In celebration of the Healthy Woman Blogfest, today I’d like to discuss health and how it affects business.

As a health professional, I have worked with a lot of women who were very successful professionally, but struggled with health issues that held them back from not only FEELING successful, but being able to take their business to the next level.

How can such a limitation be decreased? I won’t say it’s simple, but there are a few steps one can take to START on the road to improved health:

1. Set goals. What would you like to see your health like? It might be to lose weight. It might be to control blood pressure or blood sugars. It might be just to feel and look better! Until you know what you want to accomplish, you can’t work towards accomplishing it!

2. Investigate what has held you back. Why have you not been able to achieve these goals in the past? Be serious in investigating these reasons. This is important in order to help you create a plan that will be different than previous plans. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

3. Craft your plan. Now look at what you will do! This is where it might be helpful to hire a nutrition professional or perhaps a counselor or coach to help you move past perceived limitations. A coach can help you set up goals and hold you accountable to those goals.

4. Take tiny steps. In your plan, the more simple the steps, the more likely you will see success! If you want to lose weight, a simple change may be to switch to snacking on fruit at night instead of chips or ice cream. If you want to lower your blood pressure, it might be using herbs and Mrs. Dash instead of salt.

5. Write it down. When we write down our goals, we are more likely to follow through with them.  Rather than just saying you want to lose weight, how MUCH weight and by when? If you want to increase exercise, what does that actually mean and look like? Put it on paper.

6. Share with others. This also increases the likelihood of success, when we share with others what we are doing. Plus, sharing can help gain support for your efforts, too.

These are just a few simple first steps towards improving health. They may not be anything you don’t already know, but it always helps to read them again. You might be in a different place right now in order to hear them!

If you are close to the top of your game with your business, ask yourself what’s necessary to take to TO the top! If you felt better, would that help? If you felt you looked better, would that give you more confidence? If you had more confidence, what could you accomplish? I bet it would be anything you can imagine! Sometimes women use their health/weight as excuses for NOT pushing to be at the top of their game!

Margie

Join us for the blogfest by checking out the other links of participants, below!

BLOGFEST LINKS:
Angela White at Blisstree’s Breastfeeding 1-2-3 – Helpful Skills of Breastfeeding Counselors
Angie Tillman, RD, LDN, CDE – You Are Beautiful Today
Anthony J. Sepe – Women’s Health and Migraines
Ashley Colpaart – Women’s health through women
Charisse McElwaine – Spending too much time on the “throne?”
Danielle Omar – Yoga, Mindful Eating and Food Confidence
Diane Preves M.S.,R.D – Balance for Health
Joan Sather – A Woman’s Healthy Choices Affect More Than Herself
Laura Wittke – Fibro Study Recruits Participants
Liz Marr, MS, RD – Reflecting on Family Food Ways and Women’s Work
Marsha Hudnall – Breakfast Protein Helps Light Eaters Feel Full
Michelle Loy, MPH, MS, RD – A Nutritionista’s Super Foods for Super Skin
Monika Woolsey, MS, RD – To effectively work with PCOS is to understand a woman’s health issues throughout her life
Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog – How breastfeeding helps you, too
Rebecca Scritchfield, MA, RD, LD – Four Keys to Wellness, Just for Women
Renata Mangrum, MPH, RD – The busy busy woman
Robin Plotkin, RD, LD – Feeding the Appetites of the Culinary, Epicurious and Nutrition Worlds-One Bite at a Time
Sharon Solomon – Calories, longevity and do I care
Terri L Mozingo, RD, CDN & D. Milton Stokes, MPH, RD, CDN of One Source Nutrition, LLC – Crossing the Line: From Health to Hurt
Wendy Jo Peterson, RD – Watch Your Garden Grow

Today I have some comments on New Year’s Resolutions. Do you make them? And, if you do, how does that work for you? I view Resolutions in the same light as diets: Something to go “on”, only to end up discouraged and go “off”. Why do we do that?

For people who strive to lose weight, only to struggle from year to year to year, they often live in the land of ‘someday’, rather than in TODAY. The only ‘today’ that they experience is when they wake up and promise themselves that “today I will do better”…

But what happens when they are NOT ‘better’? Often they end the day as all the previous days – feeling a sense of failure. They started out great, but…. And then they go to bed again feeling guilty!

Isn’t this the same thing that happens with Resolutions?

Why not do something different? And here I’m going to diverge into two separate topics: Health and business, again.

Business is the easier topic, actually. This is where goals can be made and action plans created. Starting something new in the New Year is a great time! But it doesn’t have to be a Resolution… beyond maybe a Resolution that this year you’re going to make it REAL! So, for that business, sit down and write out what you would like to accomplish this year. If you’re just starting out, or in the THINKING stage, what minimum action will you take? If you already have a business, what new product, service or direction would you like to take it this year? It might be something as simple as cutting expenses or tracking income and expenses better! It might be something as challenging as moving in a new direction. Regardless, it does need to be written out on paper to help solidify your plans.

Health is a more challenging topic. As a health professional, I have spent years helping clients achieve their health and fitness goals. Many are successful, but some continue to feel challenged and unsuccessful. We discuss that topic of ‘one day’, with the focus of feeling better and living healthier. What we do NOT do, however, is discuss the option that it is OK to feel a sense of failure and fear that they may never ‘get there’. We view ‘today’ as something to get past, rather than something to actually live in and be ok with. We continue to encourage to think positive and investigate what holds them back from achieving that elusive goal of ideal health and weight. What if they were to really sit with where they are, right now, at this very weight or health condition. And what if we stopped trying to IMPROVE where they are for awhile? Instead, just trying to appreciate it for what it is. You know: “It is what it is”. It IS what it is, afterall! We can’t pretend it otherwise…

Why do I bring this up when I’m talking about Resolutions? Perhaps we should consider the concept of allowing people to accept what their life is like right now and stop focusing on the future until they have actually accepted their present situation. What if people were allowed to ‘wallow’ if necessary, and come to real grips with where they are right now? For health challenges, this makes sense. For business challenges, I still believe that setting goals and action plans help move us forward. But health is more personal and involves so many more emotions.

There are many successful people who still struggle with their weight! If you are one of them, I’m sure you’ve had some conversation with yourself about this. The two seem totally separate, somehow. But are they, really? What I often hear is, “I don’t have time.” Hm; there’s that time management issue, again!

But it’s more than a time management issue. It’s a self-care and self-acceptance issue. And it’s an attempt to put one aspect of life aside in favor of another. However, it’s been my experience that people, women especially, who struggle with their weight and health, no matter how successful they are in business still don’t feel successful.

What does success look like to you? And, instead of making a New Year’s Resolution, what can you do to start facing what you’ve tried to ignore and help yourself move into that person you ARE, rather than the person you want to BECOME.

Margie