Stop saying “I have to start over”

By: Michael Beiter

Six years of work on macro tracking and daily exercise lead a client of mine to say “I just need to start over,” after she skipped food logging for a month and gained some body fat.

I challenged her statement: “You’re not starting over. That implies that the thousands of food logs you’ve done and hundreds of hours of sleep and exercise are for nothing. Change your phrasing. ‘I’m continuing what works, or ‘I’m resuming my lifestyle,’ are both better ways to think.

The science is clear, every workout changes your body in a way that is forever irreversible, just like eating good food does. If you’ve ever started a workout or nutrition program, even if you only lasted a couple weeks, you can never start again. To do so would be to erase the un-erasable.

You may pause and resume time and time again, but don’t be so hard on yourself with the ‘starting over’ business. Because technically, it’s not possible.