Pace Yourself with New Year’s Health Goals, Burnout Stories & Healthy Meal Planning

Ahhh, the wisdom of age and perspective. Let me go way back for a bit to about age 25 to show you what an UNHEALTHY relationship with diet & exercise looks like. A little warning on reigning it in a tiny bit if you are the type that likes to go full-on, gung-ho into your New Year’s health resolutions.

At 25, I was working hard and playing hard. Bright new young engineer at Dow Corning, had just purchased my first home as a single woman . Not single in the sense that I think I was dating the engineer in the cubicle next to me, which all of my friends and coworkers warned me not to! They warned that it could get messy… and it did . Especially when he was dating the chick in the parts department at the same time.

(Don’t worry, she and I found out he gave us both earrings for Christmas and we met for a drink to talk about what a fool he was, how awesome we were, and we both ditched him for someone who would treat us better.)

On the diet & exercise front, I was always on some new diet, especially to kick off a new year. I was hardcore into my step aerobics era and had a whole setup in the basement of my new house. TV with built-in VCR and a stack of VHS workout videos from The FIRM. Very 90s on my technology and workout front.

I would buy the whole system with their step benches, weighted bar, angled step, whatever I need for this whole workout regime. I knew all of the instructors names, was on the forums with other FIRM fans, even considered road tripping to South Carolina to workout in person with these instructors. I always thought I could somehow diet enough and work out hard enough to look exactly like these fitness instructors.

Except a few bad habits tripped me up… A big one being partying like a rock star on the weekends and sometimes during the week if an opportunity arose. One particular night, I am pretty sure I closed out the Boulevard Lounge with my rowdy high school and/or Dow Corning friends. Translation drinking my bodyweight in Labatt Blue Light and getting home at about 2am.

That didn’t deter me, I had a New Year diet & workout goal to lose weight and look like a FIRM instructor! I was working in the manufacturing plant and had to be in early in those days, so I was up and working out on my step bench at about 6am. Nothing like 4 hours of sleep and Labatt fumes coming out of my pores as I worked out.

This time, I knew I had pushed my limits. I finished the workout, drank a lot of water to try to speed up my poor body’s detox, marched upstairs and went straight into my bathroom to puke I did NOT feel well. I was also restricting food all of the time (yet somehow never had any restrictions on alcohol ) and obviously I was restricting sleep that night as well.

That combo was too much. I knew I had to get more sleep, some food, and let my poor body recover. I called in sick to work. I was sick, but I’m pretty sure my boss knew on a Friday morning that it was ‘brown bottle flu’. Luckily he had been a young, hard partying engineer himself before the wife and kids came along, so he let it slide.

I share this little story with y’all as a reminder to be kind to your body and not push it beyond its limits. PROGRESS NOT PERFECTION. An interesting statistic:

People are most likely to give up on their New Year’s resolutions on the second Friday in January, which is known as “Quitter’s Day”. According to studies, 80% to 88% of people fail to keep their resolutions within the first two weeks.

I don’t want this to be you. Let’s dive into some Mindset & Health tips this week to help you take things slow & steady, eat and exercise intuitively, and be part of the 20% who stick with their resolutions and achieve their goals.

This Week’s Shot of MINDSET

Pacing yourself, avoiding BURNOUT, listening to your body and making slow & steady progress. These are all things I want to encourage with your mindset and your actions as you work toward goals in any area of your life.

Had I known at 25 what I know now at 52, I would have been a lot healthier & happier and not burned the candle at both ends for so long in my life .

To avoid burnout, you can try some of these strategies:

Practice self-care: Make time for activities you enjoy, like exercise, meditation, or spending time with loved ones. You can also try journaling or enjoying nature.
Prioritize sleep and nutrition: Getting enough sleep and eating a healthy diet can help reduce stress.
Reprioritize your work: Make a list of your work demands, prioritize them, and estimate how many hours each task takes. Try to limit your working hours to 40 or fewer per week.
Build a support system: Connect with loved ones through phone calls, walks, shared meals, and weekend adventures. You can also meet with mentors to discuss setbacks and time management strategies.
Take breaks: Schedule daily “timeouts” for activities you enjoy, like yoga or a hobby. You can also try breathing exercises to calm down when you start to feel overwhelmed.
Practice positive self-talk: Repeat positive affirmations to reduce stress and boost confidence levels.
Laugh: Research has shown that laughing and smiling can instantly reduce stress and improve your mood.

More tips on work & career burnout will be coming in future newsletters. I was the Queen of that dynamic and hope my cautionary tales can help others. Mindset & Health are key to turning that freighter around. Being a Michigan girl, I LOVE watching Great Lakes freighters! It takes a lot of time and patience to move one in a new direction.

This Week’s Shot of HEALTH

If healthier eating is part of your plan in 2025, I am including a link to the Meal Planning Made EASY Guide I prepared which includes all sorts of recipes, meal plans, resources, and tips & tricks to have healthy meals and snacks available.

And the last shot of health advice for this week… PACE YOURSELF and BE GOOD TO YOURSELF. In the immortal words of one of my beloved 80s megabands Journey (we lived next door to the keyboard player Jonathan Cain’s mother-in-law in Memphis, more stories on that in future newsletters ):

Be good to yourself when
(Nobody else will) Nobody else will
(Wo-oh, be good to yourself)

Finally, if you think you could use a little help pacing yourself and sticking with your 2025 goals, I am offering 25% OFF on all of my PSYCH-K® Mindset Transformation packages and 12 Week Health Transformation programs to help you achieve whatever dreams you have for 2025. Discount Code 2025TRANSFORMATION will automatically be applied at checkout during the whole month of January.

If you are interested in using the power of the mind to uplevel your life, I share mindset expertise every week, along with fun & insightful stories from my own life path from 80s hair band superfan to chemical engineer to health & mindset coach (what a journey!).

You will also see plenty of health promoting tips and recipes because I am blown away by the power of intermittent fasting + a healthy diet to prevent & reverse just about any health concern Mindset plays a big part in health and healing too, the power of the Mind Body connection is pretty mind blowing.