How to stick to your wellness goals

A client once told me that she doesn’t set goals or plan ahead anymore because when she fails to meet them, she feels like a failure and it makes her feel terrible about herself.

Do you have goals or wishes for yourself that you are afraid will never come true because when you put out effort, you inevitably fail? Going on a diet, quitting sugar, training programs, or the gym are examples of such efforts.

Well, I’ve got some news for you…

Failure, slips, or relapses, whatever you like to call them, are NORMAL in the process of building new habits!

They are part of the change cycle.

Once you understand how the change cycle works and what is happening inside you when you try to change your eating habits for the better, for example, it will give you the power and motivation to keep going. And that is very important!

This graph will help many who are struggling or quit quickly and blame themselves for the lack of willpower.

 Change is a process not an event!

Relapses are NORMAL when we are in a change cycle.

We just have to learn how to fail less and bounce back quicker!

HOW TO BOUNCE BACK QUICKLY

First, understand what this process looks like. Once you know what is happening you can focus on building a stronger You!

Pre-Contemplation: this is where we’re not thinking seriously about making a change in our health behaviour (such as reducing sugar intake, taking part in more physical activity, reducing or stopping smoking, or organising our lives to ensure we get more ‘downtime’), if anyone says to us when we’re in this stage; ‘you should be thinking about changing that’, we’re likely to dismiss it because we don’t really see it as a problem.

Contemplation: we’re now beginning to think about our behaviour. Maybe we feel our clothes are a bit tighter than they were last year, or we can’t remember what happened after we left the pub on Saturday night, or we’ve seen the latest statistics on smoking and lung cancer, or we’ve just shouted at our kids about something trivial. We’re beginning to see that maybe there is a problem that’s affecting our health.

Determination / Preparation: by now, we’ve realised that something needs to change, and we’re ready to make changes – but maybe we don’t know exactly how. So, we start to read up on the issue, ask advice from friends and family, maybe go onto some websites for more information. We might even turn to a nutritional therapist.

Action: we now know what we want to change, we’ve researched how we can change, and we’ve got a plan to put into action. We understand, having read about the issue or discussed it with others, that the changes we’re looking for won’t happen overnight, but that over time, things will improve as long as we stick to our plan. We might have set ourselves some targets – taking a short walk four or five times a week, cutting our 20 cigarettes a day down to 15, sticking to three glasses of wine on a Saturday instead of five or six, or organising at least one hour of self care practises. We see these as small steps to get us going, and we’re prepared to increase our actions as time moves on and we gain confidence that we can do it.

Maintenance: the aim of the whole Stage of Change model is to help us get to a position where we can stay in the maintenance stage and sustain our new, healthier lifestyle. But for many people, this is the hardest part, even harder than making the initial changes. This is about trying to ensure we don’t just slip back into our old behaviours. Maybe we go out and have a slap-up meal with a huge dessert, washed down by a few glasses of wine and followed by a sly cigarette. Or maybe we go on holiday and do that on five or six separate occasions. That’s all fine as a one-off, but we recognise that it’s very easy to reintroduce the same old unhealthy habits into our lifestyle, almost without noticing it.

Relapse: relapse is recognised as a DEFINITE step in the Stages of Change model. It isn’t outside the model – it is part of the model because we understand that as humans, we’re all subject to temptation and that we may revert to our old ways. The important thing is that we don’t feel bad about ourselves but recognise exactly where we are in the model at this point – we’re at the relapse stage, which means we’re introducing unhealthy habits back into our lifestyle. We might feel that this isn’t a problem – in effect, going back to the ‘pre-contemplation’ stage – but if we see our relapse as an issue and feel we don’t want to lose the benefits we gained through the ‘action’ and ‘maintenance’ stages, our best plan now is to re-enter the ‘contemplation’ stage and begin the process again.

Once we accept that relapses are part of the change and quickly bounce back to our new forming habits instead of quitting defeated by so-called “weak will power” we are not only going to get stronger but it may give us the extra motivation to keep going.

So If you prevail and stick to your goal with time you will have fewer and fewer slips and at some point, you will set yourself FREE.

Once you make your plans for your NEW YEAR resolution or whenever you decide to change your eating habits, jump on a healthy eating plan, quitting sugar or signing up for the gym, accept the fact that you will have slips and relapses. 

Once you do, you will never feel like a failure or blame yourself for being weak but you will have the strength to bounce back and continue.

This quote says it all…

“The number of times you fall and get up is directly related to your success”

Join WELLaME – Wellness Hub, my FREE Facebook group for women who want to live healthier and happier lives without diets. I share everything from recipes and meal ideas to mindset strategies and tips & tricks so you can feel confident in your journey towards health, wellness and the body you love and enjoy.