Let me know if this sounds familiar:

You decided to start making healthy food choices(again) on Monday. Its Thursday(or wednesday, depending on the severity of the diet) and the motivation that was coursing through your veins just a few days ago, no longer exists.

You sneak in a few snacks after a lunch, a dessert after dinner, and before you know it, its sunday and you’re bingeing away at food you’re not even all that hungry for, because you’ve promised yourself you can start again on Monday.

Come Monday, you break out the soups and salads and teas(again) to pay for what you consider the sins of the weekend.

Except, if you did do that, I can promise you one thing for sure.. you WILL fail before the week is out.

The average diet lasts 72 hours… just long enough for your body to realise that a famine is upon you, slow down your metabolism, throw out some muscle, and send out hunger signals.

All of this will ensure that the next time you eat, you will store more than you burn. For every diet you try and fail at, you will be heavier.

If you think willpower is your problem.. you’re wrong. Diets are your problem.

Making unrealistic promises to yourself is your problem. Promising yourself perfection in a life thats entirely human and wonderfully imperfect, is your problem.

So the next time your eating goes wrong. This is what you can, instead, try and do:

1) Get back to where you left off as soon as you can. Not on Monday. Not tomorrow but ASAP. The very next meal.

2) Don’t try to compensate for the past. The future will take care of itself. In the long run, one bad meal will change nothing, week after week of binge eating followed by starvation will.

3) Food and exercise are not reward and punishment. Eat because you’re hungry. Exercise because you need the strength. Throw out the guilt that everyone has convinced you, you need.

4) At every meal eat some protein, carbs and veggies. Irrespective of what your last meal looked like.

Think of it this way. If you decide to run a marathon.. but also decided that you will only complete it if you do not stumble/fall through the entire distance, and will, additionally go back to the starting line every time you fall… would you ever get around to finishing the race?

Exactly.

Get up, dust yourself off and pick up where you left off. Thats really all it takes.

The Author, Jyotsna John, is a fitness enthusiast who turned her passion for fitness into a full time career. She has travelled to UK and the US and studied a lot about fitness while she was there. She has a list of certifications, and is currently a trainer at The Unit, in Chennai.