Navigating the festive season often feels like trying to sprint through a marathon with ankle weights; it's a seasonal struggle we've all faced, and I'm no stranger to it. This episode is a candid reflection on my journey—balancing teaching, staying fit, and forging time for self-care amidst the holiday hustle. I'll share the raw realities of tuning into your body's whispers for rest, the unnecessary guilt that creeps in with fitness breaks, and the liberating truth that there's no grand prize for relentless gym visits. Plus, I'll sprinkle in transformative insights from Jim Kwik's "Limitless," a beacon of light on my path to mental sharpness and productivity. So, lace up your sneakers, or perhaps unlace them for now, and tune in for a session that champions the necessity of pausing for rejuvenation in our quest to become not just fitter but happier and more complete individuals.
Podcast Disclaimer:
The Pain-Free Podcast is presented solely for general information, education, and entertainment purposes. Any information presented in this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional diagnosis. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. As always, users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition that they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
Navigating the festive season often feels like trying to sprint through a marathon with ankle weights; it's a seasonal struggle we've all faced, and I'm no stranger to it. This episode is a candid reflection on my journey—balancing teaching, staying fit, and forging time for self-care amidst the holiday hustle. I'll share the raw realities of tuning into your body's whispers for rest, the unnecessary guilt that creeps in with fitness breaks, and the liberating truth that there's no grand prize for relentless gym visits. Plus, I'll sprinkle in transformative insights from Jim Kwik's "Limitless," a beacon of light on my path to mental sharpness and productivity. So, lace up your sneakers, or perhaps unlace them for now, and tune in for a session that champions the necessity of pausing for rejuvenation in our quest to become not just fitter but happier and more complete individuals.
Podcast Disclaimer:
The Pain-Free Podcast is presented solely for general information, education, and entertainment purposes. Any information presented in this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional diagnosis. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. As always, users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition that they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
Welcome to the Pain Free Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, dana Jones. I am a certified personal trainer and I'm here to help you achieve your fitness goals without pain. In each episode, I'll share tips and strategies that will help you stay safe and pain free while you're working out. I'll also interview experts in the field of fitness and pain management. So if you're ready to learn how to stay active and pain free, then subscribe to the Pain Free Athlete Podcast today. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Pain Free Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, dana Jones.
Dana:
Happy New Year. It is 2024. How's everyone doing? How's your new year? Did you have good time? Did you do you know all the things that you thought you were going to do when you had a little time off between the holidays? I'm feeling better.
Dana:
I know you didn't ask, but anyway, you know, december slash January is just always a trying time for me. A lot of times it's well, not a lot of times. All the time it's the end of the semester of school, which always is crazy. You know, it's just as much as I go in and I'm prepared. It's just craziness, because everybody's rushing to get the work done, they want to make sure they're passing their classes, all that kind of good stuff, and what's that? Saying it's your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part. Yeah, try saying that to desperate and frustrated parents and students. It just doesn't ever work out the way you hope you know. So it's just a very hard time. It's very trying for sure. And then of course, you know the way our school schedule kind of dropped. You know we're out on the 22nd, which means Monday is Christmas, and by then I was kind of cooked and you know I just was like I need to recover and it's been a very challenging school year, as I'm sure any other teachers out there will tell you, and I just wasn't terribly motivated and you know I would do what I needed to do to make it through the day.
Dana:
And then you know I do my thing and wake up and whatever, eat and then get ready to go back to bed, like that was for the least the first week. That was the goal. Right was just to get some rest. And so the other day I worked out. And I was sitting there and I was like when was the last time I worked out? Like when did I pick up a weight and I realized that it had been about 10, 12 days since I had lifted a weight and, of course, you know, you have that piece of you that's like oh no, you know I didn't do this, and you know, because you want to, you want to finish goals, right, you want to get stuff done and you think, oh, having some time off is a perfect time to get done. Get stuff done. And that's usually wrong. But you know, I've done my work. So I was like, you know, I'm good, like this, is it? I'm just chilling, I'm resting because this is what my body's telling me, this is what my heart is telling me, and it is okay for me not to, you know, lift some weights or go work out or, you know, make working out a priority, because clearly, rest was my priority, and you know.
Dana:
So I hung in there for a little while and then, after, you know, getting toward the end of it, I was getting bored, but honestly, I mean the first three quarters, seven, eighths of it, I had zero motivation to do anything. Like I said, you know, is that really a problem? Well, it could be, you know, I know that a few years ago it would have been a huge problem because in my brain. You know I would have felt guilty. I would have had, you know, I would have lost a streak somewhere, right, like how many workouts could I do in a row? Maybe I wouldn't have closed all my rings on my Apple Watch. And then, you know, I'd lay in bed at night going, oh, but if I just do, you know, 10 minutes of stretching, I'd be able to close the ring and you know all that kind of craziness and that. Or I would have been embarrassed because I'm a fitness trainer and I didn't work out. And people are going to know, nobody knows, nobody's paying attention. But for me, I was thinking that people were.
Dana:
And you know the major point is that you know there is no trophy at the end of it. You know, when I look at stuff and I realize like, oh, I worked out this much, or you know, whatever, nobody goes, oh, dana, you, you know you only worked out 218 days out of 365. You're screwed. You know we're not allowing you, you know, to go on from here or something, right, there's no contest. But a lot of times I felt like it was. And now the healthier, dana, are mostly healthy, right, not 100% healthy. I'm going. You know, my body needs the rest, and this is what I need to do to take care of myself, and if that means that I sleep for a week to try to get myself back to some a baseline I wouldn't say normal, but definitely just a baseline that's what I'm going to do, and, yeah, I may feel a little guilty about it, but you know, that's what the journals are for and that's you know. That's the point, right, is that you have to work through this process. You have to, you know, get into it, but I did what I did.
Dana:
One of the good things, though, that I was doing as I was laying around was reading, and some of you may remember and I've mentioned Jim Quick before I was reading his book that's called Limitless, and it's an interesting book because he talks about a lot of things, but, you know, I figured it was probably good for this podcast, because we're talking about motivation, or lack thereof, or whatever, and Jim Quick says that one of the key ingredients to sustain motivation is energy, and the best way to get energy is by eating foods that boost your cognitive health. What you put in your body matters, especially for your brain matter, right, and I'm looking at the holidays going yeah, I didn't see cookies on that list. I didn't see cake, I didn't see candy, I didn't see what was that? Peppermint bark stuff, like that wasn't on his cognitive food list.
Dana:
And then the second thing he says is like, hey, you got to get good sleep. You know like, oh, set, you know consistent sleep hours, make sure your room's cool, dark. You know all the things. You know was that. Well, he even goes into saying like, hey, even losing an hour of sleep can impair your cognitive abilities no kidding right and increase anxiety the next day. And you know you can't ever make up sleep on the weekends. You know your brain needs to have consistent patterns, right, quality sleep so that you perform at your best.
Dana:
You know, was that happening during this time? Absolutely not. I was staying up late, I was laying in bed all the mornings, I was going to bed at different times. You know, couple that with bad food or, you know, not bad food, but, like you know, sugary treats. You know that wasn't helping my quality of sleep and so it was all over the place. But you know, again, it's something that I felt like I needed to. You know, like you know, thrust off the wagon so that I can get back on eventually. Um, but you know I, it is what it is. But then you add in right money, stress, right, because it's a holiday. So you got a shop, did you shop on time, did you know? And then, of course, you talk to friends and they're like, oh, I did all my shopping in August and all like, oh shit, I was ordering stuff up to the last moment. It's like, is this going to get here? I think so, all right, we'll take care of that.
Dana:
Um, you know, the holidays are definitely not built for the faint of heart. Right, as an American, um, we have made like celebrating holidays like some kind of Olympic sport, and you know all the posts on social media with, you know, trees being decorated to this degree, and you know I got all these presents. Oh, this person got this. Oh, I bought, you know, this amount of stuff for my, you know, child, and you know it's just everything's a competition and you know you, you could try to keep up or you could do your own thing, uh, and it's really up to you. Um, but you know that definitely, even if I wasn't really participating in that, you know the holiday shopping stress because you know, thank you, amazon um. I definitely avoided a lot of like. I went to store a couple of times but definitely not at the level that I know some people have um.
Dana:
And of course you add in you know family stress and it may not even be like my um family is or local family is not very stressful. There's some things right. Just you know, do you really want to hang out with somebody? For you know, six hours on a holiday or something like that. Sometimes it's just nice to hang out with them for you know an hour or two um. So that adds some stress to you and you know, during the season and um, but you know you just kind of work with it because that's what you have to do. But for me, you know, with all that stuff and you know not sleeping, not really eating well and whatever. But the cherry on top was that I live in northern California and it freaking rained and it was cold and there's a lot of days where I'm like I'm not doing jack because this sucks and you know um.
Dana:
I don't know if I have the uh, seasonal affective disorder, also known as sad um, but I definitely, you know, was it's not very motivated. If you're not feeling terribly motivated. It definitely is not motivated motivating to get up and go like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go for a walk when it's raining sideways, or something like that. You know, I just didn't want to do it and that's okay, you know, and that's what I came.
Dana:
That's the conclusion I came to is that, you know, I needed this time to rejuvenate myself. I needed, um, you know, um, to make good choices for myself, set boundaries, you know, in terms of socialization, right, like, how much was I going to go out? Did I really want to do a bunch of different things and I kept a pretty low key and I think it was just a right amount of stuff. Probably could have done more, but we were also just, you know, my house and my students, we all were just sick and so that kind of messed with a lot of stuff.
Dana:
So, you know, on top of it being the dark winter months, you know also adding in some illness, you know sprinkling a little illness, and that definitely affects your motivation, um, and it is okay, right, most people do have some kind of decrease in their motivation during these times and, of course, the, you know, the biggest part is like, don't put yourself up about it enjoy the holidays, eat all the things, do whatever you need to do, because if you're somebody who is, um, fairly motivated which I would consider myself I'm not highly motivated, but I'm fairly motivated it's going to come back and sometimes you just have to wait for that feeling. And I started feeling it, you know, last week and I was like I guess it's time, right, you know, I should probably start kicking it in, and it was, you know, part of it, like I said, it was the boredom. And then the other part of it was like, you know it's, I'm ready now. I'm ready to start doing some stuff. And so, you know, started with lifting and weights this week. I went to the gym once and I worked out last night with my fitness class, you know, and I'm starting to get back into it and do the things that I need to do to feel better about who I am.
Dana:
And you know, I guess my message to you is that it's okay to not be motivated 100% of the time. I know that Jim says, you know, energy fuels your action, right, but if your energy is not there because you have a stressful job or, you know, maybe parenting is stressful for you or your relationship is stressful for you. That's going to drop your energy levels below normal and sometimes you're just going to have to take those moments to. You know, sleep, sleep in, sit in a tub, read, do the things that you can to get yourself refueled, whatever it takes to kind of rejuvenate. So you know, that's kind of all I had for you and I wanted to just make sure that you know I'm 100% honest well, 100% as honest as I could be on a podcast. But just that you know, to let you know like we all suffer from the lack of motivation at times and you know we have to get back to whatever your baseline is.
Dana:
And just know that usually during the holidays is not a good time for you to start new projects, do any of that other stuff. It's really just about resting and, you know, possibly thinking about like what's next. You know, what are some things that I want to engage in, what are some goals that I would like to have and, again, not huge goals, not the crazy. You know, oh, it's the brand new year, I'm going to go to the gym and, you know, do crazy shit for a month and then, you know, not do anything else, but just think about, like the things that you want to do.
Dana:
Like, I set a simple goal where I want to read more and I want to try to knock out a book a month, because that's something that I've always struggled with and I found myself reading during the holidays and I forgot that I enjoy it and I use every excuse in the world to not read and put myself in front of the TV, but I find that it's a lot more motivating for me to read because then you're using your brain right. You're creating the scenes, you're creating the background. You know there's things that I have to read for my job, right? So I got a bunch of books on body image now Thank you, Donica for that, you know, and Kelly. So I'm going to read a couple of those because I feel like being informed is something that's going to help me be better at my job as a fitness trainer and coach. And you know, I just want to do what's best for me and it's kind of cool that I have figured that out.
Dana:
Like, I think a lot of times people don't do that. Unfortunately, as women, we have a tendency of putting everybody before us and that sucks that we do that, but you know it's sometimes it's just like drilled into us and we're getting all these, you know, this influx from outside world telling us that this is what we should be doing, and I'm happy that you know I'm starting to figure out. I need to take care of me, and I hope that you guys can do the same. So, anyway, thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe hey, you can also leave a review of the podcast and don't forget to share it. This upcoming year, I'm getting some different guests based off of suggestions that I'm getting from some listeners, and I appreciate that. So I'm trying to bring you all kinds of content that are going to help you be better athlete, a better human and, hopefully, doing all those things pain free. So thank you so much for listening and I will catch you next time.