Why my healthy habits imploded (and what I’m doing about it)

775 words

You put your pen down.

You’ve got everything down to the minute.

Waking up.

Meal times.

Your workout.

You’ve researched tools and tactics guaranteed to make things easier.

Strategies for boosting motivation. Tricks to curb cravings. A nighttime routine the sandman is jealous of.

This should be a piece of cake. With this level of planning there’s no way you can fail… right?

Then you can’t fall asleep Sunday night.

Monday morning’s alarm sounds excessively aggressive.

Breakfast feels rushed and gross. Why did you think you liked those weird baked egg cups? The texture is awful.

No matter what you try, the looming workout is forming a dense pit of dread in your stomach.

Why does everything you do to make things easier only make it harder?

I thought strategy was “the secret”

I was wrong.

Once upon a time I was in the military. During the last couple years of my enlistment the gym was my favorite way to spend my free time. We’re talking 2 hour sessions, 6-7 days a week.

(Spoiler alert: can anyone spell coping mechanism?)

(Also, no I didn’t make much progress that way.)

I separated in the middle of 2023 and started taking my mental health seriously later that year.

I spent 6 years doing whatever I was told. So I was baffled when all my healthy habits started falling apart the more I worked on my mental health.

“Ok” I thought. “This just means I’m not planning properly. I just need to manipulate the variables.”

I was 100% convinced that habits didn’t have to be uncomfortable if I could just plan the right way. If I could just manipulate the variables enough to make the thing easy to stick to. If I could just lower the barrier to entry.

(If you haven’t heard of that, it’s just changing tasks a bit to make them easier to start. For example if you struggle to drink water, using a water bottle with a straw instead of a twist top helps.)

Looking back that was my default coping mechanism. I thought I could plan and organize away the discomfort.

I hung onto it like a vice for a good couple years.

But of course things never got easier.

A few weeks ago I finally accepted that I struggle with anxiety. And started deliberately working it.

Fear of falling behind. Fear of taking my youth for granted. Fear of feeling incapable.

I started chipping that away and as a result also took away the foundation that my “healthy lifestyle” was built on. Turns out my anxiety was really the only thing that kept the few healthy habits I had going.

Lately everything has been even harder. Working out, going for walks, waking up on time, even feeding myself.

On one hand I’m extremely frustrated.

I feel like I’ve wasted years of effort and that I have to start back at square one.

But on the logical hand I’m actually excited.

Because the path ahead of me is clearer than it has been in a long time.

Training your body requires training your mind

When building healthy habits that are inherently uncomfortable, it’s impossible to plan away the discomfort.

There’s lots of methods and frameworks out there to help.

But using them to avoid discomfort entirely guarantees the habits won’t form. Regardless if you do them for 21, 66, or 90 days.

The ugly (but also beautifully simple) truth is that pushing through the discomfort is forming the habit.

Habits aren’t built through programs or trackers or plans. They’re built through doing them when you don’t want to.

When you perform a habit you don’t want to do, you’re not only training the habit to be easier. You’re training your ability to push through.

Otherwise you’re dooming yourself to fall apart at every inconvenience.

I’m not saying go out there and run your nervous system ragged, trying to be as uncomfortable as possible as fast as possible. Unless you want to end up in a psych ward.

But meeting yourself where you’re at, understanding how much discomfort you can take at a time, then designing your habits to slightly challenge that level of discomfort will be much more effective than trying to plan it all away.

If things are feeling hard, that’s good! It’s like hypertrophy for the mind.

And you’re still allowed to lower the barrier to entry. But watch out for the trap of lowering it so low you forget how to jump.

From here on out my plan is to stop trying to fix the discomfort. Instead I want to get to know it. Become friends with it. And let it challenge me to grow the way it was meant to.

Here’s to starting from the top. Right this time.

Savannah