Episode 247: Never Fall Off the Wagon Again with Habit Flexibility
Last week was rough. My cycle came and with it a huge wave of absolute, pure and utter exhaustion. Like, kept-nodding-off-in-the-chair-while-I-was-getting-my-hair-done exhaustion.
In this situation, it was absolutely the right call for me to trade my gym session for a walk on the trail. I was still getting movement in, but movement that actually added to my energy instead of depleting it further.
Don’t get me wrong, skipping the workout is not always the right call.
For example, if you miss your workouts 5 times a week because you’re always tired, you probably need to a) get to the root of why your body is so depleted and b) suck it up and go to the gym because it will actually help your body generate more energy over time.
Then again, maybe you’re exhausted because you’re coming down with a cold. That would definitely be a time to go ahead and rest up.
Or you could be in the middle of a hypothyroid flare that’s leaving you totally drained. In which case you should certainly take your body’s lead and focus on reducing all forms of stress including intense workouts.
All of this to say, there is no simple hard-and-fast rule that works all the time for everyone. And that really applies to just about any habit.
So if you want stressful days at work, and busy weeks, and family obligations, and low-motivation days to stop sabotaging your progress, you have to be able to make judgment calls on a day-to-day basis and shift your habits depending on all the different scenarios you find yourself in.
Having a strict set of guidelines laid out for you by an overly rigid workout or diet plan may feel easier because it takes out any guesswork and allows you to exist on autopilot. But it also prevents you from ever making healthy living a lifestyle because life simply will never fit perfectly into one set plan.
You have to develop the ability to maneuver around the obstacles on the road and keep going. But most people only know how to drive straight, and the second a tree blocks their way they just stop. Or worse, turn around and go back to where they came from.
Let’s take a real life example. Let’s say you decided to go keto and you’re so excited because you’re finally losing all this weight.
But uh oh… now it’s the holiday season. And you don’t want to miss out on your favorite cookies. And oh wait, your family tradition is to eat popcorn and sip hot chocolate while driving around looking at Christmas lights. And you have those holiday parties where you’re going to want a couple of drinks.
And now you have a choice to make. Either stick with keto and accept all the sacrifices that come with it. Or give up on keto altogether because you can’t be in ketosis while enjoying all your favorite holiday treats.
With habit flexibility, there’s a 3rd option: alter your plan to accommodate both your desire for certain sweets and your health goals.
And that’s just one example.
You’re going to need a totally different mindset and a different set of habits when you’re traveling with your family. Or when you literally don’t have enough hours in the day to get in the kitchen. Or when you’re so out-of-your-mind stressed it’s all you can do not to eat an entire pint of ice cream.
I know when I list it out like that it probably sounds overwhelming - having to decipher the right action to take in a million different scenarios. But it really doesn’t have to be, which my Club members will discover this week inside our fall challenge where I’m walking them through exactly how to apply this concept of ‘habit flexibility’.
I’ll be giving them specific, actionable, and realistic habit shifts to make in some of the most common sabotage-inducing situations. And I’m sharing my single most effective strategy for getting back on the bandwagon quickly instead of letting one mistake completely pull them under.
If you know you tend towards that ‘all in or all out’ mentality and need to learn to live in the gray, click here to learn more about the challenge and jump in with us.
Club Members: Head to the Challenge module inside The Vault to listen to the “Consistency Through The Seasons” lesson.
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