Z. Johnson
I’m sure you’ve heard these phrases or repeated them to yourself: “I’ll start eating healthier next month, when I’m back from the trip”. “I’ll get back on track after the baby is born”, or “I’ll start exercising now that I changed jobs”… I could go on with more and more of these statements. The truth is, in a willing or subconscious way, we have adopted the mentality of “reset some time soon”. If you are looking to become successful in your health and fitness journey, maybe this approach is not what you thought would help you. Instead, it gives you the mindset of starting over each time something in your life happens.
Do you know why most times people fail at their health and fitness journeys? Because, often times, perfection is expected. The reality is that life doesn’t stop. Life isn’t perfect. We will always face situations that will get in our way and take us out of our comfort zone. Think of when you’ve had to change jobs, or maybe become a parent. Even something as moving from house or an illness in the family can change our circumstances. Therefore, it’s important to understand that being successful in our health and fitness journey involves far more than just a perfect schedule, meal plan, or even a workout session.
You’ve got to face the reality with changing situations
Let’s get real here. You realized that you need to do some serious changes to your eating regimen, especially when it comes to organizing your meals. This is because your crazy schedule just won’t give you enough time to cook at home. You even rush through your meals and barely stop to eat, since you have a gazillion things to do. Then, your typical days look like grabbing quick meals at a drive-thru or getting whatever snacks there are at the office’s vending machine. Due to all this mess, frustration builds up and you feel defeated at not being able to lose weight effectively.
You are not the only on in this situation. Many people still struggle with the fast paced moving environment and schedules. But do you know what works? Making adjustments. And that’s how we will be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle in the long run. There are no perfect made meal plans that will fit into your schedule. As a matter of fact, it works the other way around. You will have to work your way into making small progressive adjustments in your habits in order to create a good eating regimen that works for you.
Things happen in our health and fitness journey…
Let’s say you had to change location due to your job or you get pregnant. These are life scenarios that happen normally. Situations like these will require us doing some changes. I often hear people saying “If I miss some workouts or have a treat during the weekend, then I will fail in my journey”. Let’s take the job relocation example. People will often say things like “I will need to get back on track once the work project is over” or “I’ll be away from the gym, so it will be difficult for me to workout during this time”. I totally get that changes are not easy and they will sometimes scare us.
But, you don’t need to go into “pause and reset mode” once a life changing situations comes your way. You can work around it. If there is no gym available, how about planning some at home 20-30 min workout sessions? It would be more effective than just stopping altogether to resume later. Or, let’s think about parking your car at a more distant spot so you’ll have to walk. Also, hitting up the stairs instead of using the elevator gets you more active. You see? It’s all about making adjustments for the time being until you can find yourself around more comfortable.
It’s a matter of dealing with the circumstances in a healthy way!
The thing is that situations will happen and are sometimes unexpected. How we deal with those circumstances and getting the right mindset will help us move forward. In other words, you have to think about impromptu conditions. Another life event is when we take vacation. Why should we even stress about it? We shouldn’t really worry about going on vacation and our health and fitness journey, since that’s just part of life. If you are on a weight loss journey, then simply enjoy being on trips. Even then, you can still make smart choices when dining out or making alternatives to workout when you are back. The thing is not to feel stressed about it. Once you have the healthy habits set in, you’ll be good to go.
Health and fitness journey is not about willpower, it’s about skills
Developing healthy skills will make us move a far way in our health and fitness journey. It’s not about willpower. This is beyond having the “good will”. Because we are humans, and conditions change constantly, we just have to adapt to what there is and make the best that we can.
I remember one day talking with a client, she mentioned that she was so frustrated trying to follow “diets” while working at the airport. She mentioned how challenging was to keep up with a night shift working schedule, while caring for her young baby and then trying to lose weight. I was like, well, “how do you work around the foods you have available at the airport?” Well, of course, you could guess, she told me how there weren’t many healthy options at hand, and that she would have to find the way to resume eating healthier later.
So what will change in these types of cases? Probably nothing. This type of approach is what makes us go around in circles. To avoid yo-yo dieting, we must get rid of this mindset. Let’s focus on how we can gradually develop healthy skills that we can keep in the long term.
Developing long term habits goes a long way
Healthy habits develop gradually. Especially when we are seeking effective weight loss or fitness results. Good things take time. There are no quick fixes. As I’ve mentioned other times, quick fixes are the road to easy backfire. I would recommend making a list of things that you can easily do in the meantime to adjust in your lifestyle.
If you don’t have much time to workout at the gym, maybe you can do a quick 15 minute workout next to the bed in the morning. How about walking out the dog? Or maybe, start by adding a side salad to your lunch. If you are always in a rush to eat, a good change would be to sit around the table or your desk. Then, after you’ve mastered these habits, you can gradually move your way up with other techniques like going for a longer workout routine or meal prepping for a whole week.
Working with what we have available is key
Health and fitness journey: Making adjustments
Going back to the above mentioned example about the crazy busy working schedule. Let’s put some examples of things you can do to make your life easier when you have a busy 10-12 hour schedule. There’s no time to cook, in the weeks, therefore, meal prepping will do wonders for you. Let’s say you take Saturday mornings for grocery shopping and you spend half Sunday doing meal prep for the week. Sounds like a deal right? Also, let’s think about healthy snacking. As simple as it sounds, it is a key to stay in shape also. Include your snacks in your meal prep or go for options. Instead of shopping at the vending machine, browse around for healthier options in the menu. Maybe you can pick up a sandwich instead of a hamburger. Or even grab a fruit yogurt or healthy chips instead of donuts. You can find healthier alternatives.
Let’s say you want to get rid of coffee addiction. Why not try decaffeinated coffee, or green tea? Matcha is a great alternative to get you that energy and help with your weight loss goals. The same thing goes with sugar. One easy way to get rid of sugar cravings is just eating less sugar. Gradually cutting down on the amount of packs of sugar added to your beverages has a tremendous impact on your health and fitness journey. And just like these examples, there are many things that you can do to help with your health goals. This is especially true when you have a busy schedule. So, no matter how terrible is your work day schedule, you can always make small changes.
Life goes on, there are no pauses or resets
We just have to accept the fact that life is full of uncertainties and imperfections. Things change constantly, and so, we should work on simple hacks to adjust on our healthy lifestyle. In other words, we should not let a circumstance get in the way of our health journey or make us feel defeated. Relax, just take things slow and move with what goes on. I like to focus on this approach when helping people. There is nothing perfect and there are real life situations.
Z. Johnson
It’s always better to achieve something than nothing at all.
Let’s not pretend that you will have a perfect eating regimen or schedule when you go on vacation, or during holidays or even during certain social celebrations. The most important part is that we set realistic expectations, and we work towards getting in shape with good lasting habits. That’s why I coach people with real life expectations and we work with what there is available.
Bottom line…
What to do next? In order to be successful, let’s focus on working with the reality and how we can move forward in a healthy way. We are all in this journey of improving our wellness and getting better. All of this, with imperfections, circumstances and challenging surroundings. Therefore, let’s take baby steps at a time and make necessary progress. Also, plan accordingly and get those healthy habits going while slowly getting back on track! It is possible! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Share this with your friends!
