Are you bored with your exercise routine? Tired of trying to incorporate whole foods into your day? Do you feel like you might slap the next person who asks you how much sleep you got or if you meditated today?
This happens to the best of us. But before you slap anyone, incorporate one of the following five ideas to stay healthy when boredom strikes:
1) Do the opposite: If you’re a gym rat, get outside. If you typically work out solo, join a group class. Go to a studio for yoga, pilates or spinning. Try CrossFit. If you always exercise with a group, go it alone. Lift some weights. Row. Utilize stairs. Change how or what you eat. Have breakfast for dinner. Drink a smoothie for lunch. Try fasting. Do something to change up your routine.
2) Intensify: Take your workout up a notch. Lift more. Run faster. Swim longer. Walk hills. Whatever it is you do, do it faster, further or harder. Challenge yourself, from the inside out.
3) Get creative: Make a new playlist. Create a vision board of how you want health to feel. Do a photography project — take a selfie every time you get out to run, or photograph the beautiful meal you’ve created. Journal. Take some time to connect with what health means to you, which is not only exercise or food related. Expand your vision of health.
4) Go to the dark side for a given amount of time: Sometimes when we get bored, we crave something “bad,” such as eating a tub of ice cream or lounging around and watching movies all day long. I’ll admit, I do it. Indulge a craving. If get up early to exercise, take one day and sleep in. If you eat healthy six days, take one day or one meal and eat ice cream or nothing but cheese. Give yourself some freedom, yet pay attention to how it feels. Indulge, but do it consciously.
5) Pattern check: Every three months, throw a pattern check into your regime. Analyze your habits. Do you typically exercise in the same way every week? Do you eat the same things? Identify those habits that are serving you, and you want to do more of, as well as those habits that are stale. Change some up. Run a new route. Use a new machine. Take class from a different teacher. Join a new group. Shake up at least one of your patterns, and breathe new energy into your health practice. This often spills over into other areas of your life. Pattern check.
The bottom line here is to do something different. Boredom is a signal. It doesn’t necessarily mean stop, but adjust. Make a change and infuse new life into what has become ho-hum.
What will you do?