Super In Six with @JustYouPTMH

This week brings to a close the 6 weeks Super In Six programme with Paul at JustYouPT, most of you already know that I do PT with Paul online, and I'm happy to wax lyrical to anyone about the benefits of doing so. But I decided to embark on his latest programme which is a mindset programme designed to build good habits.

The man himself does a much better job of explaining here:

SIS JustYouPT

I asked to join the SIS course alongside my weekly training session, I had been feeling a bit demotivated, my water intake which initially had started off well had dropped and I was reaching for energy drinks to get me through dips in mood and energy, I wanted to reset and the geeky part of me loved the idea of tracking all areas of my progress and habits and being able to compare them throughout. One of the things I find particularly interesting working with Paul is the care and attention he pays to both his clients and his own mental health and wellbeing; the SIS course feeds this into our daily habits through encouragement to notice our moods and our response to them.

I'm not going to claim my time on the course has been perfect or that I have been the model student but that's life, sometimes there are outside factors, and we need to adjust. The beauty of the SIS course is that I didn't feel as though I was trying to tackle these changes alone, the small group of people doing the same but for their own reasons was comforting and the ability to share our own ideas and encourage each other made a big difference. I looked forward to encouraging the others in their goals and in turn it helped motivate me in my own, it's a powerful feeling being surrounded by people who want to see you succeed and Paul and the SIS programme felt like that to me.

Habit tracking has proved interesting for me as it has shown me the link between the days my movement is high and the effect on my mood and my calorie intake/ water intake. The days I have journalled regularly and meditated generally the next few days my mood is more level and my activity levels higher meaning I make better food choices. The correlation between these habits and my sleep is evident and it has made me view my physical and mental health more as a whole - I now understand the links better and my own personal triggers.

There is one thing I feel like I should admit here, workouts were an entirely new thing to me in January last year when I began training with Paul, and I'll tell you something else since we are sharing here, cardio exercises generally terrified me. I've spoken about my condition a fair bit in previous blogs so I'm not going to bore you but the unpredictableness of it still causes me anxiety, and even the word cardio makes me edgy. So, it made sense to me to say, "oh no I can't do that", to head off the failure before I had to suffer it, until a particular day and motivation struck, I can't even tell you what now bloody minded stubbornness probably. I decided to do the cardio workout and I manged it. Reader, I stayed upright, and I actually enjoyed it. The sense of achievement from that one small workout I can't quite explain to you, but I do know it carried me through a lot of demotivated days.

The workouts themselves coupled with the habit tracking of daily maintenance steps became like a competition with myself, that I wanted to be accountable and tried to keep above the baseline where I felt able too. It was a good feeling to finish the day knowing I had achieved the amount I had set out. There were days I didn't of course but that is part of accepting and being kind to ourselves where we need to be and recognising the changes, we need to make in order to meet our goals. I began to get into a routine of going out for an evening walk, spurred on by seeing the foxes in the area. One particular night id had an awful day and really didn't feel up to it but the thought of tracking low steps, no workout and no journalling at such a low mood encouraged me and I went for our walk - I'm so glad that I did because it proved to me that those are the nights I needed too.

The course content became a bit of a Sunday night ritual for me, when it pinged through, I knew I had a fresh start from whatever the previous week had been, the content including a recipe and snack was a real high point for me and I made a point of checking them out and adding the ingredients to the mornings shopping and doing at least one of them through the week. I wouldn't say that I can't cook, I'd say that I am a predictable cook - with 3 teens at home one who is veggie and one autistic and incredibly fussy I've got stuck in a rut there and used to cooking the way others need me too. It was brilliant to branch out in the kitchen and enjoy creating something totally different and as an added bonus the teens joined in, and we worked on ways to adapt - the results may not always have been aesthetically pleasing but they tasted good!

At the end of the 6 weeks my weight is down by 4lb, which I know isn't a huge amount or the aim of the course but hey, I'm not complaining and I'm fairly sure no one else would either. My measurements are down which is the thing that I am following. Water is featuring a lot more prominently in my life and it's not something I have to make a conscious effort to remember or to choose anymore, it's just the status quo. As A general rule I don't tend to weigh regularly as I was finding it demotivating, preferring at the minute to focus on the improvements to my strength and management of my condition which is currently classed as in remission. I think that thanks to the SIS course I feel more equipped to make better choices and recognise why sometimes I may not be doing so, it has given me a better ability to step back and consider the thought process and backbones behind my habits.

Id recommend the SIS course to anyone wanting a reset, starting out with exercise and fitness, wanting support or to look closer at their habits and how they may be affecting their journey to better physical and mental health I feel like I learnt a lot and it made me look closer at my choices.