Ep #116: Sticking With Your Habits When You’re off Your Routine

This is the Strong is a Mindset podcast, episode number 116. If being off your routine is messing with your habits, let’s fix it.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland.

Hey, how are you? What’s new, what’s good? So what’s good here? We are going to talk about what to do when you get off your routine and how to keep that from messing with your habits. So this is another doozy that comes up often in coaching sessions. And I’m guessing that some of you listening might struggle when you’re off your routine too. And I want to help you get past this.

So here’s where this comes from. Too many of you have told me that it’s too hard to stay on track towards your health and fitness goals when you’re off your routine. You’ve shared that if you’re not at home, or if you’re on vacation, or if you’re traveling for work, or if your work schedule gets turned inside out, or if your kids are off school, then it becomes nearly impossible for you to stick with any sort of plan. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And I’m going to try in the next 30-ish minutes to blow that all up, okay? I want to share with you how thinking that it’s too hard to stick to a plan when you’re out of your routine is not helping you.

And more importantly, from the get-go, I want you to start thinking about this. Your routine is likely constantly changing and shifting. So for some of you who have school-aged kids, you may note that there’s a shift in your routine from summer to the school year. And maybe it takes you a few weeks to get used to the kids being home with you. And then the kids go back to school and it takes a few weeks for you to get used to early mornings and getting everyone where they need to be on time. And then a school holiday comes up and that throws you off your routine too.

Or if you travel a lot for work, there’s a shift in your routine when you’re home for a bit and then you’re living out of a suitcase while you’re on a work trip. Or if one of your coworkers is out on leave and you have to cover for them, you may find that your routine gets shaken up then. Or if you work nights and then you flip to days, then your routine gets shaken up there too. And these are just some of the examples that I’ve come across with coaching clients. And maybe you’ve run into these situations too.

But some of you use these changes to your routine as a reason to not stick to any sort of plan. And you’ll say, “I just need things to settle down a bit,” or “I just need to get into routine and then I can focus on my plan.” But then, as an example, just as soon as the school year starts, then sports and after school activities start, or once you get home from your work trip, you go on vacation, or once you’re done covering for your coworker, you take on a new role with more responsibilities and your evenings at work just got a little longer and it becomes a series of changes to your routine, one after another. And you can spend months or even years waiting for things to settle down. You can spend a whole lot of time waiting for the dust to settle or waiting for life to get less busy and unpredictable so that you can get back into routine and start focusing on your health and fitness goals.

But at the risk of making you mad, I’m going to argue that this approach does not help you. And most importantly, this approach does not work. When you let being off your routine keep you from following your plan, that’s going to leave you stopping and starting your habits over and over again. And those habits ultimately aren’t going to stick. And I bring this up to point out, there will always be something, okay? You can pretty much bet on that. There will always be something that comes up to throw you off your routine. I’ve seen it happen for myself. I’ve seen it happen for my clients. And I’ve determined that that’s just the way life is. There’s always something.

There is a reason people say that the only constant is change. And that’s because it’s the truth. There will always be something to put a wrench in your routine, always. So I think of routines really more like an undulating baseline. It’s like a series of waves with a pattern of rising and falling in alternation. And if you were to draw a line through the middle, you’d get a nice straight horizontal line.

But if you look at the day-to-day, really your baseline is a series of highs and lows that ultimately averages out to a straight line. That’s what I think of when I think of our routines. There’s a baseline, but there are loads of highs and lows about that baseline. And I want you to be ready for it. I want you to be ready to ride those waves and still stay on track. And I want you to see the times when you’re not in a routine as an opportunity to get creative and practice sticking to a plan anyway, instead of seeing it as a reason to quit and put off following your plan until next week.

So let’s get into it. Let’s talk about why being out of your routine could be a problem and where you might be getting stuck. But then more importantly, let’s talk about what to do about it. Let’s talk about what to do if you feel completely off your routine, because it will most certainly happen, it will happen often, and it does not need to be a reason that you put off reaching your goals. And I’m going to show you, and I’m going to explain to you, how to keep moving forward no matter what things are happening to your schedule.

All right, so let’s go. Okay, so first, let’s talk about why being out of your routine could be a problem. Well, when you’re not at home, or you’re not in your usual environment, you may not have access to your routine. Access to the things that you’re used to as far as food or equipment is concerned. And so this most typically happens when you’re traveling, either for work or for vacation. You may not be able to make egg whites for breakfast like you’re used to. You might only have access to a restaurant and they may not have egg whites.

Or from an exercise perspective, if you’re out of your usual routine, you may not have access to a gym or whatever workout equipment it is that you prefer. Or you may be on a different schedule entirely and you’re getting up super early or staying up super late and that’s messing up your usual workout time. So it’s obvious, your environment matters. If you don’t have access to the usual foods or exercise equipment that you’re used to, or if you’re on a completely different schedule than what’s typical for you, then yes, you’ll be off your routine.

And when your routines are disrupted, it becomes easier to make choices that are either impulsive, less healthy, or both. And with that, you may also be exposed to more foods that are not in line with your plan, or you may not have your food prepped like you usually do, which is forcing you to find something else to eat. So maybe your schedule has been shaken up and you didn’t have time to do your meal prep over the weekend like you usually would. So then you have to fend for yourself and make do with whatever is in front of you or decide to get takeout or get something that you didn’t make at home.

And whatever it is, whether it’s travel, vacation, a change to your work schedule, a change to your family schedule, it doesn’t really matter what it is because the underlying issue is the same. And this is key. Routine provides stability and control. And most humans crave that because most of us really like control, right? Most people like stability. Stability and control equals safe. So when your routines get disrupted, that sense of stability and control gets knocked right out from underneath you and you may feel lost.

If you have eaten the same Ezekiel English muffin and cottage cheese for breakfast every day for the last 12 weeks, and suddenly you’re staying with family and don’t have Ezekiel muffins for miles, well, then you’ve got to figure something out. And that can be unsettling. You might feel like you’re floundering. You may feel out of control. And you may feel like you don’t know what to do. You may feel like you’re going to lose all the progress that you’ve made. And that doesn’t feel good.

When you’re out of your routine, it can be really easy to throw your hands in the air and declare, “Well, since I can’t do it exactly like I would while I’m at home, why bother? There’s no way this will be good enough, so I’ll just throw in the towel and eat waffles and bacon because that’s what’s here.” And what I find is that often perfectionism shows up in full force when you get off your routine and you let that perfectionism derail you even further.

So for example, if your work schedule is crazy and you don’t have time to meal prep like you normally would on the weekends, sometimes you use that as a reason to say, “Well, I can’t make what I usually do and this isn’t going to be good enough and I can’t do it just so, so instead I’ll just eat whatever.” But that doesn’t help you. Even if you do have multiple 12 or 14 hour days in front of you, yes, that’s hard. Yes, that’s a long honking time to be on at work. But no, it does not mean that eating on plan has to go out the window, okay?

Or even if your sleep schedule is messed up from overnight shifts and normally you would exercise for 30 minutes in the morning, don’t let the change in your schedule mean that all bets are off and you can’t do anything. Being off your routine does not bar you from exercise or eating healthy altogether, okay? You don’t have to hang it up and forget about your plan just because your routine has changed. Even if it’s not perfect, you can still do something that will keep you moving forward. And when you do something, even if it’s not exactly the way you would typically do it, you are still taking control. And that feels really good, especially in contrast to throwing your hands up in the air and letting your circumstances dictate what you can or cannot do about your fitness. You are taking control, even if your routine feels out of control.

All right, so even though you may be hearing this and intellectually it may make sense, sometimes you still get stuck and you let being out of a routine turn into a spiral where you end up abandoning your habits altogether because you can’t do them exactly the way you normally would. So let me tell you some of the things that clients have told me when they get off their routines. These are thoughts I’ve heard multiple times. And if you have these thoughts too, you’re in good company. But these thoughts are keeping you totally stuck, okay? So we need to pull them apart.

Okay, so the first thing that gets in your way is that when you’re off your routine, you think this is going to be really hard. Honestly, I don’t know how many times a client has said that and I have to say that it is most definitely not helping you. When you think to yourself or when you tell me, “Oh my God, this is going to be so hard, I have no idea how I’m going to do this, there is no way I can make any sort of progress when I’m off my routine,” that is just setting yourself up.

So sometimes even the way you describe what your day and your schedule is like, sometimes it’s as simple as the words you use. That is enough to tell me the way that you’re looking at your life. When you tell me something like, “My schedule is totally turned upside down. Everything is thrown off. My schedule is a mess right now. There is no way I can stay on track with my plan because everything is crazy.” Think about that. What kind of message are you sending to yourself? What are you saying? What are you putting out into the world when you think that way?

Because remember, the thoughts you have and the way you talk about yourself and the way you talk about your life, remember, that’s your filter, okay? Those thoughts become your filter as you go and interact with your world. And what comes out of your mouth comes into your life, right? So think about what you’re saying. If you’re thinking to yourself that your life and your schedule is a hot mess right now and everything is off kilter, what do you think that’s going to do for your ability to follow through on anything? What is that going to do for your capacity to stick to healthy decisions?

If you decide that your life is chaos and it’s going to be super hard to follow your plan, what happens? Well, you look for and you find all the evidence that supports your life is chaos. And you let your long days be a reason to not only not to prepare food, but you let those long days be a reason to run through the drive-thru and get a burger and fries instead of picking up a ready-made salad at the grocery store. You let your early start mean chaos and skip trying to get in any kind of workout altogether instead of getting up and doing a 10-minute workout, which is more than a zero-minute workout.

What comes out of your mouth comes into your life. If you declare that your life is chaos, that is the reality that you’re going to create for yourself. So another way that you’re getting yourself stuck when you’re off your routine is by thinking that you have to wait for things to calm down, or you have to wait for your life to get back into a routine before you can start taking action to change your habits.

So in one word, no. I’m going to be a bit bold here and declare no. Barring true real health issues or life and death emergencies, I would say that waiting for things to calm down or waiting for your life to get back into a routine is really just a way of putting off doing what you need to do. It’s delaying the inevitable. And here’s what I would argue. My goal is that your habits are small enough and simple enough that you don’t need to wait for things to be super calm and settled to get back to them because your habits are small enough and easy enough that you can squeeze them in where you can.

So let me explain what I mean by this. So say you’re working on getting meal prep into your life so you aren’t relying so much on fast food or restaurant food for meals. But then life happens, your schedule shifts, and now your weekends are getting eaten up by either work, family activities, or both, and your routine is off and you don’t have time to get anything ready. Well, instead of waiting for your kid’s soccer season to end which some of you have told me is your plan, I would argue, how about no?

How about you find something that you can do instead, even if you can’t do your full-on meal prep to keep you on track until soccer season ends? Or how about you find an alternative like having pre-packaged salads and cut up rotisserie chicken delivered to your door from Costco if you can’t go to the store and then all you do is scoop the chicken and go. So these are just some examples here. And the larger point is this, do not wait until the dust settles, okay? Do not wait until you get back into a routine to start working on your habits, okay?

Honestly, of everything I hear, this is probably one of the most common thought errors that is keeping you from moving forward. And yes, I’m pulling out a coach term and using the phrase thought error here because that is truly how I see it. You have yourself convinced that your life and your schedule needs to be just so in just a certain way so that then you can make time for your habits. But that’s backwards. Instead of trying to wait to fit your life into your habits, how about you get really, really good at fitting your habits into your life?

Meaning you decide, “I’m done with fast food takeout five nights a week because I don’t like how I feel when I eat it and I want to eat healthier and lose weight.” And then you really, really decide it. But beyond that, you take the extra step and you make it happen. Even when all hell breaks loose and your work weeks have been awful with no end in sight. Even when you are in the busiest after school sports season your house has ever seen. Even when summer ends and fall begins and you have to get used to another change to the routine. Even when you have a ton of travel and spend half the month in a hotel. You don’t let any of those things stop you from practicing your habits.

So please do not tell yourself that you just need to wait until things calm down. Please don’t tell yourself that you need to wait until life gets less chaotic, or that you need to wait until things are more routine, and then you can get back to your habits. Because you know what happens. As soon as your work schedule calms down, something happens at home to upend your routine and the cycle starts all over again. I have seen it happen for so many of my clients. It is always something. So don’t kid yourself into thinking that you’ll wait until things are back into a routine to start changing your life.

All right. And another way that you’re getting stuck when you’re off your routine is when you stop looking for what is possible. So this is somewhat of taking a fatalistic approach and deciding, “Well, shoot, if I’m away from my gym for the next week and don’t have access to a barbell and plates, it’s done. There’s no way I can work out. So I’ll just sleep in and I won’t bother doing anything.” Or if you’re on a super busy stretch with work and your days are much longer than you planned, you decide, “Well, that’s it. I’m just going to have to grind and work and sleep and eat until the schedule shakes out a little bit.” And you make that decision without looking for any other possibilities.

But that is totally selling yourself short. And it’s so common. When your schedule changes, or work, or kid activities, or life just gets really busy, sometimes you let it control you. You decide, “Well, kids are back in sports and I basically have to spend every weeknight shuttling a kid to some sort of practice, so that’s it. Take out it is.” Or you decide, “Work is sucking the life out of me. There is zero time for anything else. So I guess I’ll just put off my exercise until things clear up.” And you stop looking for what is possible. And that’s when you revert and go back to old habits. That’s when you start getting fast food and takeout and stop going to the gym or getting in any sort of exercise.

Okay, so now that we’ve gone over a number of ways that being off your routine is keeping you stuck, let’s talk about what to do about it. How do you still take care of yourself? And how do you still get to work on your habits even when you’re off your routine? So I’ve got some ideas.

So first, to piggyback off what we were just talking about. So instead of letting your schedule mean that good habits are impossible. Instead, don’t let being off your routine block you from your own creativity and wisdom, okay? Use this as an opportunity to get creative. So I’ll use myself as an example. We were on vacation recently, and the way my family likes to travel is to stay in Airbnbs so we have more space, we’ve got laundry, and have a kitchen, but there’s no gym.

And instead of throwing in a towel and saying, “Forget it, I can’t get under a barbell and squat, so why bother?” Instead, we did body weight workouts and we didn’t even do them every day, but we made it a point to get them in. And on the other days when we were out and about, we got in a ton of steps. And as for our food, well, we were in Costa Rica and we were in some pretty small remote towns in Costa Rica. There was not an Ezekiel muffin to be found, but I didn’t let that stop me. I had regular toast for breakfast. I found a Costa Rican version of cottage cheese and I had that.

We had salads and tried different types of lettuce from what we would normally get. We found chicken and we paired it with rice and beans. The food wasn’t the same as what we would have at home, but we made do, we made it work. And we tried some local produce. We could have said, “Forget it, there is no way we can do this. We’ll just go out to eat for dinner,” but we didn’t. We schlepped ourselves to the grocery store. We picked out foods that were still in line with our plan and we made it work. Was it 100% healthy? No. Did I still make decisions in advance and stick to some sort of plan? Yes. Did it taste good? Yes.

And it doesn’t really matter what the situation is. That was a vacation. But even when you’re not on vacation, say it’s the weekend and your weekend is full of family activities, driving all over and meals on the go, that does not mean you have to get fast food, okay? Coolers, use a cooler. You can pack food to take with you. Or if you’re going to a party, you bring something to share that you know you’re going to eat, like a salad.

Or if you’re not on vacation and it’s not a weekend full of plans, but instead your work schedule is super crazy and throwing you off your routine, well, you can still do something, okay? You really can. Even if you’re ordering food or picking up fast food or doing Uber Eats, you can choose veggies and protein, okay? If you’re spending hours at work, like my client who does 24-hour shifts in her hospital, you can go for a walk in the hospital or in your office building. You can walk the stairs from the bottom floor of your building to the top. You can get a salad from the cafeteria. You do not have to throw in the towel just because your routine is off. But it means looking for it. You will only find solutions if you’re looking for them.

So remember what I said earlier, if you tell yourself, “There is no way I can stick to a plan when my schedule is like this,” well, that’s the reality that you’re going to create for yourself and you will totally go off your plan and you’ll prove yourself right. But if you tell yourself, “My schedule is crazy right now, but here’s what I can do. I can drink plenty of water. I can make sure I’m writing up my meals the night before. I can order from restaurants, but I’ll get veggies and protein. I can skip the donuts that have been sitting in the break room for the last three days. I can do a 10 minute workout in the morning, even though I normally do 45 minutes. And I will let all of that be enough.” And here too, if that is what you decide for yourself, you will also prove yourself right. So it’s your choice. You get to decide what reality you want to prove true for yourself.

So do you see what’s going on here? It’s thinking in terms of possibility. It’s a concept I’ve introduced before, and I want to reiterate it here because it especially applies when you’re off your routine. So thinking in terms of possibility is exactly as it sounds. It’s looking for what is possible. A 10 minute workout in your office after lunch, parking at the farthest parking spot and walking to get some steps in, drinking water instead of reaching for candy, doing a body weight workout when you’d normally go to the gym. It’s looking for what is possible given your circumstances.

And this is in contrast to thinking in terms of impossibility which is totally blocking you from getting creative and in essence, keeping you from making progress. So instead of looking at all the things that you can’t do and letting that be a reason to hang it up altogether, when you’re thinking in terms of possibility, you’re mining your brain and looking for what you can do. “I can’t cook my proteins for meal prep this weekend like I usually do, but I will buy pre-cooked, pre-cut chicken and pre-bagged salads and eat that. I can’t run for 30 minutes, but I can walk for 10. I can’t cook my own food at this hotel, but I can make a meal out of appetizers at the hotel restaurant that fits into my plan.”

So do you see what we’re doing here? We’re just finding solutions. We’re solving for the problem of “I want to be healthy. This is the situation I’m in, or this is the schedule I have, or this is what’s in my refrigerator, or this is what’s on the menu. So what can I do that will bring me closer to my goal of being healthy?” And that’s it. We’re not making a big deal out of it. We’re not giving up altogether because the hotel doesn’t have a gym, or because your work schedule is such that you have to get up a half an hour earlier than usual, we’re just putting our nose down and looking for solutions. You’re looking for what is possible.

And not only will that feel so much better than looking for all the ways that you can’t stick to your plan, it will also keep you moving forward. You will prove to yourself that you can make progress and eat healthy, exercise and lose weight, even when it seems hard. Even when it seems like there’s nothing you can do to help yourself. You prove to yourself that no matter what, there is still action you can take to keep you moving forward.

So another thing you can do when you’re off your routine is have a plan. You can still have a plan even when you’re not at home. You can still have a plan even when you’re off your routine. You can decide how many meals and snacks you’re going to have. You can decide what, how much, and how often you’re going to treat yourself. You can decide when and for how long you will exercise and what that’s going to look like. Your plan does not have to go up in flames just because you’re out of town or just because you’re on vacation. You can still decide on veggies and protein for dinner, even if you’re going to a restaurant, okay? You really can have a plan no matter what your routine looks like.

And maybe it’s better to call it an if all else fails plan. You can decide, “If this is a week from hell and I can’t meal prep or I haven’t gone to the grocery store, then this is what I’m going to do. I will order from this restaurant because I know it has food that works for me and this is what I’m going to have. Or I will order these foods from the grocery store and have them delivered. Or I will pull this dish that’s been in my freezer and thaw it out and eat it.” So you get the idea here. And that idea is that no matter what happens, you can still make a plan. Even if that plan is takeout, fine. Think it through and make a decision about what that takeout is going to be. Is it going to be greasy spoon takeout? Or is it going to be a deli salad takeout? You still have that choice.

Or if you can’t do your regular workout, you can decide, like my client did, that no matter what, she could take five minutes at the end of her day to do planks in her PJs. When all else failed, and she wasn’t able to get in her morning exercise like she planned, she was confident that she could do five minutes of practicing planks before bed, and she stuck to it. And that was her, if all else fails, plan. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t her first choice, but it worked, and she didn’t have to think super hard about it. She knew, “Well, this has been a really hard day. I didn’t get my workout in like I wanted, but my plan is five minutes of planks.” And then she executed that. So you can do the same. You can come up with your own plan for when the wheels come off the bus and you’re off your routine. And then you don’t have to waste time and mental energy trying to decide what to do the next time you’re off your routine. You have a plan.

All right, next. And along with having a plan, you can practice being somewhere in between flexible, and rigid, okay? I know that sounds a little conflicting, but let me explain what I mean by this. You can make a decision and declare, “Okay, I’m not able to prepare my food this week, so I’m going to buy prepared stuff. I’m going to buy pre-cut, pre-washed veggies, and pre-made salads, and pre-cooked proteins.” So you’re being flexible, but you’re not being so rigid that you’ve given yourself no room for pre-made foods. You’re making accommodations for yourself. It’s not cooked by you personally, and it’s not meal prepped, but it’s also not a burger and fries from the drive-thru.

Or if you go to a restaurant and you’ve decided to get lean veggies and protein, but then you get to the restaurant and there is not a veggie to be found. Well, then you choose. You do your very best. You choose a dish that makes sense and isn’t coated with so much oil that you can see reflection in the plate when you’re done. You choose a reasonable menu item and you have a reasonable portion of it. You don’t throw in the towel and order the greasiest thing on the menu, but you also practice flexibility and find something that works and moderate yourself around it.

And that’s just it. I would encourage you to find a place that falls somewhere between flexible and rigid that’s a sweet spot for you. Because while there will always be something to throw you off your routine, you still have got a choice. You can still have a plan. You can still have an idea of how you want to eat. And if you don’t find things that fall neatly into your plan, you can be flexible and find a way to fit your choices to your plan as best as possible. And it’s most definitely a practice, okay? But you practice making decisions that are still in line with your goals, even if they’re not 100% perfect, okay?

All right, and next, the next thing you can do when you’re off your routine is to take the drama out of it. So maybe that sounds harsh, but I have seen some clients get very upset when their life or their schedule changes that gets them off their routine, and I want to help you take the drama out of it. So remember what we talked about at the outset. There is always something. Once one fire is put out, you can almost certainly guarantee another fire is not too far behind it.

So it’s really great when work and life and kids and school and traffic and in-laws and the weather all line up. It is awesome when the stars align and you get out of work when you’re supposed to and colleagues aren’t out sick and there are no issues at your kid’s school and everything is ticking by as it’s supposed to. But when that doesn’t happen and when life is no longer easy, that is when you have an opportunity. That is when you have an opportunity to prove to yourself that it doesn’t matter that you’re off your routine. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been on vacation or that you travel for work or that your work schedule got super hectic, or your kid’s sports or after-school schedule is upending your routine. None of that matters, because you’re not going to let those things stop you from taking care of your needs and doing the things you need to do to keep you on track towards your health and fitness goals.

So to be clear, you can still acknowledge that you’re off your routine and it feels hard, okay? I want to make that clear. I’m not saying that you ignore it or minimize the stressors that are keeping you from being on a routine. But at the same time, if you make it a big deal and make it into a drama for yourself that this is too hard and there’s always something getting in your way and there’s no way that your life will ever be in a place where you can take care of yourself and eat and move the way you want, that’s when the drama is getting in your way, okay?

So this is a practice in acknowledging that yes, things got shaken up, your environment, your schedule, your work, whatever it is, you acknowledge that something is shaking up your routine. But instead of letting that be a reason to give up on your goals and give up on your plan altogether. How about instead you let that be a reason to really put your nose down and figure it out. You don’t let the change to your routine become a big deal. You don’t let yourself become a victim of your circumstances. You don’t let your long work days control you and be the reason that you don’t take care of your needs. Okay?

And part of the reason I’m putting this point last is because if you do the other things I’ve suggested, if you practice thinking in terms of possibility, if you have an if-all-else-fails plan, if you practice living somewhere between flexible and rigid, if you practice all of those things, then by nature, you will take the drama out of being off your routine, and here’s why. Often, it’s when you get off your routine that you feel that things are out of control. You feel like you have no control over what’s going on in your life, and that can feel yucky and uncomfortable and unsettling, and that can lead to a lot of unnecessary mind drama, and it can lead you to create all kinds of stories in your head as to why you can’t stay on any sort of plan or why you can’t eat healthy or why you can’t exercise. And it can become very big and dramatic and feel insurmountable.

But it does not have to go that way. If you think about what’s possible and you have a plan to the extent that you’re able and you practice being flexible, then you show yourself, “Hey, I’ve got this. I can still eat healthy, even when my work week feels like it’s been turned upside down. I can still exercise at the end of a busy day. And even though it wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to go, I got it done.” And the more you do this, the more the drama subsides. Because instead of freaking out about the things you can’t do, you’re using your brain energy, getting to work on the things you can do. And that feels so much better than spinning in drama about how you need to get back to a routine.

And quite honestly, it’s teaching you life skills. This skill stays with you. I’ve said it a number of times already, but it’s really true. There’s always going to be something. That wavering baseline really is how I see our lives. It’s waves of calm in between waves of busy, sometimes crazy. So the sooner you determine a way to navigate those waves, the less dramatic they will feel. You will prove to yourself that you can still take care of your needs, and you can still eat and move in a way that supports your health and fitness goals, no matter what is going on around you. All right?

And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, I’ll help you plan for the times you’re off your routine so that you maintain your habits and keep moving forward towards your health and fitness goals. Check out my website, Go to www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact and send me a message and let’s talk about how coaching will help you strategize so that you’ve got habits you can stick to no matter what.

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

Hey, if you’re looking for your next great read, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/books and download my list of most favorite reads. I’ve got two collections waiting for you. One is all about work-life balance. The other is a collection of books that have changed my life. I’ve referenced many of these books in the podcast, and now you can access those titles all in one place.

Again, that’s CarrieHollandMD.com/books. Check it out and find your next great read. Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.