Thirteen Tips to Help You Resume Your Health & Fitness Program if You Get Off Track

It is going to hap­pen. You are going to “fall off the wagon” occa­sion­ally due to spe­cial events, vaca­tions, lack of moti­va­tion, some­one or some­thing in your life sab­o­tag­ing your efforts … When it does hap­pen, there are a num­ber of things you can do to get back on track with your health and fit­ness pro­gram. Here are thir­teen tips for us all to keep in mind:

1. Be kind to yourself.

You are not per­fect. You are never going to achieve per­fec­tion. So there is no point in beat­ing your­self up psy­cho­log­i­cally when you occa­sion­ally demon­strate your own humanity.

2. Keep it in perspective.

Con­sider your slip-up. How does it com­pare to your old habits? Did you fall right back into your old destruc­tive habits or was this different?

These days, when I “fall off the wagon,” the scenery around me as I’m pick­ing myself up and dust­ing myself off looks quite dif­fer­ent that it used to.

So when it hap­pens, I stop and com­pare my lifestyle before I devel­oped this pro­gram for myself and what the pro­gram looks like when I am con­sci­en­tiously fol­low­ing it. Inevitably, I find that my devi­a­tion is minor when com­pared with how I used to live and what my eat­ing habits used to be.

3. Under­stand why you aban­doned your program.

It is extremely impor­tant to your suc­cess to under­stand what hap­pened, i.e., why you are not fol­low­ing or tem­porar­ily stopped com­ply­ing with the over­ar­ch­ing prin­ci­ples of your health and fit­ness regime. Under­stand­ing how you got off track is the key to get­ting back on track — and stay­ing there.

Was it a minor devi­a­tion such as a one-time splurge at a wed­ding or other fam­ily cel­e­bra­tion? Has some­thing hap­pened in your life that has caused you to engage in “emo­tional eat­ing”? Are you upset, stressed, ill? What moti­vated you to aban­don your pro­gram and lapse into old habits?

Or are they old habits? Per­haps you have devel­oped some new bad habits that are not as destruc­tive as your old ones, but sab­o­tag­ing your abil­ity to achieve your health and fit­ness goals nonetheless?

There have been trea­tises writ­ten about why we do not eat in a man­ner that pro­motes and facil­i­tates opti­mum health and fit­ness. Some­where on the planet right now, hun­dreds of peo­ple are observ­ing, study­ing, research­ing, ana­lyz­ing why peo­ple develop weight issues and, more impor­tantly, why they are so dif­fi­cult to conquer.

To all of that effort, I say “fuhgetaboutit.” Not that the vast resources avail­able aren’t valu­able — to a cer­tain extent they are, if only to val­i­date your feel­ings and help you real­ize that you are both quite nor­mal and def­i­nitely not in this bat­tle alone.

But here’s the bot­tom line:

Only you know the answers to the rel­e­vant ques­tions. Only you can look deep within and extract the hon­est answers. It isn’t easy and it cer­tainly isn’t enjoyable.

I hear peo­ple with weight issues say, “I don’t know why I overeat.” Yes, you do. But fac­ing the answers to the ques­tions requires engag­ing in a search­ing, no-holds-barred self-inventory that most of us would rather avoid.

But suc­cess demands that you do the dif­fi­cult work and under­stand the fac­tors that moti­vate your own behav­ior. No one else can do it for you.

4. Deal with the fac­tors that moti­vated you to veer off your program.

You thought that fig­ur­ing out why you did not fol­low your pro­gram faith­fully was chal­leng­ing? The old cliche is true: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

There have also been trea­tises writ­ten about why, once we under­stand and appre­ci­ate what moti­vates us not to eat prop­erly and exer­cise con­sis­tently, we don’t just “deal with” those issues. We all know that it is much eas­ier said than done.

A ther­a­pist once told me, how­ever, that we will be pre­sented with the oppor­tu­nity to work through issues repeat­edly through­out our lives — until we face them head-on, work through them and are able to move on. So it is with weight man­age­ment and fitness.

I have run head-on into the same metaphoric wall count­less times. I have lost the same 40, 50 or 60 pounds repeat­edly — only to find them again.

Only I have the power to decide that this time will be dif­fer­ent because I am going to work through the issues that allow me to become defeated once and for all.

5. Do not let any­thing or any­one inter­fere with your exer­cise routine.

You sim­ply have to be dog­matic about it. You have to sit down with your cal­en­dar in front of you and find those times when you will exer­cise. Block them out in red. Label those times “unavail­able,” “busy,” “out of office” or what­ever term you wish to use. After you have com­mit­ted to a rou­tine, stick with it. Do not let any­thing inter­fere, includ­ing your own attitude.

Of course you’re tired. But you will be more tired if you remain sedentary.

6. Do not let any­thing or any­one inter­fere with your food plan.

You can still go out to eat. You can still go to par­ties and enter­tain in your home. You sim­ply have to adjust how you do that. There are many strate­gies you can employ and still social­ize around food.

Well-meaning — and not so well-meaning — friends and rel­a­tives will try to dis­suade you that you can eat “just one” or “splurge just this once.” But a derailed train does not eas­ily get back on and con­tinue down the track. If you are like me, I sim­ply can­not eat “just one” of cer­tain things because one bit turns into a binge. And if I “splurge just this once” it becomes eas­ier to “splurge just this once” the sec­ond, third, fourth … times. When I get into the habit of being dis­ci­plined and com­mit­ted, I have to be dog­matic about the way in which I eat as I am about exercise.

It’s your life. It’s your health. It’s your food plan. Friends and rel­a­tives need to respect that. Part of being strong enough to take care of your­self means being strong enough to gen­tly but firmly com­mu­ni­cate that mes­sage to them. They may be shocked at first, but they will adjust. And if they don’t? If they insist upon attempt­ing to sab­o­tage you every time you get together, you may, unfor­tu­nately, find your­self hav­ing to make a choice between spend­ing time with them or tak­ing care of your­self. This is another area in which doing what is right for you can be extremely dif­fi­cult and unpleas­ant. But some­times it becomes nec­es­sary for your own survival.

7. Cel­e­brate your successes!

I’ve come a long way since last sum­mer when I was con­stantly out of breath, felt mis­er­able, took five dif­fer­ent kinds of med­ica­tion daily and had three dif­fer­ent types of inhalers. When I get dis­cour­aged, I think about my cir­cum­stances once year ago and how far I have come. I remind myself that I can accom­plish any­thing if I am will­ing to com­mit to the goal and work steadily to achieve it. I look at the pile of clothes that are too big and headed for char­ity, never to be worn or hang in my closet again. There is a lot to cel­e­brate and more good things to come.

A lit­tle self-validation can go a long way toward pulling me out of the doldrums.

8. Accept com­pli­ments graciously.

You deserve them!

The other day I wore a pair of pants to work that I found in the back of my closet that morn­ing when I was des­per­ately search­ing for any item of cloth­ing that fit prop­erly. I had for­got­ten all about them!

As I was dri­ving to the office, I thought about how long it had been since I had worn those pants. I con­cluded that they last fit in early 1999. I bought them for a trip to New York City to see my friend, Clint Ritchie, that spring. I have a photo taken of me with some friends on the steps of the ABC Stu­dios where “One LIfe to Live” is taped in which I am wear­ing those pants. My rec­ol­lec­tion is that they were rather snug then, so I came home put them away and just re-discovered them.

They are baggy now.

So a cou­ple of peo­ple at my office noticed that I was wear­ing pants that fit bet­ter than the really baggy and ill-fitting ones I have been wear­ing. They said things like, “Wow, you’re look­ing good” and “See how good you look in clothes that fit bet­ter?” So I was doing the happy day around the office, singing “today we’re going to party like it’s 1999″ and call­ing those pants my “party pants.”

At that point, my col­leagues were rolling their eyes and good-naturedly implor­ing me to go back to my office!

But those silly moments sus­tained me for a few days and when I am tempted to aban­don my pro­gram, I think about things, some silly, like my “party pants” and find the strength to persevere.

9. Reassess your goals.

I am never going to be “skinny.” “Thin” is too ambi­tious a goal.

I just want to be within the nor­mal weight range for my height and age. I will set­tle for that. I will be ecsta­tic, in fact.

I want to be able to walk fur­ther and fur­ther, tread water for expand­ing time peri­ods and keep increas­ing the inten­sity of my water aer­o­bics pro­gram. I want to feel health­ier which means that I will look healthier.

I gauge my suc­cess not by a num­ber on a scale, but how I feel and my cloth­ing fits.

10. Estab­lish interim goals.

Short-time, incre­men­tal goals are palat­able and psy­cho­log­i­cally sus­tain­able. So it is a won­der­ful idea to have an over­ar­ch­ing goal, but also estab­lish bench­marks that you can achieve along the way.

For instance, a monthly or quar­terly tar­get can help you stay focused and not get dis­cour­aged because the jour­ney to opti­mum health and fit­ness is a long one — and, in fact, a per­ma­nent lifestyle change is required.

I have an interim goal that I have not yet achieved: The abil­ity to wear a par­tic­u­lar skirt and blouse. Those items of cloth­ing are my favorites from the period of time when I pur­chased them and they fit well. They are hang­ing not on the rack amid my other cloth­ing, but on a spe­cial hook in front of the other clothes. That way I see them every day when I go into the closet to select some­thing to wear and am reminded of my goal.

When I first took those items from the back of the closet and put them on dis­play where I see them every day, there was no way I could but­ton either item — the but­tons were sev­eral inches away from the buttonholes.

At this writ­ing, I can but­ton both the skirt and the blouse, but they still feel snug enough that I would not feel com­fort­able wear­ing them. Yet. I will soon.

And the day I wear them again, I will estab­lish another interim goal because although wear­ing those items of cloth­ing sym­bol­izes the sig­nif­i­cant progress I have made, there is still so far to go. As I con­tinue on this jour­ney, those cloth­ing items must also become way too big and even­tu­ally be donated to charity.

When I get dis­cour­aged, I tell myself, “You didn’t get this heavy and out of shape overnight. You’re not going to achieve opti­mum health and fit­ness overnight, either.”

11. Seek out the help you feel you need.

In order to work through the emo­tional aspects of weight gain and man­age­ment, it may be appro­pri­ate and nec­es­sary to seek pro­fes­sional assis­tance. That is a deci­sion that every indi­vid­ual must make for him/herself.

12. Develop a sup­port network.

Pro­fes­sional assis­tance aside, I think it is really impor­tant to have a core sup­port sys­tem com­prised of two or three peo­ple who will sup­port your efforts uncon­di­tion­ally, with­out judg­ment or inter­fer­ence. They could be fam­ily mem­bers (but not likely, in my expe­ri­ence), neigh­bor­hood or child­hood friends who know you well or even a fel­low blog­ger or two with whom you have got­ten acquainted. It doesn’t mat­ter who your sup­port bud­dies are, so long as you have some peo­ple you can talk to when you need a com­pas­sion­ate, sup­port ear.

13. Research and learn from oth­ers who are on the same or a sim­i­lar journey.

There is a plethora of insight­ful, well-researched lit­er­a­ture avail­able address­ing the top­ics of weight loss, weight man­age­ment and nutri­tion. Some­times the most valu­able aspect of read­ing about some­one else’s expe­ri­ence is sim­ply that: The reas­sur­ance and val­i­da­tion that comes from know­ing oth­ers are strug­gling, too.

I avoid diet books because, after all, this isn’t a diet, it is a lifestyle change and I don’t want to read or be influ­enced by any­one or any­thing that sug­gests or speaks/writes from a van­tage sug­gest­ing otherwise.

A num­ber of years ago, I read a book that lit­er­ally changed my life: Fat is a Fem­i­nist Issue. I highly rec­om­mend it and will be writ­ing more about it in future arti­cles, so I invite you to sub­scribe to my feed or via e-mail if you are interested!

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