Happy Monday, Noosers! We are marching into a new month (get it?!), and with daylight saving and the promise of spring weather looking quite literally like the light at the end of the tunnel, we thought it might be a good time for a reframe, a new way to think about what we are thinking about. Today’s Noosletter will give some practical and motivational tips to reframe your thoughts. We’re coming with a spring reframe from two angles, because we’ve found it really does take both. Anne is in your corner on the food side: the small, quiet, upstream decisions that make the hard moments easier before they arrive. Avery is tackling the mindset piece, because your environment can only take you so far. What happens between your ears matters just as much. One of our favorite quotes (that really kicked this whole Noos thing off a couple years ago) is Napoleon Hill’s: “Every person is who they are because of the dominating thoughts which they allow to occupy their mind.” While our environment makes a huge impact on our decisions, we need to give credit to the power of our thoughts. Read along for some tips to help you navigate the daily struggles our environment presents — you know, when the pantry beckons you at 9pm and the bed feels way too cozy to work out when that early alarm goes off! NooS Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. If you like what you read, click the ❤️ at the top or bottom of this post, or leave us a comment. We love hearing from you! March! Coming home from one of my morning runs last week, I heard it, quiet chirping, a single bird, the kind of sound you forget exists after a long winter. And tomorrow night we have the full Worm Moon, March’s full moon named for the earthworms that begin surfacing as the frozen ground starts to thaw, a sure sign the earth is waking back up. The dawn is approaching earlier, morning light creeping in a little more each day. And then of course, daylight saving comes along next week to snatch it right back. Oh well. More light on the back end, I’ll take it! There’s something about a new month, a new season, even a Monday that carries a little momentum with it. A breath of fresh air. A sense of possibility. (Read more about fresh starts here!) Avery and I want to piggyback on that feeling this March and offer something we’ve been calling a spring reframe. One of the biggest barriers I hear from patients is: “I start the day with the best intentions and somewhere between lunch and dinner it all falls apart.” Decision fatigue. It’s not just a daily thing. Zoom out and the same pattern shows up on a bigger scale: I started the week great, then the weekend hit. I was doing so well, then vacation, then stress, then sickness. You insert whatever life throws at you. The hardest part for most people starts around 4pm and doesn’t let up until 9. You get home from work and your brain is done making good decisions, it wants a reward. You’re unpacking the kids’ lunches, so hungry you’ve inhaled the leftovers before you even realized it. And then later, instead of midnight striking and the fear of turning into a pumpkin, it’s 8pm, a quiet house, and a raccoon-like figure takes hold, not ravaging the trash can, but absolutely ravaging the pantry! We tend to blame the real world for all of it. And it does feel like the problem. But the real world has always been there. It was there last spring. It was there three years ago. It will be there next fall. The chip aisle isn’t going anywhere. The work stress isn’t either. Neither are the exhausted weeknights spent schlepping your children to their sports and activities. So if the real world is a constant, and it is, it can’t actually be the variable that’s shaping your relationship with food. Something else is. Drum roll please…. Your decisions. The small, quiet, invisible ones you made before the moment arrived. Whatever's tempting is on the counter because that's just where it lands when you unpack groceries. The eggs weren’t hard boiled Sunday because it didn’t feel urgent. You put off planning out the week’s meals because Netflix was calling… None of those felt like choices. But they were. And made over and over, quietly, they built the food environment you’re now standing in at 8pm when the raccoon takes over. Here’s what I’ve learned from sitting across from patients—most of them don’t need more information. They need fewer decisions in the hard moments. And the only way to have fewer decisions at 8pm is to make better ones at 10am on a Sunday when you’re not depleted, not starving, not stressed. Most of my patients don’t walk in the door because they woke up one day feeling inspired to eat more vegetables. They come in after a scary lab result or because their jeans stopped fitting. Hey, whatever gets you to the moment of “I want something to change” is valid. The question is just what you do next. You don’t need a new plan. You just need one thing. One small intentional decision today that makes tomorrow easier (or maybe choosing to work with us!). Hard boil the eggs on Sunday, it takes 12 minutes, or buy them already made! Have something waiting for yourself when you walk in the door at 4pm instead of your children’s stale, soggy goldfish. Close the pantry before the raccoon takes over. Pick one thing today that sets tomorrow-you up for a better day. The worm doesn't wait for perfect conditions. It just surfaces. Anne’s right. It’s so easy to give in to challenges that real world “adulting” present on a daily basis. We are all one long day at work or one bad night’s sleep away from saying “Jesus take the wheel, I can’t possibly workout today.” We have all been there: making deals with ourselves that we will workout tomorrow, or start monday, or find a new program that will finally be the right one, then kick the can down the road a bit longer. Exercising on a regular basis can be a struggle — whether it’s where you live, access to gym equipment, or managing the daily list of responsibilities between family and work. On top of that, the workout itself can be a STRUGGLE. But what if we changed our mindset around exercise? What if we embraced the struggle instead of resisting it? If you think we are springing out of bed, foaming at the mouth for a killer workout, you are mistaken. I engage in the daily ritual of “hmm-ing and ha-ing” when that alarm goes off. But most days, I’m open to the idea of starting the day with a little struggle, a little…. resistance (see what I did there, ahem, resistance training). Because once I have one struggle under my belt, the others don’t usually feel so bad. There’s a quiet whisper, knowingness, from somewhere deep within: I’ve been here before and I can do it again, that nudges me out from under the covers. And then as I'm brushing my teeth and still thinking about hopping back in bed, the whisper returns: I'm gonna do this because I know I'll feel at least 1% better after. That’s usually enough to get me through the first mile or rep. When the environment is my comfy bed, especially after a less than perfect night’s sleep, my thoughts are what get me moving. And in case you thought we were done with the Olympics, it ain’t over yet. The clip of Alysa Liu on 60 minutes, saying she “loves the struggle, actually” with a big grin, really stuck. She goes on to say, that the struggle makes her feel alive. Her words made me think of exercise, that it is a struggle, but it always makes me feel alive. It’s the kind that gives, rather than takes. That kind of struggle builds strength. When the workout feels clunky, the weights feel heavy, the miles feel slow or literally all uphill, rather than feel defeated, remind yourself that you love this kind of struggle — even if you don’t always believe it in the moment. You love the struggle, not just because it makes you physically stronger, but because it builds the mental toughness that stretches well beyond the workout itself. The strength that will find you when your baby wakes up for the 50th time from teething, your dishwasher breaks, or your flight gets delayed. Every workout you push through is digging the well you'll draw from when the real world gets hard. You’ve done it before and you’ll do it again, whether or not you’re excited about it in the moment, because you love this kind of struggle and you know what’s on the other side. So when the dreaded early alarm goes off or the weather looks too shi*tty for a walk? Remind yourself that you love a struggle. Maybe even say it with a grin like Alysa Liu (or fake one, because sometimes you do have to fake it til you make it). And know that the more you embrace the struggle, the more you might just love it. Perhaps not the middle of it, but the end, and the accomplishment you feel from overcoming whatever tried to convince you that the workout was not worth doing in the first place. With more wins under your belt, the more wisdom you gain, and that whisper might just get a little louder. I’ve been here before and I can do it again — and I’m gonna feel better after it. So next time you’re negotiating with yourself to get started or keep going, let Alysa Liu inspire you. Love the struggle, it will make you feel alive. Until next time.. NooS Substack is a reader-supported publication. 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