Life Didn't Get in the Way: It's Always There
May not be fun to acknowledge, but it's the inevitable truth.
The most common thing for me to experience with clients, particularly while dealing with nutrition, is that I'll hear something like, "I was really good for the past two weeks, then life happened."
The kids went haywire and I didn't get any sleep, so I ate ALL the carbs the next day.
My boss was up my butt and this deadline was closing in, so I forgot to drink any water or eat throughout the evening.
We were all out with friends at dinner that ran super late, so I missed my morning meditation.
My wife and I had a fight this morning, so instead of my workout after work, I went out with the guys and had a beer and wings.
I'm a trainer that promotes realistic balance. I believe that with slip-ups, you make it 10x worse for yourself the more you beat yourself up about it.
But it is a careful balance between over-shaming yourself and then making excuses to let yourself off the hook. We have to anticipate curveballs and things not going perfectly to schedule-- we cannot solely blame happenings and external circumstances for our lack of taking action.
Don't mind my broccoli tree.
Life didn't get in the way. It's always there.
There will always be curveballs and hiccups we didn't anticipate. So, really, it doesn't matter what happened to interrupt your well-intentioned plan of getting a workout in or healthy eating. What does matter, is how we proceed from there.
1. No shame train.
It's just going to make things worse for yourself and this merciless self-deprecation helps no one, least of all you.
2. Acceptance.
Stop fighting the circumstances and crying over spilled milk. It happened, done, you can't do anything about it. Bemoaning and lingering on the fact changes nothing.
3. Figure out how you will move forward.
Sh*t happened, so now what? You reroute. Plan your next workout and adjust it to include some stuff you missed. Make your next meal a more nourishing one to help your body even out. Set an appointment in your calendar so you don't put aside that workout and keep missing it.
4. Plan ahead for next time.
Has this "hiccup" turned into persistent hiccups?
Aka, do you notice that the same incident keeps cropping up and throwing you off? Then, obviously, this original plan isn't working. Figure out a new one- and perhaps, it's not as idealistic as the original. Maybe you only can realistically plan a 30-minute workout instead of an hour. But those consistent 30-minutes will get you much further ahead than planning for your hourly workouts that you always miss.
