How many times have you decided that this time things were going to be different?
You’re going to lose the weight. Start going to the gym. Eat healthier. Get your shit together.
And you do!
Maybe you lose some weight. Maybe you’re crushing it at the gym. You’re meal prepping, eating your vegetables, doing all the things.
Until you’re not.
Work gets crazy. Life gets complicated. You’re exhausted. You haven’t made it to the gym in three weeks, meal planning has gone out the window, and the Feral Snack Goblin has apparently taken over your kitchen.
Maybe you’ve regained some weight. Maybe you’ve stopped doing things that used to make you feel good.
And what do you tell yourself?
I fucked up again.
What the hell is wrong with me?
And there it is.
We stop judging what happened and start judging who we are.
It’s no longer about a habit that didn’t stick or a plan that stopped working. It’s about being a failure.
And sometimes we make it even worse by comparing ourselves to who we used to be.
When I was in my twenties, I was in such great shape. I was so much thinner. Why can’t I do that now?
As though the person we were at 25 had the same body, responsibilities, circumstances, and demands as the person we are today.
Okay, Coachy Coach coming in hot.
There’s something called ambition overload.
We get excited about making changes. We create these elaborate plans, decide we’re going to overhaul everything, and underestimate just how much time, energy, and attention it’s going to take to keep all those balls in the air.
And when we can’t keep up? We blame ourselves.
But here’s where the research gets interesting.
A 2024 review published in Nature Reviews Psychology looked at what actually helps people change their behaviour. One of the findings was that simply giving people more knowledge is generally less effective than addressing the barriers that make a behaviour difficult to carry out.[1]
Think about that for a second.
Most of us already know that getting enough sleep, moving our bodies, and eating nutritious food are good for us.
So why isn’t knowing enough?
Because knowing what to do and having the capacity to do it are two very different things.
And sometimes, the answer isn’t trying harder.
Let me tell you about my rubber balls.
A friend of mine, Amy, shared an analogy with me years ago that I’ve never forgotten.
Life is like juggling balls. Some are made of glass. Others are made of rubber.
The glass balls are the things we really can’t afford to drop. The rubber balls can bounce. We can pick them up again.
A while back, my life was in a pretty bad place.
My mental health was struggling. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was dealing with injuries, pain, and impulsive behaviours that were creating real problems in my life.
And my job? I came frighteningly close to losing it.
I was also learning more about my ADHD, working with my therapist and ADHD coach, and trying to figure out how the hell to manage everything.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to maintain all the expectations I’d built around nutrition, exercise, and what I thought taking care of myself was supposed to look like.
Something had to give.
Keeping my job and addressing my mental health were glass balls. I couldn’t afford to drop them.
So I made a choice.
I kept moving my body because exercise helped me manage my stress. I worked on improving my sleep and recovery.
But the rigid expectations I’d placed on my nutrition? That was a rubber ball I could put down.
Was I completely comfortable with that decision?
Hell no.
I’d worked hard to change my body. I’d received a lot of positive attention for that transformation, and watching some of those changes slip away brought up feelings of shame and failure.
Sometimes those feelings still show up.
But I’ve learned something important.
Just because I feel like a failure doesn’t mean I am one.
My body changing doesn’t make me less capable as a coach. And your body changing, or your habits changing, doesn’t make you less worthy as a human being.
I still have that negative voice sometimes. The difference is that I don’t automatically believe everything it tells me.
I can acknowledge that my nutrition isn’t where I’d like it to be without deciding that I’m the problem.
And I can recognize that choosing where to put my limited capacity wasn’t failure.
It was prioritizing.
One dropped ball doesn’t mean you have to drop them all.
Here’s where all-or-nothing thinking can really mess with us.
Work gets nuts. You haven’t made it to the gym for a couple of weeks. You’re exhausted, your nutrition starts sliding, and suddenly you’re wondering why you should bother with any of it.
But why does one thing going sideways have to mean everything else goes with it?
Your muscles don’t suddenly decide they’re not interested in getting stronger because you ate an entire bag of chips.
Your cardiovascular health doesn’t stop benefiting from movement because your nutrition isn’t perfect.
And getting a decent night’s sleep still matters, even if the rest of your day was a shitshow.
You don’t have to abandon everything just because you can’t maintain everything.
Sometimes it’s not about doing one more thing.
(Side-eyeing you, Ed Mylett.)
Sometimes it’s about recognizing the value of the one thing you’re already managing to do.
Here’s the thing. I’m a certified nutrition coach. I know a hell of a lot about nutrition.
And knowing all that doesn’t magically give me unlimited capacity to put it into practice.
Some days, my nutrition is pretty damn good. Other days? Not so much.
But even on those days, there are things I can still do.
Maybe I hit my protein target. Maybe I make sure I’m drinking enough water. Maybe that’s the one thing I manage to do for myself that day.
And you know what? Some days, that’s a fucking great outcome.
There’s an approach to behaviour change called the dial method.[2] Instead of treating a habit like an on/off switch, you adjust the dial depending on what you can realistically manage.
Maybe you don’t have the capacity to prepare every meal this week. Could you make one meal a little easier?
Maybe your usual workout isn’t happening. Could you manage 15 minutes of yoga or mobility work? That’s often my choice because I find walking boring as hell.
Or maybe today, rest is what you actually need.
The point isn’t to do everything perfectly.
It’s to figure out what works for you, with the capacity you have right now.
I don’t have to do all the things to benefit from doing one of the things.
Let’s collect data, not judgment.
Here’s something I’d encourage you to try this week.
Notice when you do something that doesn’t align with what you’d intended.
Maybe you skip a workout. Maybe you grab takeout instead of cooking. Maybe you stay up scrolling when you’d planned to go to bed.
Before you start beating yourself up, get curious.
- What was going on in my day that might have influenced that choice?
- How was I feeling? Tired? Stressed? Overwhelmed? Bored?
- What else was demanding my attention?
- What might have made the choice I wanted to make a little easier?
You don’t have to fix anything immediately.
Just notice.
Because when we start looking at what’s actually happening instead of judging ourselves for it, we have information we can work with.
And that’s where meaningful change can begin.
You didn’t fail. Maybe the plan just wasn’t working for the life you were living.