What to Do When The Wheels Fall Off The Bus

Here we are. It’s January, and many of us are no doubt feeling the hangover from “the holidays” and all the food, drink, and general stress that comes with it, which seems doubled this year. This is why January is “New Year’s Resolution” time. This is the time of year when google searches for “how to lose weight” and “how to lose holiday weight gain” are probably the top searches. By this point, its common to not feel so great and be acutely aware of how eating all those fun holiday foods since Thanksgiving (Halloween?) makes our bodies and minds feel. But getting back on track is difficult after months of enjoying fun foods that are often addictive in nature. Making healthy changes in the New Year feels insurmountable. In short, the wheels have fallen off the bus.

Here’s the good news- no matter how many times you fall off you can always get back on. We will all run into things that throw our routines off (like, oh, I don’t know, a pandemic?). Simply acknowledge that the wheels have fallen off the bus (or in my case, the bus has crashed, it's on fire, people are screaming, and the fire department is on its way), then start making choices that will point you in a healthier direction.

How do you do that when it feels overwhelming?

Here are a few tips:

Ease Back Into It
Sometimes going cold turkey on habits can set us up for failure, like we wake up one day and declare, "Today I am healthy!" and then feel guilt when we realize we are human and in fact, do NOT go for a run every single day or eat kale for every meal. Going hard core cold turkey works for some people, but for most people its a recipe for disaster. I generally don’t recommend this approach to my clients. This all-in-hard-core approach is what the diet industry is set up to do- and the diet industry is a 72 billion dollar industry, yet obesity and chronic diseases are skyrocketing. Also, this all -or-nothing approach starts with nothing (“I can’t eat anything for x amount of days”) but then ends with all (“yay! my diet is over! While I feel good from eating super healthy, now I can go back to eating what I was eating before because I’ve felt so deprived”). This see-saw is one reason why people often feel like they are never reaching their health goals.

So instead of going all-or-nothing, easing into it is one way to set yourself up for success longer term. You can do this easily both with food and with your workouts.

We can do this by starting to clean up our diets while allowing ourselves some treats. For example, if you've been eating a lot of cookies and pies for weeks, switching entirely to a dairy free, gluten free, sugar free diet is going to SUCK, and also be very difficult. I like to start easing myself back into it by adding more veggies and eating those first but not thinking so much about what I can’t eat. For workouts, we can take the same approach by starting with low key workouts, slowly increasing intensity. This method doesn’t feel so depriving, sudden, and harsh.

Crowding Out

One way to ease into more nutritive habits is crowding out, which is the idea of slowly adding in healthier foods which then leads to slowly removing less-health supporting foods. So instead of starting with a ginormous bowl of pasta, start with a salad. You'll start to fill up more on veggies and by the time you get to the rest of the meal you won't feel like eating as much and will have given your body some vitamins and minerals it needs to feel great.

The trick with crowding out is to focus on the idea of adding IN foods that will serve and support out nutrition, without really focusing too much on what to take OUT. As we add more and more healthy foods IN, the non-nutritious foods tend to get crowded out. Plus, its mentally easier to think about all the yummy things we CAN eat instead of feeling deprived by focusing on what we CAN’T eat.

Focus on How You Feel, Not How Much You Weigh

This time of year kind of drives me batty because people are SO worried about their WEIGHT but seem to not be too worried about their HEALTH. The reasons we worry so much about our weight are mostly due to external societal pressures- especially for women. We’ve been trained to focus so much on how we LOOK that we don’t think about how we FEEL. Focusing so much on weight and how we look to others are all external motivators, while focusing on how we feel, how much energy we have, how certain foods make us feel, what chronic conditions might be flaring up, and how we want to feel better so that we can live our best lives is a much stronger internal motivator. This difference between focusing on what’s motivating us can have huge benefits. So think about your goals and whether they are for YOU or something outside of you.

If you need help figuring out how to feel better in this new year, talking with a trained professional can help. As a certified Nutrition Consultant, I help my clients feel better by determining their reasons behind wanting to make changes, and then I teach them how to make lasting changes. If you want to learn more, check out our packages here.

This information is for educational and informational purposes only and solely as a self-help tool for your own use. I am not providing medical, psychological, or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your own medical practitioner. Always seek the advice of your own medical practitioner and/or mental health provider about your specific health situation. For my full Disclaimer, please go to https://www.sourceandsproutnutrition.com/disclaimer