Three months ago you stepped on a scale and a smile spread across your face. You may not be at your ultimate goal, but you were making progress and felt PROUD of your focus, effort, and ability to stick with your plan.

Now it’s September, and I truly hope that your smile has just gotten bigger.

But…I also know that for a lot of you, that is not the case. This is the sad reality for almost ALL weight loss efforts. You work hard for a month, a quarter, even a YEAR making steady progress toward your goal and then something happens.

You get sick. You go on vacation. You move. Your daughter starts a new sport. You get a new job. Or you just get busy.

Whatever it is, something throws you off track and in a shockingly short period of time, you have gained back weight, inches, and pant sizes.

What happened?

Well, if there is one thing I have come to learn in my time working with people trying to change their lives and their bodies, it is this:

You either adapt or you fail.

As Heraclitus told us 1500 years ago, “The only thing that is constant is change.” And what is unique to the struggles of health and fitness is that to STAY THE SAME, you must change.

Let me explain.

At some point in your life, you probably had a routine that worked. It may not have been perfect, but you felt good about it, and it kept you relatively fit.

Hopefully it was just a few months ago! Or it was back in your grade school PE class. Either way, you did have one!

Regardless of what your routine was, or when it happened, the thread that runs through every part of life is change. And when life changes, so does your routine.

The key: do you CREATE this new routine or does life create it for you?

For most of us, life dictates routine much more than we do. But if you want to stop the “yo-yo” effect, whether that be with your weight, your waistline, your energy, or your cholesterol, you have to acknowledge that things will change and your MUST change with them.

If this sounds daunting, be reassured that if you break it down, you will find an incredible ability to MAINTAIN your routines in the face of change.

The BIG Three

When faced with any life change (something as simple as a vacation, to something much, MUCH more complex, such as having a child), there are really just three things you need to figure out.

1) When & where to exercise

2) When & what to eat

3) When & how to sleep

This is all you really need to know if you want to improve or maintain your health and fitness. You just have to make sure you do this every time life changes.

That could be as frequent as once a week for people who travel for work. Or, if your life, career, and family situation are more consistent, you may not need to revisit this more than once every few years.

The point is this: things change, that’s life. And unless you are adapting with it, your old routines are not going to work with your current life situation.

If, however, you can keep the Big Three in mind and recognize when change is happening, I guarantee you can keep your health and fitness on track.

Sometimes, however, it can be a challenge to figure out what to do or how to do it. You may be in a new situation that you have never experienced before and are struggling to figure out how to fit it all in.

That is where having a coach comes in.

A coach is someone who can see things from an outsider’s perspective and help you figure out the right option for you.

And if you are going through a change right now, or have fallen off track because of a recent change, I would encourage you to give us a call at (408) 370-1739 to see if one of our coaches can help you, too.