When your week goes belly up, what is your default setting? Do you let your standards slip? What habits disappear?

Firstly it is okay to fail when you face new challenges. In fact, you need to expect to fail.

Failure is simply feedback. What you tried didn’t work. You need to try another method. Another viewpoint. Another strategy.

Let me give you an example. You have a busy weekend and have no time to get the regular food shop done or house in order. You go to bed late on Sunday night, snooze through your workout alarm and end up running late for an important meeting. You boss calls you up and gets you to re-do a whole presentation because the brief you were given was poor to start with… you skip lunch and your afternoon walk. By the time you finish work for the night you are tired, hungry, stressed and frustrated.

You can probably imagine that decision you are likely to make from these thoughts and feelings are not likely to be helpful towards your weight loss or health goals.

Bumps in the road

It is important to remember that life is not perfect. If you are waiting for the moment to ‘have enough time’ to invest in yourself, that time will simply never come. There will always be circumstances that will pull your attention and try to bring you undone.

If you do not plan for those moments when you are tired, stressed and overwhelmed, you will end up making decisions based on your default setting. Unfortunately, you will not get the results you seek by letting hungry or stress decide what you are going to eat.

It is important to consciously plan ahead  and learn how to smooth out those ‘bumps’. Why? These bumps are tremendous learning opportunities to learn self love, the ability to focus on the things you can control and not bully yourself over the things you can not.

Anything you’ve done that you consider a ‘failure’ is really an opportunity to learn, move forward and ultimately reach your goal. Maybe it is time to bust out your journal and do a little deep thinking.

Reflect on your week to consider when you think you’ve done something that didn’t work. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What happened? Describe the incident in neutral terms, just the facts.
2. Why did I choose to do what I did? Do not beat yourself up here. Again, just facts.
3. What was I thinking when I did this? And what was I feeling?

If you would like more help around mindset, weight loss and nutrition, get in touch to find out more about our 1-1 coaching packages, group training and body recomposition focus groups.