I'll get back to eating healthy and working out again after my holiday...I just don't have time right now for the gym or thinking about food...I messed up on my diet, so I am going to try to start over next week...
Have you ever thought these thoughts? It is an all too common thought process by EVERYONE. You are not alone in your thinking. Even I have thought these thoughts sometimes, and I am a weird fitness professional who is always thinking about exercise and nutrition.
The problem with this mentality today is that taking a "break" from your diet never allows you to actually make any progress. You may find success at first, but as soon as some life circumstance happens, you get off track and feel like you just need to start all over again. This is called yo-yo dieting and studies have shown that this actually causes just as great of stress on you as not taking care of your health and fitness at all. So, why does this happen? It happens because, for some reason, we get this idea in their minds that they have to do it all perfectly. We have to work out just right and they have to eat just right. If we mess up at all, then we feel consumed with guilt and feel like we failed to the point that we binge on the food we were trying to avoid and stop exercising. We decide to take a break until the timing in life is "just right", when we have the free time and the motivation to do it.
But when do that "right" time EVER happen? In real life, there are things that come up all the time. Maybe a family member needs your help or starts having health problems. Maybe you are going through a job or life transition. Maybe your schedule gets so packed that you are trying to fit all the pieces in. Fitness often gets pushed out. Your job and family are responsibilities that you have to give your time and focus to, but so is your health and fitness. You can just take time away from your spouse and kids to focus on your job for a while. Same goes for your fitness. So, what do you do with your job and family when things get tight? You keep going and you do the best you can. You keep trying and you keep trying to get better. Same goes for fitness! You don't have to be perfect and you shouldn't expect to. But what you can do is keep going. Keep doing the little things to make it work. Take baby steps towards health. Over time, you will find yourself making far more progress than trying to do the all or nothing yo-yo dieting you have tried in the past.
You are not alone in this. I even just recently went through this. As a fitness professional who travels back and forth overseas a lot to work in different countries, travel is a part of my job description. Just recently my wife and I had our first child. So, as my wife and I have been adjusting to being parents, we have been traveling all over the place and feeling like nomads, often with no gym to work out in. I knew that I wanted to still maintain my health and fitness, so I had to change some things to prioritize my fitness. For the first 3 months of my daughter's life I tried my best to get a 30 minute workout 3 times per week at whatever home I was staying in during my daughters nap time. I made it work and I tried to eat from home more often than going out to eat, which meant going to the grocery store occasionally to get food to prepare.
We all go through life circumstances that can keep us from being as perfect as we would like, but if we keep going and doing our best then we will find ourselves in the best shape of our lives.
If you want more help in making this happen, contact us at Velocity Fitness Consulting. Consider signing up for our online coaching where we personally guide you to continue doing your best to improve your health and fitness.
If you want a more in depth look at what I'm talking about. Check out this article:
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/pause-button-mentality
See you next time!
