Ep #69: When You Fall off the Wagon: 3 Steps to Recover

You are listening to the Strong as a Working Mom podcast, Episode #69. What do you do if you fall off the wagon with your habits? I’ve got three steps to make it super simple for you.

Welcome to the Strong as a Working Mom podcast. If you’re balancing career, family, wellness, and some days sanity, you are in the right place. This is where high-achieving, busy, working moms get the tools they need to eat, move, and think. I’m your host, physician, personal trainer, and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. Let’s do this.

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here today, I’m answering a listener question that’s come up a few times now, and it came up again last week. I haven’t addressed it yet on the podcast, and as we’re heading into the end of the year, starting with Halloween quickly followed by the holidays, I think this is an appropriate time to cover this question.

The question I got was: How do you recover after you fallen off the wagon? Meaning, what do you do when you started a new habit or created a plan for yourself and then you stumble? Or to really pare it down to the bare bones, what do you do when you mess up? That is related to your nutrition, your exercise, or really any habit for that matter.

So, if you mess up, then what? What do you do? I think this is a really excellent question to dive into for one key reason, you are human. You’re going to stumble. You’re going to mess up. We all do. You’re going to fall off the wagon at some point.

Why? Because there is no such thing as perfect. No one person on this earth is perfect with his or her diet or exercise, so we have to address this face on. I want the stumbles that you encounter to be as short lived and as drama free as possible so you can get on with your life and get back to your habits, without your slip up becoming a downward spiral.

As I address this, I’m going to take a pragmatic approach here, because I need this to be as digestible and as practical for you as possible. I want this to be simple and easy for you. My goal is for you to see your stumble as nothing more and nothing less than that, a stumble. So you can move past it and get back to your habits as quickly as possible.

While I normally like to get very granular about things and pick things apart, there is a point at which you have to let your stumble go and decide to move forward. We’re going to get into exactly how you do this.

All right, so let’s go. The first step, when you’ve got a stumble, is to own it. Just acknowledge it. All that means, is that you simply accept responsibility for your actions. I’ll use a common scenario that I coach clients through all the time. So, say you’re going out to dinner with friends. You made a plan in advance that you’re going to have a nice dinner, but you’re skipping alcohol, and you’re skipping dessert.

You thought it through ahead of time, you made a choice, and you want a great dinner, but you’re fine without the added dessert or alcohol. But then your friends order a few desserts for the table, and before you know it you’ve had multiple forkfuls of each of them. Or maybe you finished one all together, when you didn’t really want it in the first place because you were already full from dinner.

Or maybe, despite your decision to skip alcohol with dinner, your friends ordered a bottle of wine and a glass appears on the table in front of your plate. Your friend goes around and fills everyone’s glass including yours. At which point you decide, ‘well, there is no way I can skip the wine now that it’s been poured into my glass,’ so you have it. And then you have another.

These are two common scenarios I’ve come across often. So, what do you do in either situation? You own it. Very simply, you acknowledge to yourself that you went off your plan. That’s it. You don’t have to wear it like a scarlet letter on your chest, okay? You just own your behavior.

Part of the reason I bring this up, is that sometimes you make your stumble out to be something for which you had no choice. In the case of the wine, you might think to yourself, “Well, there was no way I could skip the wine. My friend bought it for me. I couldn’t upset my friend or say no or skip it.” Or you tell me there was no way you could skip dessert because all your friends were eating it, and it would be weird if you didn’t have any.

My question to that will always be, “It will be weird to who? It would be upsetting to who?” So often you worry about what other people will think if you make a choice to skip the alcohol, or say no to the bread, or not have a drink. You’ll tell me that it will be weird for your friends or your family if you don’t have what they’re having.

But I’m going to respectfully challenge you on this, and ask you to get really clear on who it’s actually going to be weird for, your friends or family, or is it maybe going to be weird for you? There’s a big difference here and I think it’s important to pick that apart.

Often, the thing you’re worried about your friends or family thinking, is what you’re already thinking about yourself. When you tell me your friends will think you’re boring if you skip wine at a party, I will ask if that’s really what your friends are thinking. Because you can’t read their minds, and I would hope that your friends aren’t calling you boring. Or is it what you’re thinking about yourself?

I bring this up because no one is a mind reader. Unless you can get into your friends’ or your family’s minds and read them, you really don’t know what they’re thinking about the choices you’re making. Unless they outright tell you, you have no idea what your friends think about your choices.

And at the end of the day, does that even really matter? Should it really matter? Are you really going to let the fear that your friends might think you’re boring stop you from following through on your decision?

My whole point in bringing this up here, is that often we make our stumbles out to be as if we had no choice. But I would argue instead that you always have a choice. Often you end up projecting your fears or concerns onto your friends. You make your own fears, the fears of your friend. And you use that against yourself to make it out as if you had no choice.

But you always have choice, okay? You always have a choice. Because you have a choice, if you have a stumble, own it and take responsibility for it.

Alright, next, once you own and acknowledge your stumble, the next thing to do is get curious about it and start asking questions. I don’t mean, “Why can’t I do anything right? Why am I such a screw up?” No, we will get to more on that in a few minutes when we cover what not to do.

What I mean by asking curious questions is two things. First, what did you learn from this? So, I say it often, especially to my kids, even though they roll their eyes at me, you learn more from your mistakes than you do your successes. Take your mistakes and see them as an opportunity to learn.

For example, if you get home from work, only to raid the kitchen and eat everything in sight between the time you walk through the door to the time you eat dinner, that’s information. So, what can you learn from that?

Do you need to have a bigger lunch to keep you satisfied until the time you eat dinner? Or do you prefer to have a snack sometime in the afternoon so you don’t come home hungry? Do you need to find a way of coping with the stress of your workday besides food? Like, a glass of water, a stretch routine, a few deep breaths in your bedroom before you head to the kitchen to make dinner. Whatever it is, ask questions about your mistake.

But the key here is to ask productive questions. Every stumble is an opportunity to get curious, instead of judgmental. Ask good questions and get good answers so you can troubleshoot your habits. Make your questions kind and interested, instead of something like, “Why can’t I do anything right?” There’s a big difference in the outcome of those questions.

I do this often with clients who want to be morning exercisers, but struggle. If you are regularly sleeping through your alarm, and ultimately skipping your workouts altogether, that’s information. If you have a plan to get up early and repeatedly don’t follow through on that plan, that’s telling you something.

And so, again, instead of beating yourself up about sleeping through your alarm, ask yourself what can you learn from this. There’s information to be collected there. Is it that you need to go to bed earlier so you can get up earlier? If that’s the case, don’t stop there. Keep working the process backwards to determine all the things that need to happen in order for you to go to bed early.

Choose your bedtime, then work it backwards and decide all the things that need to get done beforehand so you can make it to bed on time. Is it that you need to have all of your gear, including your workout gear and your water bottle and your clothes for the next day, all laid out the night before, so it’s waiting for you to roll out of bed and put yourself together?

Do you need to sleep in your workout gear? I’ve had some clients do that, and it works. Do you need to have an accountability partner? Like someone you’re meeting for a workout or an exercise class in order to get you out of bed? Some people are more apt to get out of bed if they know a friend or a trainer or a class is waiting for them.

Do you need to make sure that everyone’s lunches are packed so it’s one less thing to wrangle with in the morning, giving you more time to work out? What is it for you? If you’re willing to go beyond the surface level and look past the stumble itself, there is a load of helpful information to be unearthed that will help you troubleshoot your habits. But you have to be willing to ask the question, what did I learn from this?

Once you’ve determined what you’ve learned from your stumble, the second piece of this is decide what you will do differently going forward. That step is essential. The purpose of mistakes is to give us information. But that information does you absolutely no good unless you use it. So, use that information and try something different.

As an example, most of you are super busy throughout your workday. Some of you are jumping from meeting to meeting. Or for my physician friends, you’re hurrying from patient to patient, and you just don’t leave any time for yourself to eat. So, you skip lunch.

But then, by two or three o’clock, you get so hungry you end up grazing on snacks, having leftover pizza that’s been sitting out in the break room for who knows how long, grabbing a handful of nuts from your lunch, maybe a piece or two of candy from someone’s desk, and you end up grazing and ultimately eating more than you intended. But it’s not a real lunch. It’s just bites and snacks here and there.

Then you come home from work still not entirely satisfied, and you end up eating more than you planned for dinner. This happens all the time. So, what can you learn from this? Maybe you take away that you have to make time during your work day to eat lunch.

Maybe you decide that taking the extra 10 to 15 minutes out of your afternoon to actually eat lunch is worth the effort, even if it puts you a little behind. Because eating a real lunch keeps you on track with your goals, and that’s important to you.

If eating a real lunch in the middle of your day keeps you from coming home hangry and overdoing it, then it may be worth it to prioritize eating lunch. So, with that information, and knowing what you’ve learned, what do you do differently going forward? Do you set an alarm on your phone for 12:30 that says, ‘hey, it’s time for lunch?’ Do you have your lunch sitting at your desk instead of down the hallway in the break room, so that you can have it ready when lunchtime comes?

Do you make your lunch be something handheld like a wrap, as opposed to a salad that you need to eat with a fork, so you can get through it faster and with less potential mess? What changes do you need to make in order to make this habit work? What are you going to do differently? And most important, what is your backup?

If you know me by now, you know I’m all about having a plan. But that being said, you also need a backup. So when you’re thinking of what you can do differently to ensure that you eat lunch, instead of coming home hangry and grazing and snacking until dinner, I would also encourage you to have a backup plan.

If you’re just not able to eat your lunch that day, then what? Do you have a go-to snack? Preferably one that has fiber and protein to keep you satisfied until you get home. Do you keep a stash of protein shakes or cheese sticks or apples that you keep at your work for exactly those kinds of days? What is it going to be? What is your plan B? This is your failure plan. Just as you need a plan for what you want to do on most days, have a plan for

what you will do when all hell breaks loose and you’re not able to follow through on your plan. It’s easy when it’s easy, right?

It’s easy to take 10 to 15 minutes for lunch when everything is running according to plan, all your meetings run on time, and there are no unexpected snafus getting in your way. And it’s awesome when those days happen and your schedule runs smoothly.

But know that there will always be something, okay? There will always be something to derail you from the habits you are trying to establish. That is when having a failure plan is essential.

To summarize, ask two questions: What did I learn from this? What will I do differently next time? Take the time to come up with real, solid, actionable answers. This is not the time to say, “I just need to do it.” If you’re telling me that you’re sleeping through your alarm, or skipping your evening workout multiple days in a row, saying ‘I just need to do’ it is not going to work. That does not troubleshoot your habits.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it here, but ‘I just need to do it’ is surface level. If it were that easy, you’d already be doing it. So, do yourself a favor and get specific, look for the holes. Look for where the holes in the Swiss cheese are lining up. And then, come up with a real, step wise, concrete plan to troubleshoot your stumble.

You know what happens when you leave your plans vague, and when you leave change to chance. ‘Just do it’ is not a plan. Okay? Seriously. You may be shaking your head, but honestly, this is where I see so many of my clients stumble further.

A client will stumble, but then she doesn’t take the time to really look at where her habits are falling apart. She’s not looking for definite, tangible, specific steps she can take to correct her stumbles. Instead she dismisses it by saying, “I just need to do it.” So, I’m challenging you to ask for more of yourself and get specific.

I know this isn’t easy. It’s not necessarily fun coming up with a plan and outlining steps for how you’ll get your workout done. It takes work upfront, but you have to decide if it’s worth it to you. You decide what it’s worth. But ‘I just need to do it’ is not a plan. Ask for more of yourself.

All right, next, the final step of getting through your stumble, or recovering when you fall off the wagon, is to move on. Yep, that’s it, you move on. So, in full transparency, when I was putting together this episode and coming up with an outline, I put the title “How to Recover After a Stumble.” And then I had a bulleted list of 1-2-3: 1- Own it, 2- Learn from it and decide what to do differently, and 3- Move on.

I hemmed and hawed for a while, and wondered if I should add another step, or if there’s something else fancy you need to do in order to move forward. But I decided, actually, no. There’s nothing fancy you need to do here. So, this might have been the shortest outline I’ve ever created for a podcast, but I’m going to run with it.

After you mess up, you keep your eyes forward and you move on, okay? You don’t make it any more complicated than it needs to be. This is coming from someone who loves to make things more complicated than they need to be. I’m telling you to simply keep moving forward. You keep going and you keep working on your habits. That’s it.

As I’m talking about this, it’s a really nice segue to lead us to talking about what not to do after you stumble. I just suggested that once you learn from your mistake and decide what to do differently, you move on. I really do mean that, because some of you take that one misstep and turn it into a reason to beat yourself up. Hear me now, don’t do that.

I’m asking you to treat yourself with compassion as you move forward. Have self-compassion. Ick, I know. But it’s not ick. If you don’t like that word “self-compassion,” like I don’t, or feel that you are too tough for self-compassion, that is okay, do it anyway.

I will be the first to admit that the concept of self-compassion did not sit well with me because quite frankly, it seemed too nice. I thought I was too sarcastic and too hardened to be nice to myself, but I was wrong. Self-compassion is essential for everyone. Everyone. Even the most tough, badass people on the planet, they need some self-compassion.

If you need a reminder about what constitutes self-compassion, let me remind you of its three components, as defined by the mother of self-compassion, Kristin Neff. Self-compassion involves self-kindness instead of self-judgment. All that means, is you are nice and understanding towards yourself, instead of hyper critical and mean to yourself.

Self-compassion also means that you recognize your disappointment in yourself as part of the shared human experience. In plain English, because we are all human, we are all imperfect and we all mess up, and you are not alone in that process.

And the last, self-compassion means that you take a mindful, balanced approach to the emotions you have. You don’t ignore them, but you also don’t over identify or over dramatize them either. In plain English, you approach your emotions in a balanced way.

So, I’m asking you that when you stumble, as we all do, that you treat yourself with self-compassion instead of beating yourself up. Remember, you cannot beat yourself up into your next best version. Change does not work that way.

Remember what BJ Fogg says, he’s the author of Tiny Habits. I love his quote so much; I share it all the time. “You change best when you feel good.” Okay, let me say it again because it’s just that important. “You change best when you feel good.”

So, if you want the changes you’re making to last, you need to find a way to be kind and self-compassionate towards yourself when you mess up. Because it’s not a matter of if, it’s when you mess up. And my guess is, that many of you have proven to yourself over and over again that when it comes to habit changes like diet and exercise, being mean to yourself when you mess up simply does not work.

If that doesn’t work, and you’ve tried and failed that route over and over again, let’s try something different. Okay? No one on this earth is perfect, so I would encourage you to practice self-compassion for the inevitable times that you are not perfect.

If you’re worried, remember too, that being compassionate towards yourself doesn’t mean you’re letting yourself off the hook. You still have expectations of yourself, and you still have high but not impossible standards for yourself. But let me make it loud and clear, you are not letting yourself off easy by having self-compassion. It simply means you approach your mess up with kindness, with perspective, while recognizing that you’re a human being doing your best.

In addition to not beating yourself up, the other thing I’m encouraging you not to do, is let one stumble turn into a downward spiral, where you make a series of choices that do not help. You don’t let one choice turn into a series of choices that leads you back to habits you’re trying to give up.

There is nothing good that comes from taking one small stumble, like eating two enormous pieces of cake when you’re meant to have zero, and turning it into a negative vortex of, “Have I messed up. This is impossible, I cannot stay on track while you go and reach for a bag of potato chips,” because you think all hope is lost. That does not help you at all.

If you have a habit of doing this, which I know some of you do, because you told me this is your opportunity to rewrite the ending of your usual story. Instead of making those two pieces of cake, or that one or two missed workouts, mean you are a failure, how about you make it mean you’re learning? Instead of deciding that your stumble means you cannot succeed and that change is impossible.

What if you decided, ‘hey, I can work with this. I’m fine.’ What would happen then? So, I’ll tell you what happens, because I’ve seen it. When you truly believe that one misstep is exactly that, one misstep, you don’t make it mean anything. You don’t allow your brain to go down that familiar, well-worn, perfectionistic all-or-nothing pathway that says, “This is hopeless. Just pull out the bag of Oreos already.”

No, you take control of your brain, you recognize the familiar negative thought loop that leads you to make more choices you aren’t proud of, and you stop it in its tracks. You practice thinking new and different thoughts.

“I am learning that was one choice. The next one will be different. I can do this.” Practicing those thoughts will move you forward. Telling yourself, “This is hopeless. I did it again,” that does not move you forward. Let me run with that just a little further.

I mentioned it just a second ago and I want to go back to it. Make your next choice one that you will be proud of. James Clear says it so well in his book, Atomic Habits. I’m going to share it here. He says, very simply, “Never miss twice.” Never miss twice.

So, he argues, that on the road to establishing habits, one mistake is an outlier. But two mistakes in a row is the start of a pattern. Yes. What this means, is that when you’ve made a choice you’re not proud of and eat your weight in chips and salsa before your dinner even gets to the table, make your next choice one you’re proud of making.

When the margarita glasses come around, you say, “No, thank you.” Or when you sleep through your morning workout, you go for a 15-minute walk when you get home from work. You set your alarm for the next morning and get up and get the workout done. You don’t let one “bad” decision turn into a cascade of bad decisions that leaves you to declare, “I’ll start again on Monday.” No, it’s one decision.

Make the next one, the very next one, a decision you’re proud of. This is really about bouncing back as quickly as possible from a stumble. It’s like what my kid’s football coach tells him, “When you mess up a play, you’ve got a memory like a goldfish and shake it off, so you can get on with the rest of the game.” You don’t make it into a big deal. You don’t let it mess with your head, really.

The benefit of practicing this, of practicing never miss twice, is huge. When you adopt the approach of never miss twice, one, you’re getting back into your habit as soon as possible and reminding your brain ‘hey, this is how it is around here. I am someone who gets her workout done. I am someone who sticks to her meal plan.’

And two, taking the approach of never miss twice teaches self-trust. Remember, I’ve said it a few times already, you’re human. I’m human, we’re all human. By our very nature of that we’re all going to screw up. The sooner you recover from your mess up and make a choice that you’re proud of, the sooner you will be on your way to trusting yourself.

When you can make your misstep mean nothing more than that, and make it mean absolutely nothing about you as a human being, then you’re onto something. I think people underestimate the power of that. But in my years of coaching, I see more and more how important this is. In order for you to succeed at changing your habits you have to build trust with yourself.

I want you to have your own back, and know that if you mess up it’s okay. Because you will own it and take care of yourself. You will not make it into a big deal, and you will not be hypercritical and tear yourself to shreds. You will recover quickly and make a different decision the very next time. The more you do this, the more you build self-trust. When you know that you won’t beat yourself up about your mistakes, you’ll be more likely to keep trying to keep going.

Sometimes we just stop trying because we know how hard we are on ourselves when we fail. But remember, it’s chips and salsa, it’s a cookie, it’s a morning workout; it’s one decision. If you can make it no more mountainous than that, you can get on with it and keep going. That is essential. That is priceless.

I just hit on it, but the last piece to recovering from a stumble, don’t make your mess up and do a bigger deal than it needs to be okay. Alex Toussaint says it all the time in the Peloton, “It is not that deep,” okay? It’s not that deep. The cookie you had, that you did not mean to have, it does not have any bearing on your moral character or who you are as a person.

That skipped workout does not mean you are a failure. It’s one decision. That’s it. Please, do not make it mean any more than that. I have talked through stumbles with many clients, and this can be especially challenging for any perfectionist or all-or-nothing thinkers. If that’s you, I would simply ask you to zoom out for a second and ask yourself what that gets you?

What does being a perfectionist about your habits do for you? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Being a perfectionist about your habits keeps you trapped in a cycle. You hold yourself to an impossible standard and you don’t meet it. And then, when you don’t meet your impossible standard, you use that as a reason to go off the rails until you get sick of it and start the process again.

I know, because I’ve been there, I’ve done it. It’s agonizing being on a hamster wheel. It’s Einstein’s definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But the perfectionist approach, followed by going off the rails, it will always bring you the same results, no change.

So, trust me on this and give yourself some grace. Recognize that you’re going to mess up, and stop holding yourself to a standard that no human being can live up to. It will feel a lot, a lot, a lot better than the stress of trying to get a 100%, A+, only to break the streak and go off the chain as you stuff yourself with pastries and start over again on Monday.

Stop that cycle and be kind to yourself when you mess up. Don’t make it into any bigger of a deal than it needs to be. That’s why the third step in this process is to move on, period. Make the stumbles as small and insignificant as possible.

Of course, I want you to learn from your mistakes, but without dwelling on them. Because the only thing dwelling on your mistakes does is slow you down and set you up for more mistakes. Do not make your night of one too many chocolate chip cookies mean anything more than you ate too many chocolate chip cookies. Do not make your one missed workout mean anything more than you missed a workout, it’s not a big deal. It’s not that deep. You move forward.

So, to keep this all in perspective, remember that you make loads of decisions every day. There’s a widely cited article, from Cornell University, that suggests you make over 220 food decisions every day. That’s over 1,500 food decisions in a week.

I have no idea how scientists were able to figure that out, but again, by the math, we’re talking about 1,500 food decisions in one week; 1,500. And that’s just food. We’re not even talking about alcohol, or sleep, or exercise.

Think of all of the decisions you make about your eating and moving in the span of one day. There are a lot, and not every single one of those decisions is going to be perfect. Not all of your decisions are going to serve your ultimate goal.

My point in bringing this up, is that I want you to see that no one decision is going to break you. Okay? The decision to have pizza and fries instead of the salad you brought from home? One decision. The decision to sleep through your alarm and skip your workout today? One decision. One decision in isolation is not going to break you.

So, if you’ve had an awesome week, where you stayed on track with your nutrition only to eat your weight and doughnuts on Saturday while at the orchard with your kids, remember, that is one decision. One. Each decision you make is just one decision in a sea of loads and loads of decisions that you make throughout the day.

You can let each decision stand alone and not mean anything more than what it is. Or you can make yourself miserable by focusing on the decisions that you aren’t proud of, and use those isolated decisions to fuel a downward spiral where you go off the rails. I don’t recommend that.

Instead, zoom out and look at all of the other decisions you did make that are in support of your goals. Remember all of the work that you are doing and all the habits you’ve already put in place. And remind yourself of the positive decisions you’ve made, instead of focusing on the one thing you didn’t do well.

Here, in my opinion, is the most important thing to remember as you work to change your habits and manage the stumbles that inevitably happen along the way: The only decision that will stop you from reaching your goal is a decision to quit. That’s it, really. Quitting or giving up on yourself is the one decision that will keep you from reaching your goal.

So, to go back to the initial question that so many of you have asked me, there really is no falling off the wagon. I really don’t think of it that way. There is no wagon, honestly. Instead, I think of it as this, either you make a decision that gets you closer to your goals, or you make a decision that takes you a little farther away from your goals.

You’re either moving forward or backward, but you’re not falling off the trail or off the wagon altogether, you’re just picking up where you left off. The only time you really fall off the wagon is when you decide to give up on your goal altogether. That’s it.

If you hang around with me, I will not let you quit. You can recover from your decision to eat too many donuts. You can bounce back from the workout you missed today and get it done tomorrow. You can stick to water instead of wine the next time you’re out to dinner this week.

And ultimately, you can decide that you are in this process for the long haul. You can make the decision right here and now that despite any stumbles along the way, you are not quitting. You are not done. All right?

If you need help finding those answers, let’s talk. When you coach with me, you’ll not only practice changing your habits, you’ll also learn the tools and mindset you need to manage the inevitable stumbles that happen along the way. Most importantly, I will not let you give up on yourself. Check out my website. Go to www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, tell me your goals, and let’s get started.

Thank you, again, for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

If you like what you’ve been hearing, please review the show. I would love to get your feedback and ideas. Your suggestions have inspired episodes and will help me make the show better for you. Share this podcast with a friend, text a show link, share a screenshot, or post a link to the show on your social media. Be sure to tag me @CarrieHollandMD on either Instagram or Facebook, so I can follow along and engage with you.

This is how we get the word out to other working moms who want to feel strong, inside and out. If you know someone who wants to feel better or eat and move differently but she is too tired or too busy, it is time to change things up. You know making that change starts with how you think, and that is what we do here on the Strong as a Working Mom podcast. I’ll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to Strong as a Working Mom. If you want more information on how to eat, move, and think, so you can live in the body you want, with the mind to match, visit me at CarrieHollandMD.com.