You may have seen our Instagram post last week on how to beat the snooze button when it’s still dark outside. Truth is, it affects us all from time to time!!
We’re sure you’ve heard of people talk about ‘magic morning routines’ and think “I’ll just never be that motivated”. Chances are, everyone feels a little unmotivated from time to time.
We here at Retreat Yourself not only love a consistent set of morning rituals, we find them vital to actually function effectively on a day to day basis. Without them, its easy to feel a little out of control and out of touch with everything around us (or – let’s be honest – a lot).
Now, while we completely believe in the power of a really defined & consistent morning routine consisting of things like journaling, 30 minutes of deep meditation, yoga, getting up before the sunrise, etc etc – we know this is not realistic for many people. You’re busy, and you need a morning routine to be easily achievable to enable you to stick with it and therefore benefit from it.
So here’s our tips on 5 non-negotiable morning behaviours that we think are achievable by everyone, and are absolutely vital to set you up for the day.
1. Movement – just after waking
We’re not going to say you need 60 minutes of high intensity HIIT exercise here. But we will say some type of movement NEEDS to occur each morning.
Don’t make it difficult - an outdoor walk, dancing around the living room with your kids, a quick 20 minute at home workout on the bedroom carpet, or even a run around the block and 15 minutes of yoga or stretching in the backyard.
The result is your metabolism is kick started, your mind & body are woken up, happy chemicals are released from your brain, and so on. ALL vital ingredients for a balanced day.
2. DO NOT SNOOZE
Ironically, snoozing is the very thing we joked about on our Instagram page this week. Why? Because we all do it!! But being educated on why it is not good for you is the key to avoiding it for the majority of your mornings.
Without getting too technical, let’s just say your body has a set cycle it follows during the course of a sleep or a nap. Upon falling asleep, your body releases hormones that trigger deep sleep, and if woken up just after those hormones have been released, you’ll feel all foggy brain-ed and worse for wear, just like you’ve had a terrible night’s sleep.
So yes, that ‘innocent’ little snooze cycle on your iPhone is not innocent at all!
3. Jam-packing your breakfast with nutrition
Breakfast doesn’t have to be complicated, but focus on these two rules – don’t eat empty calories, and ensure you’re covering off the fibre/fat/protein trio. What do we mean by this? Jam on basic wholegrain bread or a fruit only smoothie isn’t giving you the balance and quantity of nutrients your body needs.
Pick something that has a high nutritional value, and make it easy. For example, we’ve included two great breakfast options in recent boxes and both just happen to be by the awesome team at Food For Health. We’ve partnered with Food For Health twice as their food is real, it’s not over-complicated, and it’s nutritious. And it’s gluten free, FODMAP friendly, super affordable and available in the health food aisles of Coles, Woolies and some independent stories, so it’s easy to get! You can check out their products on their website (www.foodforhealth.com.au) and you can also see a pic of their fruit free bars below (taken as part of our Autumn Shoot!).
4. Mindfulness made easy
Meditation or mindfulness is incredibly valuable in the morning, but if you find yourself not able to prioritise this, simply be mindful within whatever it is you are doing. Mindfulness is – at it’s simplest – taking notice of what is going on in & around you, and you can incorporate this into a lot of your daily activities.
Catching the train to work? Put down your phone, close your eyes for a couple of minutes, focus on taking a couple of deep breaths, and then look out the window while focusing on how it is you’re feeling today? Cooking breakfast or going for a walk? Same goes. Stop, be present, and simply focus your thoughts inwards for once.
5. Plan ahead – make use of your Sundays and weeknight evenings
Ok, so this isn’t exactly a morning behavior. But sticking to consistent behaviours and rituals in the mornings requires pre-planning. Why? Because you’re more likely to ditch those behaviours if they aren’t easy to do.
Make use of Sundays for tasks you can do weekly (head to the supermarket for a grocery shop, get a week’s worth of workout gear washed & ready), and your weeknights (get your workout gear out, prep your brekkie).
Make your mornings as hassle free as possible and you’ll find yourself achieving so much more.
These 5 things can be achieved by everyone, and anyone who finds themselves with more time in the mornings (lucky you!) can expand on these as well as adding some journaling or intention setting.
Ps. Speaking of Food For Health & grocery shopping, the team at FFH have a comp running for RY community members to win 6 months of muesli (talk about making your brekkies easy!!) – all you need to do is purchase a Food For Health product from Coles or Woolies, and post a pic on Instagram of you eating it. See our recent email for more details, or Food For Health’s Instagram page!