[00:00] I don't know about you, but I personally have time and time again said that I would start a new workout routine and stick to it, be consistent with it, and see the change eventually, but time and time again, I have fallen off of that workout routine, got bored with it, lost motivation, had no
[00:15] interest in it whatsoever, and felt bad about it. That cycle continues. Over and over again, it keeps happening. Personally in the past, I have said multiple times to friends, this is the day that I start working out every day for the rest of my life, and it's going to be crazy, and every
[00:31] time I do that, I fall off of it, and it sucks. It's the worst feeling, and it makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. Why can I not stick to this routine? So what I want to talk to you today about is how I have been able to have a consistent workout routine for the last year or so,
[00:47] and what I have done to make that a possibility. Let's go! Yeah! Now I try to give as much free information as possible, but can I fit everything into a YouTube video? No,
[01:03] not necessarily. So this is actually a preview to what I'm going to go and talk about in a workshop on March 15th. If you're not able to attend live, a recording will be available so you can watch afterwards, but it's going to be an hour and a half workshop to implement everything you learn
[01:19] in this video and more. So if you are like me and want to really invest in ensuring that these tools and things happen, join me in the workshop either live or afterwards so that you can get all of the info,
[01:32] all of this stuff beyond what I just put in this video. We'd love to see you there. I don't know about you, but I follow a lot of fitness influencers, and they tend to be people that go to the gym, and they show the different exercises they do, and they've been doing this for years.
[01:47] They are the experts at it. They look incredible. They look amazing, and I fall into these like hyper-fixations of being like, I'm going to be a gym girl! That's the creatine speaking! But realistically,
[01:59] what ends up happening is that either I never start because I'm so intimidated by the gym, or I do start do it for a couple days, or maybe at my best do it for a couple weeks, and then I fall off of it.
[02:11] So I think what we end up doing is comparing ourselves online to these girls who have this incredible ability to work out and they love the gym, and they do that. I'm not that person. I'm not that person.
[02:23] I am not the person that is going to be at the gym every single day. Why? I find it boring. I'm not interested in it. There's no novelty to it, and so I lose interest in any hyper-fixation that I had started when looking at it. And the truth is, if you're ADHD like I am, discomfort is something we
[02:39] avoid at all costs. We want to do things that feel good, and the truth is that a lot of the time activity and workout don't necessarily feel good, and so that barrier of, oh my God, I need to go to the gym
[02:51] right now and workout and sweat and do something hard, is a big enough barrier because of the discomfort that we'll never do it. So how do we avoid that, or how do we work past it? Let's take ourselves out of this idealistic world where we're like, I am the workout goddess, and I'm
[03:08] going to do it every day. So let's be realistic. Down to earth. The truth is, when it comes to ADHD, our interests sway. This is why you have tried to do different hobbies and lost them after two weeks,
[03:24] and then tried a new hobby and thought this is my lifelong hobby, and then lost it after two weeks. We are interest motivated. And so when we lose interest in something, we stop wanting to do it. Novelty is something that's really important for ADHDers, and so if you're doing it consistently
[03:39] at a certain point, it might feel boring, and you're not wanting to do it anymore. We are dopamine seeking people because we are in a dopamine deficit, which then means that we are looking for things to build our dopamine up. Working out in activity is a great way to do that, but if we're not interested
[03:55] in it, if it has no novelty to it, we're probably not going to do it. The most important thing I want you to take from this video is that if you have ADHD, you have been told there is one way to do workouts,
[04:08] which is go to the gym. Be consistent. Good. I want to suggest to you that maybe having changing interests is not a bad thing. You're allowed to be consistently inconsistent in terms of interest.
[04:24] Consistency in working out does not mean consistent activities. It just means consistent activity.
[04:36] So what our goal is as ADHDers is to have movement in our life. Consistent movement, not a consistent movement, as in only one type of movement. So one of the things that I adopted for myself when I was
[04:49] first starting to get into activity again was to build a movement menu. The idea of a movement menu is not only to give you a ton of different options for different types of movement on any given day,
[05:03] but what it also does is it considers your energy on that particular day. I don't know about you, but there are many times that I wake up in the morning and I go, you want me to drive to the gym? Not going to happen. And that all or nothing thinking makes it so that I do nothing. Whereas if I
[05:18] were looking at a movement menu with a ton of different activities, I might be able to say to myself, you know what, it's not realistic for me to get to the gym today, but it is realistic for me to go to for a walk. That is the beauty of a movement menu. It considers different types of energy.
[05:32] Here's how you build yours out. In the middle circle, you're going to write out any types of movement that feel unbelievably easy to do. The most realistic. Imagine the hardest day, the most tired day,
[05:46] what thing can exist in this circle? For me, some of those things could be stretching for 10 minutes, taking my dog for a walk around the block, playing with him in the backyard, doing some light yoga,
[05:58] things that feel incredibly realistic. In our second circle, we're going to add more things, imagining the average day. On an average day, what type of energy do you have to put into movement? Are you able to go for a light run? Are you able to do a 30-minute workout class virtually
[06:16] or maybe you're able to make it to the gym for a certain amount of time? What exists in number two? Finally, we're going to build out our last circle, which is maybe the least achievable one. The idea of, I have so much energy, I need to burn some of this off. I'm going to do that with movement.
[06:33] Maybe that's going to the gym for an hour. Maybe that's signing up for a full workout class. Whatever it is, that is, oh my god, I've got so much energy, I can do all of the things that exists in our furthest circle. Now, when you're looking to do movement, you can look at your circles and go,
[06:47] which circle do I land in today? The smallest circle, I'm going to pick something in there. So, you're being consistent with your movement, not necessarily the type of movement.
[06:59] Now, I know for myself one of the hardest things about having ADHD is building the consistency into my day when it comes to movement. One of the things I did last year was I am incredibly privileged enough
[07:11] to be able to hire a trainer and that trainer built in the consistency to my week. I was like, I'm going to see Mark on Wednesdays and Fridays and it would be perfect and that consistency was built out for me. Now that I don't have a trainer, who is building that consistency for me? When am I supposed
[07:28] to be working out? And so my suggestion for you is habit stacking in terms of when you're doing movement. This looks so odd. Who knows what's down here? Could be a man who knows it is. It's Leonardo DiCaprio.
[07:47] So my suggestion for you is that instead of waking up in the morning and going, when will I do a workout today? When will I do movement today? I'll do it when I feel like it. We'll just wait. It'll happen
[07:59] when it happens. It's build habit stacking into your routine. For myself, I am most likely to do movement first thing in the morning. And so I personally currently have the routine of getting up first
[08:12] thing, putting my clothes on to go for a run. And I go do a very short run. They're often like only like eight to ten minutes so short, but it's movement first thing in my day. So can you habit stack your movement with something you already do every day? But maybe it makes more sense that when you
[08:28] close your laptop, you're done work. You're immediately putting workout things on and going to do that movement. Or maybe it means that you're an evening workout person and before you make dinner, you go and do your workout. How can you habit stack your movement to create consistency? One of the
[08:44] most helpful things with my habit stacking has been ensuring that I take my workout clothes. I fold them and I put them in my bathroom for the morning. So when I get up and I'm tired and I make my way to the washroom and I do my little pee, it's little but furious. And then I see my clothes there,
[09:01] put it on and I'm going right away. I don't have to deal with the decisions around going running because I've made all those decisions for myself the day prior. So if you can, set yourself up for
[09:13] success by putting out clothes the night before so that you don't have to think about it the next day. Another important piece of working out and movement for 80 years in specific is building
[09:26] accountability. I cannot say this enough. Is it easier for you to work out if you were going to a workout class with a friend? Of course. Is it easier to get motivated to go do a hike if you're doing it with someone else? Of course. And so we want to build that out into our activities or movement
[09:43] or whatever it is we're doing. For example, I'm not a runner but I'm trying my best. And so some of the things I'm doing in terms of accountability is my friends know that I am working towards a specific goal. My goal is doing a five kilometer run in a couple of months. Am I nervous about it?
[10:01] Yes. But will I do it? I hope so. I also signed up for a race with my brother. Why are all my things so sassy around you right now with my brother? Can I run five kilometers
[10:16] right now? No. Would I like to be able to? Yes. And so having a very clear goal is super helpful because it's something for me to work towards and there's other people involved. He is depending on me.
[10:28] To run that five kilometer race, our lives depend on it. But because I've told my friends about it, because I have a race coming up, because my brother's going to be running it with me, I have all of these external things making me want to go do it. Now how do you do this with other activities?
[10:44] Let me tell you. There are a lot of different examples of this. For example, you can sign up for a pole dancing class and at the end of the year you have the option of potentially signing up for the show. Or maybe you set personal goals for yourself. Bye. Got a blast. So for example, if you're
[11:01] someone that is trying to get better at yoga, maybe you measure your flexibility on a certain day and you set a goal for where you would like to be. For example, I cannot touch my toes right now.
[11:15] Maybe I set the goal that I'm working towards being able to touch my toes. That gives me purpose and reason and accountability behind why I'm doing that movement. Some other ways that you can add accountability into your workouts is by competing with your friends using an apple watch if you happen
[11:32] to have one of those. Doing workouts with friends over Zoom, I actually did this with my friend a couple of weeks ago and it was great. It held us accountable to doing something active but we didn't actually have to leave our house which was way easier to do. The important thing to remember here
[11:49] is that your ADHD will at some point change focus. Frequently, abruptly, in a disappointing way, one day you're going to be doing the activity that you love. For me, it was rock climbing and one day
[12:02] you're going to go, I actually don't want to do this anymore. I know I invested money in this in time. I actually have no interest in doing this anymore. That is okay. So my suggestion for you is to follow
[12:14] the dopamine. When your brain is telling you I'm no longer interested in this activity, give it one or two more tries, see if it was just a bad day or not. And then try something new. See what it is that you are asking for. Your brain is like I need something new. A good example of this is that
[12:30] I was going to yoga classes extremely consistently last year and all of a sudden it wasn't working for me anymore. And I decided okay, we're done that for now. So what's instead? Then I started doing my training with my trainer. All of a sudden I decided this isn't for me anymore time to do something else
[12:46] and now I'm running and I'm loving it. I'm consistent in my movement but not in what movement I'm doing. And that has been the most supportive thing when it comes to being consistent in getting
[12:58] workouts in. The other thing is, if your brain is asking for movement in a specific moment, give it movement. Do it. Do the thing. This was a piece of advice that my friend Michaela gave me and it was
[13:11] so helpful because I told her one day, you know what, I have this random urge to go run. And she was like go like this second. Don't think about it. Go do it. And I was like okay, I'll go do it. And now I've been running almost every day since then. It really helped to push me to start. And so if you
[13:28] have had a moment randomly in your day going, I'd really like to do yoga. Go. 10 minutes. Go do it. Go try it. Give in to the urge to do it. It's better to do it imperfectly than it is to do it perfectly.
[13:41] So let me break it down in the clearest terms possible. Haley, how do I start? Let me tell you. First, create your movement menu based on different types of energy so that you can be consistent
[13:56] in doing movement, not necessarily the same movement. Two, set a habitual time to be doing your movement. Habit stack that time by making it consistent every single day. Add accountability into your life
[14:09] by telling your friends, telling your family, posting about it, make it something people know about. Create more accountability by setting goals or signing up for things so that you have something to be working towards. And when your interest inevitably fades, it'll happen. First, talk to people
[14:28] about it. Find out if you were just having an off day or if truly, completely, you are no longer interested in this activity. Two, investigate what is the shift happening within you.
[14:40] For me, when I was shifting away from yoga, it was because I wanted something more interesting, more bigger energy, like I wanted to be a fucking caveman and I wasn't getting that yoga.
[14:52] So doing intense training was exactly the shift I was looking for. And three, honor the change. Do it. Allow yourself to shift into this new energy, this new way of working out
[15:04] and see how that feels within your body and your brain. Baby. The final thing I want for you to consider is that this year, this is the year
[15:18] that we stop being afraid of being perceived trying. This was one of the biggest things that stopped me from trying different things because I thought, well, I'm a beginner if I try this new thing. Yeah. Everyone was at one point in their life. So go try it. Stop being afraid of being
[15:36] perceived trying. That is everything I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait to see what types of movement and activities you are going to do it. Just have a stroke. That is all for me today. I cannot wait to hear what types of movements you
[15:52] guys are going to try. So put them in the comment. DM me over on Instagram. I read that. I read all of it or send me pictures, send me videos. I would love to see what it is that you're working on or how you're working out. In case nobody has yet told you today, I am so proud of you for putting
[16:08] in the work to yourself because nobody else is going to do it. So it's pretty cool that you're doing it for yourself. As always, I love you and I will see you next time.