“Heather, I was doing really good and I can’t get back to it. I had a few off days, what should I do? What’s wrong?” The fact that you’re asking what’s wrong is what’s wrong. First, you aren’t giving yourself a break, like I talked about in Tip #1, but the second thing is you’re focusing on what’s wrong.
Is everything you’re doing, from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment that you go to bed, working against your healthy habits, or is it just a few things you’re doing?
Remember the old adage: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t throw out all your hard work when it’s probably just one or two things you’re doing that aren’t healthy or helpful to your weight loss goal.
Are you waking up in the morning? Are you eating healthy breakfast? Are you getting your water in? Have you gotten in some extra walking? Are you eating the lunch you packed? Maybe in the afternoon you have a candy bar.
Doing that isn’t helping you get to your ultimate goal, but it sure isn’t erasing all the good you’re doing. For the next couple of days, write down all the positive things you’re doing. Focus on those.
Our brains immediately go to the negative. “I had a candy bar; what was I thinking? I totally blew it. I can’t seem to get this going in the right direction.” Wait a minute. This should be pretty much going in the right direction, even if you were a little bit off.
Look at all the good you did. That’s important. We start saying everything we do is wrong, bad, no wonder people don’t finish this out, when we should be saying, “Yeah, I had a couple of candy bars. It wasn’t the best thing, but you know what?
Here comes dinner. I can eat my healthy dinner I prepared. I can still go to bed at a decent time and rest and get up tomorrow morning and refocus on all my healthy habits.”
Focus on the good you’re doing. Focus on all the habits you’ve established. If you’re drinking your water, getting in your walking, eating your breakfast, packing a healthy lunch, preparing a healthy dinner and, yeah, maybe there’s something in the day that didn’t go quite as planned, guess what? That’s what maintenance is like, too.
You’re going to be doing this for the rest of your life. This is great conditioning, so try to change your thinking about it. I’d love to hear about the really wonderful parts of your day. Chances are it didn’t start out looking like a frat party gone wrong, right?
I’m sure you didn’t wake up in the morning drinking wine. You didn’t have a pizza first thing in the morning and donuts for lunch.
I’m sure your day didn’t look like that, so find the good in your day. Comment below or on Facebook and share the positive things you did today. I’d love to hear from you.