Have the Winter Blues hit you and you’re finding it hard to stay motivated and continue with the July 28 Day Challenge as you first planned?
You can’t get out from under the doona in the morning to do your exercise? It’s raining again and you just want to lie on the couch? All you feel like eating is chocolate and other unhealthy comfort foods? You feel tired and sluggish?

Here are our top tips to beat those Winter Blues and get back into your best Challenge game:

Avoid Making Excuses

There will always be an excuse or a reason why you can’t stick to your healthy eating and exercise plans. Whether it’s because the weather is awful and you can’t go for your run or the kids have come down with a cold and you’ve been up all night looking after them. Even when the sun is out you can probably think up an excuse to delay your progress.
Try and avoid allowing these excuses and negative chatter into your head. Whenever an excuse or negative thought pops into your mind fight it with a more positive solution e.g:

• “It’s raining, cold and I don’t want to get out of bed”. Swap with “I’ll allow myself an extra 15 minutes lie in during these cold days and do some indoor exercise after breakfast”.
• “My exercise plans are always put off due to the wet weather”. Swap with “I might try some different exercises that I can do indoors in short bursts”.
• “All I want to do is lie on the couch with a block of chocolate”. Swap with “I’d like to try some of the healthy sweet snack recipes from the Challenge recipe hub to satisfy my winter sweet tooth”.

Take Things Slowly If Needed

Don’t be hard on yourself and ensure your expectations about what you can achieve are realistic.
During Winter everyone can sometimes feel like just rugging up, staying indoors and lazing about. If you feel like this, it’s ok and perfectly normal. Don’t make yourself feel guilty for wanting to take things slowly.
Have small, achievable goals for each day that you know you can do such as “I will exercise for 15 minutes today” or “I will prepare a healthy meal today in a larger batch so I have leftovers to enjoy on another day”.
Once you start regularly achieving your small goals, you’ll get the momentum needed to get through those days when the Winter Blues hit extra hard.

Change Your Routine

Sometimes by changing around the way you do things can give you an extra boost of energy to get over your lack of motivation.
Try going for a long walk on a Monday morning before you get stuck into your daily responsibilities. Make some healthy “weekend” type meals like healthy pizza, burgers or pasta earlier in the week. Get the kids or your partner involved with preparing some delicious, healthy desserts with you to enjoy after dinner.
Just rearranging your weekly schedule where possible, moving exercise times, changing the days you do the groceries, trying out a new type of exercise class or meeting up with friends for a cup of tea when you wouldn’t normally, will all help you to get out of a case of Winter Blues and low motivation.

Remember It’s Normal

We can all lose motivation or feel a bit down, especially when the weather is miserable. Remembering that you’re not the only one feeling this way and asking for support or an extra kick in the right direction will get you out of the doldrums pretty quickly.
Doing what’s right for you and taking each day one at a time will have you feeling ready to jump out from under that doona in no time.