Episode 18: How to Develop More Consistency

You feel super motivated to exercise and eat well on Monday but by Friday you’re exhausted and ready to quit. Sound familiar? Today’s episode dives into consistency, what it is and how we develop it. Listen in for 6 tips to become more consistent with your health and wellness.

Episode Transcript:

Anytime that you are repeating the activity and continually showing up, that's consistency.

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, friends! Welcome to this week's episode. I hope you are doing well. Today we are talking about consistency, which is something that seemingly everybody wants more of when it comes to their health and wellness routine. As we get started today, I want you to just consider what would be different for you, if you felt that you were more consistent in your routines?

As you're thinking about that, I want to share something a client said last week that I thought was very profound. This client, just to give some background, identifies (her words) as a chronic dieter, which is pretty common for most of my clients. She's really looking for more consistency. That's something that we've been talking a lot about and exploring in our coaching sessions. And as we were exploring this last week, she recognized that dieting has really been the antithesis of consistency in her life. As we explored what that meant, and how that has shown up for her, she realized that if she could let go of this diet mentality and this mindset around food and activity and stress that comes with a diet mentality, that that could really increase her ability to be more consistent in her life. And what an insight that was, right?! What a big realization.

I think dieting is really how a lot of us have been taught to manage our health and wellness. And with that in mind, we're not really set up for success with consistency. From my experience talking with people and in my own experiences as well, I think this desire for consistency partially stems out of the frustration of starting something, stopping something, starting again on Monday, stopping, starting, stopping. That cycle. I think this is especially true for those of us who have relied on dieting in the past as our guide in the health and wellness world. That process is really exhausting. The starting the stopping starting the stopping, it's exhausting, and it takes a toll mentally as well. And so we're sick of it, right?

What we want instead is consistency. We want something that is continuous. We want something that feels sustainable. That is essentially what consistency is. Consistency is sustainability. Being able to continue a habit or routine or action over an extended period of time.

Even when we aren't dieting, if we have worked to get rid of that diet mentality, consistency can still be a challenge. One of the reasons being because we typically plan our goals, when we are feeling very motivated, or excited about a change. We're feeling pumped up, we feel capable, we put a plan in place for ourself, we set these goals. And then life happens. Life is constantly changing and challenges pop up and unexpected things arise. And it's not exactly what we had hoped for or envisioned when we initially set those goals.

We have these high expectations for consistency. We feel like it's something I should be doing this every day. "There's value in showing up every single day and having a routine that works for me in every situation". And it can be really hard to do something every day. Although there are a few behaviors that we do every day, for example, brushing our teeth. Hopefully that's something we're all doing every day. But if we look at that, compared to these health behaviors, things like our eating behavior, even our activity level, maybe meal planning, maybe taking time for meditation or time to relax, getting to bed on time, these more complex behaviors are a lot harder to build consistency around than something like brushing your teeth.

When you brush your teeth, it's very fast. Usually just a few minutes is all that it takes. There's not very many interruptions. If there is an interruption, it's usually pretty manageable to do while you're brushing your teeth. If someone's talking with you, you can finish up real quick. If you need to run out of the house, you can wrap things up. It's not too hard to manage distractions when it comes to brushing your teeth. You also feel an immediate benefit, if you have a weird taste in your mouth, you can brush your teeth quickly and then you feel great. There's a noticeable difference so it's very encouraging to know, "oh, I can just take a few minutes, I can feel better instantaneously".

When we're looking at the more complex behaviors, like eating and moving, and all those things, it's just not as simple. So a lot of the tactics that we're taught, things like forming habits, doesn't quite apply the same, right? It's not quite as easy as forming a habit around doing your activity for the day and now you never have to think about it again, because it's just a different, it's a different beast.

Today, what I want to do is give you a few tips, a few ideas, a few things to ponder on, as you start to consider how you can develop more consistency and what that might look like when it comes to your health and wellness routines.

The first tip I have for you is to define what consistency looks like for yourself and for your goals. When we look at just the plain Jane definition of consistency, it's basically doing the same or staying the same over some amount of time. There's no specified time stipulation on it. So let's just expand that definition a little bit. I think sometimes this is where we start to say, "Oh, I have to do this every day, if I want to be consistent", but let's expand it a little bit. If you do something every day, you are being consistent. If you can do something every week, you are being consistent. If you do something every month, or every year even, you are being consistent. Anytime that you are repeating the activity and continually showing up. That's consistency. So when you're looking at what it might look like for you and how you want to define it, be detailed with yourself and what your expectation is. How often will you need to do this activity to be satisfied with your level of consistency? Is this something that you could do weekly, and that would be good enough? Or is this something that feels like such a priority that you need to find a way to make it happen every day for yourself? Really paying attention to the level of importance and how this is going to fit into your routine is important to knowing what consistency looks like as it's incorporated into your life with this behavior.

My second tip for you is to make your goal realistic for even your hardest of days. So let's say...a goal I hear quite a bit is I'm going to exercise every day. And usually then we say okay, what what might that look like? "Oh, I want to exercise for 30 minutes every day". And that is a great goal. That's awesome if that is what is super important to you. What I would ask is how confident are you that you can do that 30 minutes of exercise on your hardest your longest your busiest of days? Is it completely realistic to always have time to carve out that 30 minutes? It may be or it may not be. You know best, you're the expert on you here. If it doesn't feel realistic, if you feel like I had a very long day at work, and I had to figure out what to make for dinner and the kids were yelling and screaming and I don't want to do 30 minutes today and it's not going to happen, then we need to look at lowering that barrier of entry, lowering the amount of time being very realistic with that goal. So let's say we lower it down to five minutes every day. This doesn't mean that you can't do 30 minutes, it just means at a minimum to develop that consistency, you want to aim for at least the five minutes, you still have the opportunity to do more than that. So the goal is set at the minimum that you want to accomplish for those hardest hardest days.

My third tip for you is to ditch the all or nothing mentality. Of course, it always comes up right? So if you can't do 100% of your goal, instead of scrapping the whole thing, can you do 75% of it? Can you do 50% of it? Could you do 10% of whatever the goal was that you set for yourself? Something is always going to be better than nothing, especially when we're looking at developing consistency. Part of the challenge with consistency is figuring out how to carve out that time how to make it part of your routine. With that in mind, it's important to do something for our goals to be sustainable. They have to be flexible. We have to be able to bend and not break. The way that we bend is being able to be in the moment and figure out what we can do instead of scrapping the whole idea because we can't do 100% of what we wanted to do.

Tip number four is to expect challenges and give yourself compassion when they happen. My favorite self compassion phrase I I've said it before, I'll probably say it a million times again. This is hard because it's hard not because you're bad at it. These are complex behaviors, right? If it was easy to figure out how to exercise every day, or how to get the most nutrition out of your day, we would all be doing it, it's not easy. And so recognizing that there's going to be some days that are harder, there may be some days you miss, there may be some days, you don't feel great about the progress you made. And that's all part of the process, and totally normal. That happens to everybody. And it's okay. What we need to do in those cases is just learn from it and not beat ourselves up, because it doesn't get any easier when we're hard on ourselves or when we get frustrated, because that only makes us want to quit. And that gets us back to that starting and stopping again. So if you miss a day, or if you miss a week, but you come back to the goal, you show up again, that is consistency, you're still doing the behavior. So what we can focus on with this one is learning to pause instead of stopping if we need to. Of course, the goal here is to be as consistent as possible, right, with the other tips that we mentioned, of course, scaling back trying to do something, trying to be realistic and carve out a minute or two, if possible, is going to be our first option. But if you miss a day, it's okay. It's okay. You can still be consistent when you show up the next day.

My fifth tip is to look for joy in the process, not in the outcome. I really feel like this ties back with the dieting that we talked about in the beginning. A lot of the problems we see from dieting, in terms of behavior change and not being sustainable, is that we're doing behaviors, looking at the outcome of wanting to lose weight. And when that takes time, when we don't lose weight as a result of the behaviors quickly, we quit the behaviors because we're not getting the outcome that we want. And the problem is that is it does take quite a bit of time. Weight loss, to be sustainable, is a long process, it's not an overnight change, it's very slow. And so when we're only looking at the outcome, when that is the goal in mind, when weight loss is the goal, or the end spot, whatever it might be using weight loss as an example here. If we're only waiting for the outcome, it's a lot harder to develop that consistency, because we're waiting for the reward to come. What we can do instead is look for joy in the process. So as you're doing these actions, think about what enjoyment can you find in the routine right now, regardless of the outcome, what can you enjoy right now? What benefits are you seeing? How are you currently improving? Making it something that you enjoy now in the process or that you can see benefit in helps you to keep going with it helps you to continue.

The last tip that I have for you is to build in support and accountability. Can you do any of these behaviors with a friend or with a family member or anybody who can support you in that? Could you maybe hire a coach if you need extra support, right? That is a great reason to have a coach to work on the consistency and to work on the goal setting that's going to help you get in the frame of mind to be consistent and to set goals that you can maintain.

Alright, so quick recap of the six tips.

1. Define what consistency looks like for yourself and for your goal.

2. Make your goal realistic for your hardest of days.

3. Ditch the all or nothing mentality

4. Expect challenges and give yourself compassion when they happen.

5. Look for joy in the process, not the outcome,

6. Build in support and accountability.

I want to say to that consistency is not just about behaviors and actions and checklists and getting things done. Consistency at its core is showing up for ourselves continuously. It's honoring our needs and being mindful of what those needs are and how to best serve them in a way that cares for ourself in a meaningful way. Sometimes you may need a pause and that's okay. What's important is that we're mindful. It's not quitting to change your goals or to take a new path. Health and wellness is a continuous journey. We have different phases of life, different situations. So when you pivot, when you change, when you stop goals, and incorporate new goals, that is all in one process and that is consistency, As long as you we are showing up for ourselves and doing the things that best care for ourselves.

You can be consistent. You are already being consistent. And if you are here listening to a podcast episode on health and wellness, then you are likely doing better with this than you think you are.

That's what I have for you today. Hope you have a wonderful week and I will talk to you next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.