Getting Past Arrested Development: How I Stuck To My Fitness Resolution *And You Can TOO!* Part 3

Falling Off the Wagon

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.

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