When starting to pursue a new goal, especially regarding exercise or diet, many people start strong, but eventually, when life stress gets higher, they take a break. This is called the “pause button mentality”, and it’s one of the facets of the “all or nothing” way of thinking. So, how can you stay on track when your life gets busy?

A demanding job with important deadlines, family, kids, cooking, household work — trust me, I get it. As a working mom and wife, who also has many other interests like coaching, writing, learning, competing, to name a few, sometimes my battery is just empty. On such days, all I want to do is literally do nothing. All I want is to lie down and chill: no exercise, no movement, not even doing something nice for myself.

And sometimes it’s completely ok to do so! Sometimes we do need to rest in order to refocus and to recharge our “battery.” Nevertheless, you have to be careful so that pressing a pause button on your fitness and wellness doesn’t become a habit.

What happens if you constantly take a break from your fitness goals?

To get good at something, you need regular practice. It’s not any different with exercise as well. When you start doing cardio regularly, your cardiovascular health improves. Once you stop doing it, you lose any progress and return to the state you’ve been before.

The same is with weight lifting. Once you start training regularly, your strength improves, your body composition positively changes, and you feel more energized. To keep the positive changes, you have to keep lifting weights.

When you take a break for some reason, you lose the progress you’ve made, depending on the break’s duration, to some extent or completely. Perhaps, when life stress gets lower, and you have time and motivation again, you continue working on your goals. However, the problem here is that you might start at the exact same point where you’ve been before. And once again, when your life gets busy, you press the pause button, and so the cycle repeats.

As a result, you might get some short-term results, but when you look over the last months or even years, you would realize that not a lot has changed.

How to break the cycle and get results in the long term?

Stop waiting for the perfect conditions! Our life will always stay busy, and we will always have stress in our lives. Sometimes less and sometimes more, but it will always be there.

And stop relying on your motivation: sometimes we have to do the work we are not excited about right now, but it will bring benefits in the future.

The key here is not how perfect your workout or diet is. It’s consistency. According to the research, based on Precision Nutrition® Coaching, even a little bit of consistency brings you great results over time.

Here are some tips on how to stay consistent when your life gets busy:

• Plan, plan, plan
It can’t be repeated enough! You have probably heard the saying: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”, and that’s true. The better you plan your day and what you need to accomplish, the better chance you have to achieve your goals.

• Time management and prioritizing
One way to prepare well is to manage your time and priorities according to your goals. Sometimes, it’s better to pick only a few most important things when you have to do a lot. Plan the less critical and less urgent tasks to later, or spend less time doing them.

Different tools can help you prioritize and work productively, such as the prioritization matrix or the Pomodoro technique.

• Think about your “why” and the long term benefits
For example, when you get the desire to rest after a long workday instead of driving to a gym, think about your reason why. Why did you start exercising in the first place? Why was and is it important to you? It’s better to be uncomfortable here and now for a short moment than be unhappy with your choices and regret the things you wish you’d done before.

• Do the first step
Sometimes all it takes is the first step. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just do something. Take stairs at work instead of the elevator, do ten air squats when brushing your teeth. You would be surprised where a little step done consistently can bring you.

• Get support
If you have a hard time doing all the work by yourself, including planning, or don’t know where and how to start, hire a coach. A good coach will take your life stress and your current situation into consideration, help you achieve your goal step by step, and keep you accountable.

• Do what you can
If your schedule is crazy, maybe it’s not the right time to do a two-three hours workout five times a week. Be realistic with your time and yourself, and set the goals you can achieve. I had a client, a highly busy and stressed mom with two kids, and all we did was a 5-minutes workout twice a week. Just after a few months, she did one of the most incredible transformations and has established quite a few healthy habits she still keeps doing. And who doesn’t have 5 minutes a day?

You don’t have to be perfect and do it all. All you need is doing what you can, a tiny little step taken every day.