There are updates on the book project, and website launch notes.
• Finally, there are some crisis resources for anyone who might be having a hard time right now.

But first...

Welcome to Our Community of Adventurers!

I know you've subscribed to the newsletter (thank you!), and that you know about the GoYouFitness.com website. Did you know that we have a private group on Facebook? It's a low-key community, with random check-ins, occasional questions, and general support and kind encouragement. If that sounds like fun, please join in!

💬 Join the discussion in the Fitness Adventurers group on Facebook.

​

Habit How-To: Start Small, Keep Going

It's natural to want to dive right into a whole new fitness program. Really go for it! In our minds we can already see the results we want. We imagine that we could change our daily habits (run every morning!), and our diet (no more sugar!), all at once, and power through until we hit our goals. Alas...

It's very rare that someone can maintain those kinds of massive changes. Oh, we try! But when we can't sustain the effort we feel like failures. And that's terrible for our belief in ourselves. It's like deciding we'll run a marathon next weekend, then being disappointed with ourselves when we're not able to finish the race.

We've just tried to do too much, too soon.

Instead, make small changes — smaller than you'd think — so you can sustain them over time. That's how you set yourself up for success.

This week's challenge: Make one small change.

Change is hard, but we can get better at it with practice. This is practice.

Think of one very small, super-easy thing you could do on most days, and do that this week.

Here are some ideas:

• Eat a piece of fruit most days, OR...
• Do two squats after you start the coffeemaker, OR...
• Keep bottle of fresh water at your desk, OR...
• Say "I'm pretty awesome!" after you turn off your alarm in the morning.

The point isn't to get in great shape by Friday, of course, it's to strengthen the "muscles" of building solid habits. We'll be doing a lot with habits, and this will give you a good start.

If you are really eager to dig in, and just have to do more, choose very small changes in two or three different areas. For instance, don't make three changes that all involve your eating habits. Instead, change only one habit around food, use positive language about one thing, and do one small activity.

That might look like this:

⬜ Drink one glass of water between lunch and dinner.

⬜ Say "I get to walk to the mailbox," instead of "I have to..."

⬜ Do 30 seconds of jogging in place while the shower gets hot.

​

Attitude Adjustment Article

This week we're thinking about the way we think about fitness.

Check out the newest article, a tongue-in-cheek look at how we set fitness aside from the rest of life, and treat it like something separate and strange, rather than a normal part of our day:

What if We Approached Cooking Like We Do Physical Activity?

The Book Report

I'm re-working the whole organization behind the book. It feels like shaking up the box of puzzle pieces and dumping them on the table. This is exactly the sort of thing that's important to do at the beginning of a book project, so things are right on schedule.

I think the new structure will be much more useful. Once I get it outlined I'll be asking for your feedback. I'm sure there will be room for further improvement!

And the website... Well, huge news there, as it's completely new, from the ground up. It's only a few days old, and there are still some bugs to work out, but it's off to a good start.

Table of Contents The Table of Contents is "in the shop" this week. The freshly-reorganized outline for the book and site will be available soon. Table of Contents

Release Notes With each significant site update I post a list of changes. Check out new posts and articles, plus website updates and new feature announcements. Release Notes

Thank you for being a part of Go You Fitness! Have a question, suggestion, or request? Drop me a note at Newsletter@GoYouFitness.com​

Join the fun on social media, too!

​​​​

​

If You're Having a Hard Time...

We have a lot of fun here, practicing our snarky attitudes and celebrating little victories. We try to take a healthy, balanced, and positive approach to living a fit, active life.

People often engage with fitness during major life transitions: a bad health scare, divorce or death, getting clean and sober, an empty nest, job loss, a move to a new community. These are appropriate times to reexamine who we are and what we want out of life. We get our hopes up. We start out full of determination. But change is hard, and body and health issues can be especially challenging, bringing up past traumas, our perceived failures, uncomfortable feelings.

Anyone can get discouraged, frustrated, disheartened. It's easy to go overboard, and it's easy to give up. I deal with chronic pain and health issues. I've seen friends flounder in their lives. I lost my only sister to alcoholism and addiction when she was only 42.

I know how tough things can be. I want you to be OK.

Here are some U.S. based resources if you are in a bad place right now:

You know yourself best. Give yourself a break. Get help. Talk to a friend. Go for a walk. Call 911. Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself.

You have a 100% success rate for getting through hard times so far; you can do this. Go you.

Please note that these crisis resource links are also always available on the website, under Fitness Resources, if you should ever need them.

Copyright © 2023, Linda Eskin — Go You Fitness