Are you guilty of making it conditional as to when you will fully engage with your health and fitness goals? “I’ll get my act together when…”. Fill in the blank - "Work settles down... I'm recovered from that injury... The kids go back to school... Once Summer comes around.."
In real life, all the moons of Jupiter will never actually align to allow us to finally get this health thing off the ground. There will always be ‘something’ that can set you back. There isn’t ever going to be a ‘perfect’ moment and if you keep holding out for that then you’ll seriously be left waiting for a long while.
Instead how about we take the approach that doing something is far better than doing nothing. That 1>0. How are you defining success here? If you say to yourself that if you can’t eat five portions of vegetables each day then there’s no point in eating any that’s pretty irrational. What if you could get by with having two portions though? Or three? Would that be better than having none at all? It sure would. It’s imperative that we can start thinking this way because life does not stop. It will throw you curve balls and on those days or weeks where you’re up to your neck in curved balls, you need to be able to keep going.
I can fondly relate to this from being in college. In college you have plenty of time off. Plenty of study weeks or ‘reading’ weeks where you could legitimately put things off until then when you’d have more time to spare. Sadly - Here in the real world we don’t get reading weeks! So we best get working with the reality we have in front of us. There’s no putting things off. And even if you did... Even if you do decide to make it conditional - Will anything really have changed? Not much I reckon. Of course some times are better than others but for the most part you’re going to have to just decide to make a start or keep going and just put one foot in front of the other because life is always happening.
What you could do in these instances though, when things are a bit tougher (because you’re not going to stop remember) is think about just ‘turning down the dial’ instead of switching off completely. Maybe some weeks you can operate at a 9/10 on the dial - Things are going well, you have an active job and you’re managing to train six days a week - That’s awesome. However, then you find yourself under a bit more pressure - Something needs to give but you won’t fold completely - Instead you dial things back to a 6/10. It’s not your absolute best ever but it’s certainly good enough to keep you on the path and infinitely better than if you just let things grind to a halt. Maybe 6/10 looks like you pulling training back to three times a week - Wonderful. That way you’re committing to the fact that 1>0, always. It doesn’t matter how far off ‘perfect’ you might be, because at some point you will be able to dial things back up and push it. And when you do, you’ll be in a much better position for not having switched off when the going got tough in the first place.
Do the best with what you can right now. Always do something, 1>0. Forget about being perfect - perfection doesn’t exist and that’s okay. You won’t let that stop you.