consistency

carpenteravree426

how can i stay consistent

TracyL963

Practice - strive to do better, but don't beat yourself up when you're not perfect. You're not going to be perfect 100% of the time.

But, keep coming back and logging (yes, even bad days). You will learn from those bad days. Where you over stressed, over tired, unprepared?

Prepare - do you pack a lunch? I find that packing a breakfast too, helps keep me on track. You won't be as tempted to hit the drive thrus. I always wanted to snack when I got home from work. I started to bring a small snack for my evening commute. No grazing when I get home.

Baby steps - are you out of shape and want to get back into exercise? Start with a small goal and track it. It seems silly but you could mark it on a calendar. Keep yourself accountable. Then increase your goal over time until you're back into the swing of things.

AnnPT77

Make an easy-to-follow plan, and treat it as a series of experiments, like a fun, productive science fair project for grown-ups.

You don't need some extreme restrictive diet where you give up all the foods you enjoy to eat only "diet foods". You don't need a miserably intense punitive exercise plan.

Losing weight slowly is easier than losing weight fast, and that time is going to pass anyway. The choice is whether you gradually make some positive changes in your habits that add up over time, and can continue long term . . . or you can do the more common thing of picking an extreme diet and maybe an extreme exercise plan on top of that.

A sustainable process can lead to good outcomes in less calendar time than some extreme plan that causes deprivation-triggered bouts of over-eating, breaks in the action, or giving up altogether because It's. Just. Too. Hard.

As a bonus, an easier plan that relies on positive changes to daily habits will make it easier to stay at a healthy weight long term, something most people find harder than losing weight in the first place.

All of these same concepts apply to fitness improvement, too, not just to weight loss.

Any series of experiments will include some experiments that don't work out as we'd hoped. That's OK, as long as we frame them as something we can learn from, as long as we cross that tactic off our list and try something else. Taking a couple of steps forward then one back is fine, as long as the overall direction is positive. None of that kind of thing is a personal failure.

Beating ourselves up when something goes sideways is unproductive, a waste of energy, burns zero extra calories, and feels icky. Why do it? Just adjust the plan, and go on.

If a person does that sort of thing persistently and patiently, they will succeed. Only giving up the effort, "going back to normal" derails success.

Consistency? Maybe. But mostly patience and persistence.

You can do this, if you commit to it. If your experience is like mine, the quality of life improvement from succeeding will be more than worth the effort it takes to get there.

Best wishes!