10/18 Mental Toughness Thursday

When it gets a little crazy this holiday season, grab your weirdo friends and go for a walk.

​AVOIDING THE HOLIDAY SEASON SNOWBALL EFFECT

Courtesy of Railroad CrossFit in Hudson, NY
WARNING: CHALLENGES AHEAD
You know it’s coming in the next 30-40 days…
You’ve built up good momentum, are already consistent and are feeling pretty good. 
You’re eating quality foods 80% + most of your days and you’re hitting your fitness consistently 3 to 5 times per week without deviation.
Your next greatest opponent to challenge all the behaviors and momentum you’ve built is right around the corner.
The holiday season.
The holiday season challenges all of that in its own unique ways. 
I know that if in the past you’ve gotten

• Very stressed around the holidays,
• Fallen off your nutrition routine
• Lost consistency with fitness

That these patterns are likely to emerge and challenge you again and again.  
​
AVOIDING THE SNOWBALL EFFECT
While the holiday season are exciting times:
family gatherings,
delicious foods,
shared memories
and quality time with people we love,
it’s very natural and normal for our nutrition and fitness to take a small step back. 

How big of a step back is in your hands and under your control. 

The snowball effect happens when that small step back turns into a walking backwards or in reverse.
HOW IT HAPPENSAt Thanksgiving, we are around people we love and we feast. We are in company we love and enjoy and we let our guards down temporarily.
We eat foods we wouldn’t or don’t normally eat on a regular day to day basis.
These tasty treats and variance throws our taste buds into extreme sensation and pleasure seeking mode.
This snowballs when one day with one meal turns into days or even weeks of over indulging or eating too much of those joy foods and not enough quality food. 
We are officially off our routine.
Then with Christmas around the corner our levels of stress are higher.
This leads to that need for a quick impulse or feel good to be even at a higher level, so we continue down this path.
As exciting as Christmas is for most of us, we can be in a constant state of stress about schedules, gifts, shopping, expectations or worries that we skip the gym more than get our daily dose of health, wellness and endorphins. 
Missing a day here or there is normal and isn’t going to derail your progress. 
It’s when we fall off our normal 3, 4 or 5 day a week fitness regime that we put ourselves in this hole that the further we get into it’s harder to get out of it. 
And when we do eventually make our return we are unfortunately met with difficulty, a feeling of everything is difficult and I’m winded so quick and easily.  Making the very thing you loved and enjoyed so regularly seem so difficult.
All challenging your will.
And then, New Years.
A classic time where people stay up later than normal, over eat snacks and drink alcohol to celebrate the closing of a year and beginning of another. 
The staying up late, food and alcohol combination throws off our entire daily rhythm and leaves us with more anguish than excitement. 
These factors in combination are the downhill snowball effect in full speed.
They challenge all the good behaviors, mindset/mentality and healthy consistent actions you’ve built up consistently over a long period of time. 

WHAT DO I DO? Aware – Acknowledge – Action 
Awareness, that’s the first step.  Second, we must acknowledge. 
We can acknowledge that our nutrition will not be perfect over Thanksgiving and Christmas and that we will fully enjoy those meals and moments with loved ones, guilt free.
We acknowledge in advance that we will likely be around others (people we love) who don’t share the same will, drive, discipline or goals as we do.
Sadly, even the same desire for high levels of health and wellness.

(Friendly tip: If your family knows you as the “CrossFitter” or the “healthy person” or “workout nut” a couple of things may happen during this time of year.

One – they may challenge your discipline or healthy ways or two – they may talk or communicate in a way that almost shames you for being so healthy or them for not. I encourage you to not be reactive but to lead by example and allow your best self to show up in these instances. Meet them with unwavering love and understanding. What is really being said without actually being said is “I wish I had the level of discipline and commitment to my health as you do.”)

We acknowledge that although we may travel or need to do holiday shopping or be out of town, we will remain MORE consistent within the gym than not. 

Third step, the most critical is we take action. 
We take action in not letting ourselves spiral out of control due to 1-2 holiday indulgences. 
We take action in committing to a minimum amount of days within the gym per week because we know it will lower our stress, help keep moving us closer to our goals, bettering us daily and that if we don’t we dig a hole that the deeper it gets the harder to climb out. 
We take action in planning ahead.
We plan our schedules around our workouts. 
We plan what days we will be traveling. 
We plan what healthy and nutrient foods we will be eating a majority of our days. 
We plan to get back on track the meal or day after we eat “out of the norm.”
We plan ahead and we vow to not let 1 or 2 days where we eat out of routine (Thanksgiving and Christmas) make the other 30+ days a wash and set ourselves further away from our ultimate goal and actually hinder our progress, body composition and ultimately how we feel day to day. 
We know this time of year our healthy habits will be challenged the most.
We get ahead of that challenge by being aware it’s coming, acknowledging what we need to do and not do and taking and committing to action. 
Because the alternative? 
That snowball effect turns into an avalanche that some can never recover from.