I
talked at length in Part 2 about how
easy it is to get off track with your workouts and nutrition. Whether it’s for
a legitimate reason (injury, illness, the chance to party with Vanilla Ice) or
you simply weren’t feeling it, you’ve neglected your plan. It can only take one day, one slip to throw off your whole
game, so I can’t stress enough how important it is to stay in control of your
schedule.
Even
if you are having “one of those days” or something messes up your normal
routine, it’s rarely impossible to stay true to the plan. It may just require
some creative tweaking. And who couldn’t use a good tweak once in a while?
Let
me give you a “for instance”
Problem:
Your alarm clock failed to activate/
You hit snooze too many times/ You slept in like a lazy bum and missed your
morning workout. No time for breakfast. Egg McMuffin, here I come.
Solution:
Get yourself to work or school, or wherever you go during the day. Adapt. Fit
that workout in at lunch or in the evening. Plunking down this workout where it
doesn’t belong in your routine may mean changing the workout as well. Maybe
your weight session at the gym will become a body-weight/cardio session at
home. Maybe now it’s a run. But whatever you do, do something. Also, everyone
has time to blend up a quick shake for breakfast on the go. But if you did a
complete stupid, and have also run out of shake groceries, and you have to pick
up something on the go, make it something relatively healthy. Don’t be a dummy.
Problem: You planned an evening workout but were thrown a
curveball at work and now there’s no time! You’ll be grabbing McDonald’s on the
way home for dinner that you’ll eat hunched over your laptop, crying tears of
grease.
Solution:
Even if you’ve only got 15 minutes you can throw in a quick circuit or interval
cardio session and get back to work. You can whip up a healthy salad in less
time than it takes to go through the McDonald’s drive thru, or hey, get one
from the McDonald’s drive thru (skip the dressing). If you really, really have
no time to spare, try your best to get a good night’s sleep and make this your
“rest day” muahaha.
If
you had no choice but to skip a day, or two, or three, and that turned into a
week, or two, or three, you may be sitting in the dusty trail watching that
wagon move on out of sight. So now what? Give up completely? Hells no! You’ve
come this far. Most of us falter at some point. And it can actually be good for
your body to get a rest from training every once in a while. Some studies
suggest it can even improve your results once you get back into training
(beast!) mode. Changing your lifestyle for the better is far from easy. If it
was, there wouldn’t be an obesity epidemic. Think about it.
Getting Back on the Wagon
You’ve
stumbled, fallen, the wagon has left you behind on its way to Happyfittown.
Nothing left to do but chase that old cart down and hitch yourself back up.
(Thus concludes the use of the rapidly-tiring wagon analogy).
After
having started the exciting, exhausting, invigorating journey of changing your
lifestyle and working towards a goal, it can be completely depressing to get
off track. So many people quit at this point and go back to their old ways.
Look at the odds you’re up against,
as mentioned in part 1!
On
my journey to meeting my fitness goals (losing 25 lbs and being able to run
15km) I fell off the wagon more than once. And as I mentioned this is my first
successful fitness plan after years of arrested
development. What I’ve learned might seem like common sense, but is much,
much easier said than done. Brush all that negativity aside and push through. Regain
the determination, revamp your plan if necessary, and get right back out there.
If I can, anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can.
The
first step is the hardest and you know what that is:
Putting on the runners and heading out to your next sweat session.
Maintenance
If
you are following your plan you will notice that after a couple of weeks this
magical thing starts happening and your workout routine clicks into a sort of
autopilot setting. It will become just part of your typical week and you will
put in a lot less time stressing about it and playing the mind manipulation
games necessary to get yourself to the gym. This is what I call ‘getting into
the zone’.
That
is not to say that you won’t have moments where you don’t feel like hitting the
gym, but you do it anyway after little thought. If you miss a workout you will
easily reschedule it and move on with your day. This is a great place to be but
it is also a fragile state. There is the constant danger of meandering off
track completely if the pattern is interrupted. Naturally, one must not let
that happen.
Keep
Yourself Interested
I
find a key thing that helped me in this stage was to keep it fresh. I mix up my
cardio when it was gets boring. Different cardio activities I alternate between
include:
·
Swimming 50 laps in a 25m pool
·
Running 5k outside
·
Running Intervals
·
Hill Sprints
·
Distance Skating
·
Rowing
·
Distance Cycling
·
Interval Cycling
·
Spin Class
·
Step Class
·
Dance Class
·
Elliptical Intervals
·
Circuit Training
·
Skipping Rope
·
Squat jumps
·
Combinations of any of the above
I
switch out healthy meals and snacks in my diet to curb the temptation to
venture astray – including finding some boss healthy recipes on Pinterest and comparing the calories in
my favourite adult beverages on getdrunknotfat.com.
Some
of my Go To Snacks Include:
Avocado Chocolate Mousse
·
Hummus + Veggies
·
Dark Chocolate
·
Spicy Kale Chips
·
Crispy Minis
·
Apple + Cheddar Cheese
·
Cucumber + Goat Cheese
·
Yogurt + Berries + Low Cal-High Fibre Cereal
·
Baked Apple with Cinnamon + Oats
·
Banana + Peanut Butter Wraps
Dealing
With Schedule Changes and Interruptions
Let’s
say you are humming right along in ‘the zone’, completing your workouts
consistently, eating well, seeing progress and generally feeling awesome when –
CLANG – here comes the wrench, that thing that throws your schedule and workout
plan into chaos.
Be
it a new work or class schedule, vacation, assignment, book club, etc – it can be
a lot more damaging to your plan than it sounds. For me, it threw me right off
the wagon. Suddenly,
with little warning my work schedule went from solid consistency to spastic
flip-flopping. Instead of my cozy 8-4’s I was suddenly working evenings,
weekends, and making time for evening classes. It was easy for my plan to go by
the wayside in the midst of all these changes. Depending on how well you adapt
to change in your routine, even the smallest thing can throw off your training
and nutrition goals.
Modify
It
sounds like simple common-sense but what worked for me was to re-evaluate my
week and reposition my workouts within my windows of free time. Suddenly
Mondays and Thursdays weren’t going to work for my lower body workouts because
I could only get to the gym during peak hours when the equipment I needed had a
wait time – something I do not have the patience for. I swapped them out for my
upper body days when possible and found alternate exercises for the weeks when
I couldn’t accommodate that switch.
This
is just an example of one thing I had to modify. For you it might be learning
to get up extra early in the morning to fit in a workout, or go for an evening
or lunchtime run. Possibilities are endless, but the idea is to be flexible and
plan ahead. If I know I have an impossibly busy Saturday coming up, my whole
week’s schedule will have to change to allow me to stay on track. The
super-intelligent-organized folks among us may even plan contingencies for just
such occasions before they occur. I do like a back-up plan.
Taking
it Up a Notch
When all goes
according to plan and you reach your goal it is indeed time to celebrate this
wondrous accomplishment. Against the odds, with a literal buttload of hard work
and dedication, overcoming obstacles and just plain doing it - you’ve done it!
That is huge and you deserve every good feeling and compliment that comes your
way.
Now what?
Resting on
your laurels and letting all that hard work go to waste would be a shame.
Maintenance is option one.
If you are
happy with where you are at physically, you may choose to maintain it by
continuing to do what you’re doing. However, be careful not to backslide by
continuing with the same exercises at the same intensity. Your body may adapt
to your workout to the point where it needs to be challenged or you will stop
seeing results. Here is a great article about why and when you should vary your routine. If you are getting bored with
it, chances are your body is too.
Remember to
stay aboard that old wagon. This is a time when it is common for people to
regress, especially with diet. You may feel you deserve a break or a treat from
your healthy meal plan but this can be a dangerous slippery slope. Reward
yourself for your hard work and then get back to eating the best way for your
body.
Maybe you
have achieved step one in a slew of fitness goals up your sleeve and it is now
time to move on to the next item on the agenda.
New goal is option two.
Don’t you
feel like a million bucks after what you’ve been able to accomplish? You
should! For me, this gives me the confidence to pursue things further. Suddenly
running a half marathon doesn’t seem like the impossible, leg-buckling task it
once did. You’ve proven that you can push yourself to greatness – now what else
is out there that tickles your fancy? Plan it and do it! Just make sure you
have that same determination that will get you there. There is a plethora of sites
that are excellent sources for finding new workout routines and training plans
for things like triathlons, fitness competitions and races.
However,
before I tell you that you can do anything and the sky is the limit – please be
smart and consult a health professional if you are going to do something
extreme like any of the above. Realize that the body does have its limits and
they are different for everyone.
Although
staying fit and active is not everyone’s idea of a good time, for some (like
myself) it becomes the only way to live. After all kinds of false starts and
wagon falls, I have finally gotten to the point where I enjoy my time at the
gym or wherever my active lifestyle takes me. I met my goal and continue to up
the ante. But I will be the first to admit it isn’t always easy. I have had to
work through the same challenges and pitfalls that fall on so many of us out
there.
If there is one thing I hope I can give you through these articles, it
is the full confidence that you CAN do it. I hope my words can help in some
small way to get you there.
