It happens to the best of us! You are trucking along with a fitness routine and a moderately healthy diet and something happens. You get sick, or work gets crazy busy, or you take a vacation or [enter excuse here]… Next thing you know you feel all out of whack. Maybe it’s been a couple of days, or perhaps a couple of weeks; you start to lose all the mojo you’ve built up and start falling back into old habits. NO! That’s not you! …at least it doesn’t have to be.
The first thing you need to do is stop the fatalistic view that it is all or nothing and that the path to optimal health is linear. While some people hop on a fitness journey, follow it to perfection and never deviate, those folks are the definite minority (I have never met one of those people in my life). The vast majority of the population has lots of starts and stops and ups and downs. So, the first thing to do is accept that you made some choices that you are not currently happy about. That is okay! Acknowledge those feelings and then leave them behind as those feelings are not serving you.
Maybe you’ve taken so much time off that workouts that were once easy are now hard, or your pantry has filled back up with junk food. Any version of these scenarios is solvable. The solution: do something, literally anything, to start steering you back in the direction you want to be headed. If you are contending with a lot of junk food, either get rid of it or host a small gathering and serve it up to your favorite people (also mixing in some healthier options). Afterward, restock with more nutritious choices. Workout too hard? Again, do something. Get your body moving and do not punish yourself by trying to keep up with the formerly easy, now hard, workout. Know that you will likely find yourself back on the path to fitness, but it doesn’t happen in a day. It is a series of small, intentional choices. And when you are facing decision fatigue, as so many of us are these days, do what you can to automate your choices, so they no longer feel like choices, but become just what you do.
Life is not linear. Do not beat yourself up for a deviation from the plan; acknowledge your feelings, leave them behind and get yourself back on track. A healthier life awaits.
