“it’s a forever kind of thing”
In this week’s podcast episode we interview our friend Mary Ricciardi. She is a lifestyle expert, board certified holistic, health coach, certified gut health specialist, certified nutrition specialist, and certified mindset coach. She is also the founder of Warriors Strong and Wellness and creator of Warrior Strong Lifestyle 365. Mary talks to us about how to ditch the diet culture and diet mindset and explore how you can engage in healthy habits that are maintainable and sustainable or as Mary recommends, starting a “forever lifestyle”.
Mary has developed a web course, Warrior Strong Lifestyle 365 and shares her four tips for getting out of diet culture and changing your lifestyle with her 4 D’s:
DECIDING
Decide to make up your mind. Maybe you feel really sluggish or just do not feel yourself. Maybe you’re getting sick too often and so you have decided “I’m ready”. We have decided to change. Deciding is about making a personal promise to engage in change. You are making a commitment to yourself.
Next, explore the following questions:
- What are you deciding to do?
- Who do you need to become?
- Who do you want to become?
- What am I willing to do?
- What am I willing to do?
It’s important to really be honest with yourself on this. It doesn’t mean that you have to give up all your favorite snacks. It just might mean that you’re going to add in some more healthier options, start adding in some more movement and some more water. Being honest with yourself helps you to create this decision that you’re making for you.
DEDICATE
The dedicate phase is about learning how to dedicate time to yourself. Who has time to go on Facebook for an hour or Instagram or whatever you listen or watch? We all have time. We just don’t devote time. We don’t dedicate time to things that matter to ourselves. We freely give time to our children, our family, our co-workers, etc. So why wouldn’t we do that for ourselves? So that’s what we want to do in this phase; we want to start dedicating our time to our own health and healing.
DEVELOP
The develop phase is about evaluating your progress and starting to really hone in on what it is that’s creating a healthy person. Where am I going? How am I doing? Am I drinking enough water a day? Am I sleeping enough? It’s simple. Am I nourishing my body with foods that give me life? Are the food choices that I’m making fueling me for my day? This phase is about troubleshooting what is working and what is not. You can make changes here because we are not doing this for a short time. We are creating a lifestyle. You might not be seeing physical changes yet, but it doesn’t matter because you have committed to a healthy forever lifestyle. It’s not about a quick fix. You are ensuring that your lifestyle can coexist in regular society.
That’s the different mentality, right? We’re doing it because this is what we do. It has nothing to do with losing weight. It has nothing to do with trying to be this person or that person or that size. It has to do with changing our perspective and how we feel and that we’re more healthier completely.
DELIVERY
Peace is our goal and it’s a forever kind of thing. This isn’t something that we do occasionally, but something we do. We want to change our mindset and thinking pattern to be a little bit more loving in nature. You begin to feel better because you’ve let it go. You’ve let go of all the expectations. You’ve let go of all the diets that you have tried. In the past, you may have tried to eat this way and that way. We are not meant to live that way. We’re meant to have peace within our soul and to be consistent. Don’t stop.
There’s going to be times and seasons in your life where it’s going to be different. There might be something that happens where somebody in your family gets ill and you don’t have time to work out every day. That’s going to happen sometimes. Or maybe you had a new baby. You need to give yourself grace in that season and do what you can with what you got.
Mary is generously giving our listeners a discount on her Warriorstrong Lifestyle 365 course. Normally this video course is $97, but for our listeners, we get a discount for it to be $29 99 and you can find this on Mary’s website at www.warriorstrongwellness.com.
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