How To Get Back On Track
Once you start on the journey of weight loss or fitness, you will encounter a lot of distractions that may or may not rail you into your old habits. It’s completely human to have phases where we go back to the way we were by eating unhealthy meals more often than not, or skipping the gym to watch just a little more TV. Don’t beat yourself up for it, but you have to bring yourself back to reality and regain focus on your life. Unless you want to go back to eating unhealthy for the rest of your life, then start reorganizing your thoughts and goals.
Why Do We Fall Off?
There are a lot of reasons why we might fall off the fitness journey. None of the reasons are better than the other, and there is a solution to go past every reason and go back on the fitness path. So, why do we fall off? Well, most of the times it’s because we put so much pressure on ourselves while on the fitness journey that our mind just can’t take it anymore and wants to “relax.” You see, when we stay five months straight preparing our meals, going to bed early, not talking to as many friends, being sore from working out hard, and not going out, our mind and body experience pressure and sometimes even stress. We are so focused on being focused that we forget to have a little fun. We want to surpass our fitness goals and want to become a success story, but we forget that we are humans. We forget that we need breaks every now and then.
Everything About Life Is Balance.
We need to understand that and implement it in our fitness journey. Just like we don’t train legs every day at the gym to create balance between the muscles, our mind needs balance between fitness and fun. You can work out six times a week if you want, but the seventh time you need to do something for yourself; eat a cheat meal, go out with friends, catch up on a movie, stay up late the night before, or simply forget about anything fitness related for one day. This doesn’t mean that you’ll become a bad fitness model or inspiration, it’ll simply show that you are human.
Another reason we might be falling off the train is simply laziness. We might have eaten an extra cupcake at a birthday and saw no change on the scale, so we just keep on eating them just because. One extra cupcake once a month is not a bad thing. One extra cupcake every week/day is. Once you shrug off eating cupcakes (used as a metaphor for unhealthy foods), your mind has given up. Without your mind motivating and pushing you to action, you are stuck. You become lazy, you start watching more TV, you stop going to the gym as often, your life goals are not as motivating anymore, and slowing you hate the idea of going to the gym or eating healthy.
Laziness Will Kill Dreams Without You Even Caring.
That is why you need to take care of your body and keep your mind focused and stimulate. A few bad days are OK, but a few weeks and months are not. Remember that it takes your body 21 days to create a new habit, therefore if you eat healthy for 21 consecutive days, you will have a new habit of eating healthy. The same thing occurs the other way around though; if you eat unhealthy and slack off on your gym time for 21 consecutive days, you will fall back and create a new unhealthy habit. It might even take some time before you actually realize that you’re falling back. Or you already realized it, but you’re just too lazy to care. This can even happen when you have a lot of stress in another area of your life, so you just become lazy in your fitness one. When the moment comes that you realize what your new unhealthy is, it’s very important to not panic. Keep in mind that you are practising a healthy lifestyle. A lifestyle by definition is a life commitment.
Setbacks Are Going To Happen In A Lifestyle Change.
You need to embrace the setbacks but most importantly learn from them. Now, when I say to embrace setbacks, I don’t mean to just let it be and not do anything about it, no. What I mean by embracing them is to understand that they happen and not feel guilty about it. I’ve personally known a woman who lost 121 pounds in two years while still having lots of setbacks. She embraced her setbacks, learned from them, and then reorganized her goals to get back on track. I remember her telling me about how she ate pizza everyday for a week. The crazy about it? She was smiling. When I asked her about her smile, she simply told me that she found a new flaw in her system and can now fix it for next time! Now, that’s the mindset to have.
When you fall back, reorganizing your life or thoughts can help in bringing you back into the lifestyle. Organization calendars or motivation boards can put your mind back into focus and help you visualize what you want on a daily basis.
Keep Your Mind Sharp.
Keep it sharp at all times in order to keep your mind stimulated. When you feel yourself falling back, rewrite your goals, go on fitness blogs, or reimplement a new fitness schedule. Make your fitness journey look important and fascinating again. Make it fun, happy, and something you look forward to, and remember… it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Start recreating your old habit now!
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