It’s that time of year when, despite the best of intentions and steely grit to get fit again, you start to feel yourself slipping. The 5-mornings-a-week exercise regime and Sunday arvo food prepping are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, and life is getting so busy… oh so busy. Here’s how to stop the slide and get back on track.

First of all, don’t ever think you are a failure or that you are failing. Making changes to your life are difficult for anybody. We love to stick with the norm — with what we are used to. It’s an evolutionary trait and it’s designed to protect us. So take it as a good thing.

“If you’re feeling yourself slip back into old habits; like old priorities are taking precedence, you might be self-sabotaging yourself.”

If you’re finding yourself sliding; like old demands are taking back priority, and you just can’t find time for your new and improved self, reconnect with why you started in the first place. This will give you the emotional attachment you need to reprioritise the new routines in your life.

How to Get Back on Track with your New Years Resolutions

• Start small
  You may have bitten off more than you can chew. If you started your new healthy behaviours while still on holidays, you may be finding it hard to maintain now that work has gone back. Look at where you’re at right now and start small. Maybe just commit to just two workouts a week instead of five.
  
  
• Get back to what you love
  You might like the accountability of having a set time to workout and a fitness trainer telling you what to do so you don’t have to think about it, but add in some of the stuff you used to enjoy. If you used to like going for walks or playing indoor netball, get back into it.
  
  
• Schedule it into your current life
  Now that life is back to “normal” for most people, fitting in exercise and food prepping might be increasingly difficult. Schedule time for it. Consider that you are making an appointment with yourself, for yourself. Having this time blocked out in your calendar makes you so much more likely to follow through.
  
  
• Don’t be so strict
  Food prepping is a difficult skill to master. Instead of cooking for three or four hours every Sunday afternoon, get back to shorter, daily food prep and make enough for lunch the next day. The daily practice will have a greater effect on your long term success too.
  
  
• Focus on the processes
  Instead of focussing on the big outcome at the end, and all that you need to do to get there, focus on the daily processes. From doing one small bout of exercise to cooking a healthy dinner each night, the practice of taking a small action each day will drive the needle of success far more than anything else.

If you’re feeling yourself slip back into old habits; like old priorities are taking precedence, you might be self-sabotaging yourself. We can all have whatever we want. It’s your ability to prioritise the necessary behaviours that are preventing you from achieving it.

Whatever you want to achieve, there are any number of actions you can take. You can follow these strategies to get back on track with your new years resolutions, but at the end of the day, you need to prioritise them. And ultimately that’s all it comes down to. Schedule the behaviours like exercise and healthy eating, and practice them on a daily basis.

What will you do to get back on track with your New Years resolutions?

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash