Don't get trapped in a wallow loop!

If you haven't found success with weightloss or have fallen off the health "wagon", don't beat yourself up. You are not lazy. You just have not found your motivation or the right routine yet. There is a common tendency to blame yourself when you can't stick to certain diet guidelines. But maybe, just maybe, those guidelines are to blame.

The way I see it, you have a couple of options:

• Accept your physique/health/strength
• Choose to improve your physique/health/strength

What you shouldn't do is:

• Hate your current physique/health/strength and keep status quo

I was there before and it sucked. I was in a wallow loop. I would stick my toe into self-improvement, just to turtle up at the cold unfamiliarity and wallow on how much I suck at doing anything. Don't get trapped in the wallow loop. 

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Let's say you just can't accept your current status, but keep "backsliding"?

STOP.BREATH.REFLECT

And answer the following question: What triggered the backslide? 

• Was it lack of will power? Maybe you decided on too many changes at once. 
• What are you going to do about it?
• Start small. Instead of saying, "I'm cutting out all carbs. Say: "I'll replace rice with cauliflower rice"
• Once you conquer a small change, it will give you motivation to tackle larger changes. Slow and Steady. Weightloss is not a race.
• Were you using food for comfort? Look, I use food for comfort ALL THE FREAKING TIME. The key is to pick healthier alternative comfort foods. 
• What are you going to do about it?
• Choose your pick-me-up foods I talked about in this post. If you turn towards healthier comfort foods a lot, you probably won't lose the weight (in all honesty). However, it will condition you away from more processed, sugar laden foods, which will definitely cause you to gain weight in the long run.
• And by steering clear of junk food, you can prove to yourself that you can change your behavior and it will give you motivation to take the next step of not running to comfort foods every time you have an emotional uprising (psst: I'm still learning this. Now I probably turn to comfort food every 3 uprisings)
• Did you just not have time? You don't have to cook everything from scratch. You don't have to plan everything to a "T". 
• What are you going to do about it?
• Stock up on quick meals, like Applegate sausages. Keep staples like lettuce, frozen veggies, lemons, olive oil, frozen bread, protein powder, and nutbutters. 
• Aim to cook protein twice a week and make leftovers. You can then wing the rest of your meals based on quick meals and your staples.
• Once you've chosen to make a home-based meal over stopping by Panera (and realized it wasn't so bad), it will probably give you the motivation needed to get you through the rest of a tough week. You got this.

For weight loss, what you want to do is get the ball rolling. You'll be surprised how quickly your routine will take off once you conquer small changes. And if you roll back:

STOP.BREATH.REFLECT