5 Steps to Getting Back on Track

Sometimes, we all get off track.  For years (over 10 years) I had a near perfect habit of getting up at 5am ish and either getting to the gym for a swim and weight lifting or a doing a 35 minute session of yoga at home.  The Polar Vortex winter of 2014 in the mid-west took its toll on my good habits.  I found it was all I could do to get the driveway shoveled and get to work - let alone get out to the gym at my normal hour.  Soon, everything was falling apart.  My good habit of eating a light spinach salad with carrots and hard-boiled egg each day for lunch which was nutritious and frugal gave way to a slice of meat lover's pizza from the near by cafe, still cheap, but not nearly as good for me.  My need for comfort food and sleep took over my trusted systems for health and energy and soon, my energy was all but gone and depression set in along with a few extra pounds to lug around.

Needless to say the few extra pounds only added to the depression and the lack of energy. This went on until about April.  When those of us living through the toughest winter in 130 years began to believe that spring really would come again. I managed to get to the gym after work a few times. Then, just as I thought I was getting back on track, a ski injury kept me from my workout for a few weeks. After that crazy vacation schedules, work and personal travel and other obligations continued to make getting to my regularly scheduled workouts a challenge. I still showed up at the gym at odd times and did not always swim due to colds, etc. Something had to be done!

1. Stop the unproductive behavior - no matter how fun it is!   

Finally, in early August, we had a trip planned and I had a cold and I said no more. It was time to stop. Stop and get better, so that I could get back to the schedule I knew I needed to keep for my sanity and health. So we postponed the trip, I overcame my cold and made it a priority to get up and get to the gym - twice during the week and once on the weekend.  

2. Make it easier to do the productive behavior than not.  

I went back to packing up my gym bag at night and pulling out the next day's clothes, but now I go so far as to put all of that in the car so that all I have to do is get up, pull on the work out clothes and get out of the house to make it to the gym. And if I don't make it to the gym I have to go out to the car in my robe or jammies to get my stuff back in to get dressed. Believe it or not it is easier to put on my gym clothes and get in the car than to pull it all back in the house in the early morning hours. 

3. Reinstate your former good habits and make it easy to follow through with them. 

Remembering that I used to have a very simple regular diet of spinach salad with grated carrots for lunch, I bought a big tub of baby spinach and a bottle of carrot juice to keep in the fridge at work. I also hard-boil some eggs on the weekend and bring them in for lunch so everything is easily accessible.  

4.  Keep healthy snacks around and set built in snack times.  

I also added in my 4 pm red grapefruit snack and gave up bananas! I had a root canal about a year ago and my teeth were sensitive to crunchy foods and acid foods, so I had given up apples for bananas in the morning and lost track of my favorite afternoon snack - the ruby red grapefruit. Until I found out recently that bananas are one of the fruits which is highest in sugar. Grapefruit, unlike bananas, is great for your metabolism and some studies even say that it helps you maintain or reduce your weight. Sorry bananas, love you, but you have got to go!  I also used to snack on almonds all the time and I keep them around at home and in the office again, so I can always reach for a healthy snack.

5. Continue what is working and make it even better.  

I have always had a love affair with dark chocolate. I keep it around and have a little square as needed, only now I mix in some Ghirardelli 100% unsweetened cocoa baking chocolate, which has a nice texture and unlike other unsweetened chocolate can be eaten plain. I still have a few pieces of the Santander 70% cocoa chocolate bars which are so important to me but now I include the unsweetened chocolate so that I will take in less sugar. I find the 100% gives a real boost from just a small square. Making sure I keep my favorite dark chocolate in my life ensures that I feel satisfied rather than deprived, which is what the chocolate diet is all about.

Little by little I feel my energy returning and getting up early seems to be coming more easily. I still need to add in my regular yoga practice a few mornings a week and get to bed about half an hour earlier on a regular basis. Reinstating past good habits is easier than trying all sorts of new things that may or may not work.  So, if you need to get back on track take a minute to remember a time when you had good solid habits - you know you did - and find ways to put them back in place. Make it easier to keep them up rather than let them go and finally keep the dark chocolate coming, in moderation and the darker the better!

Here's Elton John, who says it even better than I do with get back "Honky Cat" from Honky Chateau, one of my all time favorite albums. Enjoy!