Episode #131: New Year, New You: Setting PCOS Health Intentions

Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the PCOS Repair podcast, as well as a new year. As it’s the new year, we’re going to dive into the difference between just coming up with a resolution and creating a very intentional year. So this is going to be a little bit more of an interactive episode as we want to start off our new year with a bang and I’m really glad you’re joining me today, but I want you to grab a pen and paper and I invite you to pause, rewind, listen to this a couple of times if needed to get your year off to the start that you want. So first of all, I was looking up some of the definitions of these words that we just randomly throw around and think that we know the meaning of and we do know the meanings of them, probably. But sometimes we don’t think about them in detail of what does it actually mean? What am I actually saying? So when we have a resolution, it is a firm decision to do or not to do something. The problem is that we throw out these resolutions at the beginning of the year, which I think is actually a really cool tradition.

We’re setting this idea into motion. We’re thinking about our past year, thinking about our next year, thinking about where we want to be in a year. That’s a really cool thing. It’s very meaningful. I think it’s a really good thing. But I think also we’ve all I’ve done it, or many of us have done it so many times, that now you hear a lot of people saying, I’m not making resolutions this year because it’s almost like you put this thing into motion and then you essentially let yourself down if you don’t do it.

So in today’s episode, I know that if you’re listening to this episode, if you’ve been following along on the PCOS Repair podcast, there’s something in your health, something with your PCOS that is frustrating you, and you are searching for answers on how to improve in some aspect of your hormone health. We’re going to use that as an example of how to set intentional goals, or you can call them resolutions, dreams, things that you aspire to, whatever words you want to use, But we’re going to set some intentional, actionable steps and really figure out what it would take to do these things.

First of all, I want you to start with coming up with the It’s the thing that you want. It could really be for anything. You can follow these steps. I’m going to walk you through from anything towards remodeling your house or buying a new house or going back to school and getting a new education. It’s anything that you want, but we’re going to focus on it in the realm of PCOS health. I’m going to use the example of weight loss. This is a fairly finite example, and it seems simple on the surface, but I’m going to walk you through how we layer it in there so that we actually start to create the lifestyle that allows us to achieve what we want. Okay, so first of all, you have this goal in your mind. I want you to take that goal and expand it one step further. In the realm If I have weight loss, that would be like, Okay, I want to lose weight. What do I really want when I say I want to lose weight? Well, what I really want is I want to live at a weight, and I want my lifestyle to be such that weight is no longer something that I think about.

I maintain my weight. I am intentional about it. I know my safety zone of where I stay on the scale. Maybe I check my body fat percentage every once in a while to see if I need to adjust that scale reading to be reasonable with if I’ve gained more muscle mass as I’m working out but in other words, I know how to take care of my weight, I know how to manage my weight. It’s no longer something that I’m stressing about, frustrated about, down about, My closet is one size. I don’t have the, Oh, I wish I fit those clothes. These are the clothes I actually fit. These are the clothes I’m too scared to throw away because I’m probably going to be back in them in a few months. When we think about what is it that we really want, what I really want is I want to live at this weight that I have in my mind that I feel good at, that I feel confident at, that I feel healthy at, that it’s easier for me to move around at, that my PCOS behaves better at, all the It’s not just I want to achieve this weight loss.

It’s like picturing what is it that’s going to do for me? How is that going to look? How will that function, and what is it that I’m wanting from this. Once you have that goal in your head, the first step is to think about what do you need to have happen this year to reach that goal? If you’re trying to say, let’s say we’re trying to lose 30 pounds, If I’m trying to lose 30 pounds, then thinking about losing somewhere in the ballpark of a half a pound to one pound a week. If I’m really cruising, there may be times where I’m losing more like two, but there’s going to be some plateaus along the way. So let’s just make a really reasonable amount and say a half a pound a week. That’s going to take me 60 weeks. That’s going to be not even quite possible in a year. Maybe we say, I’m going to start off a little faster at the beginning, and then I’ll probably slow down and It’s in plateaus, but it’ll probably be somewhere right around 52 weeks that I could probably have this goal really close to wrapped up by the end of next year. Then the following year, my goal can be to learn how to maintain it.

What do I think about or know, or if I need to go figure out, what is it that I need to know in order to do this? We have the normal ones, like eating and exercise. Well, I’m going to take that a step further because we’re talking about PCOS Health and we want to know our root cause. You knew I was going to bring that up somewhere in here, but we want to know our root cause because that’s how we’re going to know how to nourish our bodies, what things to consider testing our body to see if it is doing okay with, such as dairy or gluten, what kinds of exercises to do, how often to exercise, how hard to exercise, what other factors are going to play into our root cause hormones that are going to allow us to release extra body fat or not. We’re going to want to know our root cause. There’s step one.

Step two, knowing how to manage that root cause. Step three, now you have your list of I need to do things like this is my sleep routine I need to incorporate, this is the nutrition portion that I want to incorporate. These are the energy, so calorie intake and expenditure that I’m looking to do. Then I want to get stronger because having more muscle is going to help me to improve my metabolic health, which will help me improve my hormonal health. These are the types of other things. You can have a whole list of the things that you want to do to incorporate that, hydration and all the things. Okay, so now that you have that list, I want you to go through that list. You might need to pause. You might need to pause this. Go make that list. What are the things that you need to do? It can be a long list. Try to make them fairly specific, but then come back when you have that list and So now I’m assuming you have that list. Now what we’re going to do is go through and I want you to put a little checkmark or a circle or something to indicate, are you doing it or are you not? Maybe you’re already drinking your half a gallon of water a day or whatever it is that you want to be drinking.

Maybe you’re already getting really good sleep at night. You already have a really good sleep routine, but your nutrition is a little bit in need of help. Whatever things that you’re already doing great or already do great some of the time. So this is a really important step. Sometimes we’re like, Oh, I’m already doing that. Well, in reality, I’m only doing it three times a week, but I’m doing it. So that’s great that you’re doing it three times a week. You already have the know-how because when we think about starting a new habit, there’s the figuring it out and then doing it consistently so that the third part is that it becomes an autopilot. You don’t think about how to brush your teeth every morning. You get up in the morning and you know you need to brush your teeth, then you already know how to brush your teeth so you can actually be thinking about or even multitasking with your other hand while you’re brushing your teeth because you know what you’re doing. It’s comfortable for you, it’s familiar or you do it every day and because you do it every day, it has become this very consistent, solidified habit that you don’t leave the house until you’ve brushed your teeth.

We want each one of these steps that you just pause this and list it out for yourself to become that consistent and that automatic but they aren’t going to do that overnight. If you have something that you’re currently doing some of the time but want to be doing every day, then make sure you notate that on your list that this one still needs some work on consistency. Now you have your marching orders, essentially. You know which things you have to do. Now I want you to go through, and anything that you’re that you’re not currently doing or that you’re not currently consistent at, I want you to go through and mark next to them or just make a couple of notes next to them. What are the obstacles that are coming up for those? Maybe you’re saying, I work out once to twice a week, but I really struggle to get the other days in. Why? Is it because you start off the week strong and then you start getting tired so you’re not getting up when your alarm goes off, you’re sleeping that extra half hour, hour, and then you don’t have time to do your workout, or is it that as the week goes on, you don’t have everything?

You can get organized on Sunday, but then as the week goes on, other things come up. You didn’t look all the way through the week to see what was happening, and so you didn’t plan out when they were going to happen. Maybe you go to a workout class and only those two times a week work for your schedule. Whatever the obstacles are, write some of those obstacles down because you’re going to have to come back and you’re going to have to bust through those obstacles and figure out what you’re going to do differently to not have those be obstacles anymore. Again, pause this. Go write down your obstacles of the things that you’re not currently doing.

The next step is now that you have your list of what you need to do. You’ve listed out your obstacles. Now, one more little mini step, not mini step, it’s a big step. We need to figure out what to do with those obstacles but I want you to maybe just to do one or two. That gets to be a big task. You essentially have your marching orders of what things you’re not currently doing. Choose one of them, maybe two of them.

Start ideally with one, but if you are pretty comfortable with the one you’re doing, maybe you just need to get a little more consistent, you could add a second one if you really want to but I would actually prefer you lean towards doing one, getting it good, and then adding in another on. So pick the one you want to start with. Now you’re going to look at what obstacles you wrote down. Think about how you’re going to bust through those. So if your obstacle was that they only offer two training programs that you can make it to during the week, then you need to look at, is there actually a third that you could make it to if you rearrange your schedule, or do you need to add in a different exercise as well? Problem solved, that one. Now that you’ve solved your problem, how are you going to make it happen? What clothes do you need? Do you need a gym bag? Where are you going to set them the night before? How are you going to make sure you’re ready to go? Do you need a water bottle? Do you have all of your equipment ready?

I go to a program almost every single day after I drop my kids off from school. So I keep my shoes because we change shoes when we get there and stuff. I keep my shoes, my water bottle, and all those things in a little bin in my car so that I don’t have to remember them every single day and then when I get there, I can just fill up my water bottle, put my shoes on, I’m good to go. That means that I don’t have to think about it while I’m packing lunches, while I’m getting my kids dressed, while I’m getting them in the car, while I’m worried about drop off, while I’m working on spelling words with them in the car. I can just get them to school and then take a deep breath, they’re dropped off, and then drive my car to where I need to go for my workout, grab my things that are always ready for me, and there I go. That set up so that there’s really no excuses of why. The next part, though, is that because you’re setting up these intentional action steps, you get to have some trial and error.

Your goal is to lose weight. One of your micro goals is to exercise consistently. Exercise is not about burning calories for weight loss. It’s about building strength and mobility and endurance and creating a healthier body, which will turbo boost your ability to lose weight and burn the extra calories that you’re storing in the form of fat. It’s not about how many calories you burn in your workout. It’s about creating a stronger, healthier you that’s going to be happier to shed the extra weight that’s not needed. You’re not necessarily trying to think about, Okay, if I want to eat this extra thing, I need to exercise X amount more. No, you’re just trying to create a very active lifestyle for yourself. I go into this in a lot more detail inside of the PCOS Root Cause Boot camp. There’s an entire bonus on learning how to reach your ideal body composition that you want to be at and maintaining it and thriving at that and enjoying life while you’re thriving at that but I just have to say right now, as we’re using this as an example, exercise is not about trying to burn more calories.

Back to our thing here. You have your list with your obstacles. You’ve picked one, and you’re looking at how are you going to make that happen in the week. Now, you’re going to spend a full week really just focusing on that. See how it goes. If it was easier than you thought, then you could think about doing this with another item on your list. If it was really difficult or you didn’t make it, don’t even think about adding another one in. If we can do one thing well and have it become this habit where even when we don’t want to, we’re already in momentum to do it. Now, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t say, Oh, I’m not actually going to go do that workout today because I’m tired and I don’t feel like it but we’re already so set up to do it. There’s already space in our calendar. It’s already in our calendar. That’s a big one, guys. Put it in your calendar. Put those workouts in your calendar and don’t schedule anything over them. They’re not a, Oh, if I have time, it’s a, I’m doing it at this time. Okay, that’s where sometimes an exercise class is nice because it’s already there. It’s not flexible. You can’t move it around until there’s no room for it but each person has their own preferences there. Find your preference, but schedule it one way or another.

Once you feel like you have it in motion, you don’t have to be an expert at it. You don’t have to have it be a full and total habit yet. You don’t have to go the whole 21 days until something becomes a habit thing but I do want you to feel like it’s in stride because what you’re doing here, the whole point of this episode is helping you to picture how do you actually recreate your lifestyle to be filled with the things that take you where you want to go. So many times we have moved in a direction. No shame, no judgment. We’ve just drifted into a direction that the things that we’re doing are not necessarily intentional to what we want to have happen. We set these goals as New Year rolls around, and we set these resolutions, and we think, Oh, yeah, this is what I want to have happen this year. Part of us feels frustrated because we wanted to have this thing happen before, but it was never given the time to really break it down to these micro steps and quietly build the lifestyle that allows us to have the things that we want.

I hope you found this episode helpful because these are the steps that I walk you through in my programs. These are the steps I walk you through when I’m working with you because it’s so important to take what it is that you want to do, break it down, and intentionally create the action steps to the habits that put your PCOS healthy lifestyle that you want that works for you on autopilot so that it becomes as easy as brushing your teeth as you go about your day and you still get to live your life. You’re just incorporating the things that help you to become and do and have the things that you want to have. You can do this if you want to recover your period and boost your fertility. Again, it’s just going to be a matter of figuring out what are those things that you need to do. That’s where the PCOS Root Cause Boot camp can really, really, really help you. Then I walk you through how to start creating that knowledge into actionable lifestyle building techniques so that you can create the habits, so that you can build the lifestyle that really works for you. Find your sweet spot of how strict you need to be, how much other parts of your lifestyle that you need to rethink a little bit so you can fit all the things in and make it work for you.

With that, if you have any questions, comments, I’d love to hear from you over on Instagram. You can find me @nourishetohealthy. I hope you hit the to try button so that you get all of the great episodes I have planned for you coming up in the next couple of weeks. Also, I do love to hear ideas or questions that you have in my inbox over on Instagram. If there’s a topic that you would like me to put into the list of upcoming episodes, I would be more than happy to do that. When I get a lot of the same ones, I definitely create an episode on it. Otherwise, I will create some content on it over on Instagram. So make sure you both subscribe to the podcast and follow me on Instagram so that you can continue to follow along this year as you set the intentions for increasing your PCOS health. All right. Until next time. Bye for now.