Why do people get out of shape?

Look at some of these comments from people who used to be in great shape:

“Was on the soccer team, captain of basketball and volleyball teams at school. Every weekend before going out we’d rent a pitch and play soccer before any outing. University came along, people became lazy and started smoking, me included, kept same eating habits but no exercise to combat those habits.”

“I got a desk job. Honestly, I love my job, and everything that comes with it. But when I was in college I was able to go to the gym for 5 or 6 days a week. Right now, I’ve been working full time for almost 4 years and it fucked my body up! Currently working on getting back in shape, but I have difficulty going 3 times a week now.”

“Eating and drinking like an animal + college rugby = fit. Eating and drinking like an animal + desk job = fat.”

“One of the really nasty things about being really athletic when you’re younger, is that you never learn to eat properly to maintain weight…You always have it in your head that you’ll just exercise it off. Few thousand extra calories? No biggie.”

Comments like this are incredibly common. In this case, I pulled them from a popular thread on Reddit—which I was pointed to by fellow fitness writer John Fawkes—but I’ve had many similar conversations with people both online and in person.

There are a lot of formerly active people that get out of shape.

At the same time, we’ve all seen those people who seem indestructible, even as they age. The last time I went to a pickup ultimate frisbee game, a guy was there who must have been in his 50s—but he was totally ripped. He came with his son, and was tearing it up on the field.

Even just at the gym, if you look around on an average day you’re likely to see at least one person that age hasn’t managed to touch.

You don’t even need to be that old. For a lot of people, the trigger that leads to getting out of shape is a change in routine. You’ll often see people get out of shape after:

• Graduating high school
• Graduating college
• Starting a new job
• Moving to a new city
• Getting into a relationship
• Having kids

Why does this happen? Why do people—especially former athletes—get out of shape? How do some people keep astonishingly healthy?

And of course, how can you get back in shape?

Before we get to those questions, I wanted to share my personal favorite comment from the Reddit thread.

“I was an incredibly active, athletic person up through my early 20s. I struggled to keep weight on. I ate whatever I wanted and as much of it as I wanted and was still really skinny. I was like a bottomless pit on legs.”

When I was in high school my dad used to call me “the bottomless pit.” I could eat massive amounts of food incredibly quickly.

But by the time I graduated college, I realized that I needed to be more careful about what I ate. I gained 20 pounds in the 6 months after graduating.

Getting back on track took a careful look at how my eating habits had changed. I lost that weight and gradually gained 10 more pounds (of muscle) through careful eating and lifting.

The 4 Types of Fit People that Stop Working Out

In my experience, there are four types of fit people who get out of shape:

• Former athletes who stop working out
• Active people who move to desk jobs
• People who get injured
• People who stop working out without changing their eating habits

Yes, there can be some overlap in categories. And category four is something of a catch-all that covers a variety of major life changes.

But in general, these four categories hold true. Let’s look at each one in turn.

Former athletes who stop working out

“One of the really nasty things about being really athletic when you’re younger, is that you never learn to eat properly to maintain weight…You always have it in your head that you’ll just exercise it off. Few thousand extra calories? No biggie.”

Like the soccer or rugby player above, these are people who used to be active in the context of a team.

Sometimes these people have been active for their entire lives, starting with peewee sports and little league. Almost always, these people played at least one sport in either high school or college.

And then they stop.

The former athlete that gets out of shape usually gets out of shape because they’ve stopped playing their sport. After graduating, or even just moving away from a rec league, the athlete no longer has a familiar way to be active.

But wait. If someone has been active for their entire life, they wouldn’t just stop? Would they?

They might, if the context, habits, and environment change enough.

When you’re part of an athletics program, you’re a member of a team. You don’t have to guess about what workouts should be doing. You don’t have to spend a lot of energy motivating yourself. You have a team for that. If anything, you work to motivate your teammates.

Being part of a program like that is great (and I advocate it)—but it doesn’t actually teach you how to work out.

As an athlete, you might learn a few different conditioning workouts. You might know some drills, and you might have a strength program to do in the gym.

But you don’t really learn how to build a program for yourself. You just have a checklist to work through.

That works well when you’re actually on the team. It works well for the coach, who can make sure that everyone is spending some time in the gym.

But it makes it harder for the athletes to work out after leaving the team behind. Even though they’ve been active their entire lives, former athletes suddenly need to figure everything out all over again.

And, often, they don’t. Many stop working out entirely after they leave the team environment. So they get out of shape.

Active people who move to desk jobs

“I got a desk job. Honestly, I love my job, and everything that comes with it. But when I was in college I was able to go to the gym for 5 or 6 days a week. Right now, I’ve been working full time for almost 4 years and it fucked my body up! Currently working on getting back in shape, but I have difficulty going 3 times a week now.”

The transition to a desk job usually takes place in one of two ways:

1. Someone has graduated from school, where they could be active, and starts a new job
2. Someone with an active job switches to a desk job

Working a desk job doesn’t inherently cause you to gain weight or get out of shape. But it does significantly change your environment. A lot of the activity you used to be doing—even the movement you did without realizing, like walking—disappears.

If you used to spend a lot of time walking across campus to class, a desk job replaces a lot of that time with sitting.

Also, it’s often easier to work out as a student than it is in a standard 9-5 job. Even if the workload is the same, the more flexible student schedule makes it easier to sneak in a workout somewhere throughout the day.

At the other end, people switching from active jobs often underestimate just how active those jobs were.

If you work as a server in a restaurant, you’re spending most of your time up and moving around on your feet. If your job is to coordinate events, you may spend long hours running back and forth to set everything up.

Then switch to a desk job. Suddenly, all of that activity has disappeared—and you might not realize it right away.

People who get injured

“My knees decided not to knee anymore.”

I won’t spend a ton of time on this one, because it’s pretty straightforward: if you get injured, it’s harder to work out.

Some injuries really are debilitating. If you have a major injury that makes walking difficult, working out can be almost a foregone conclusion.

But there’s a whole spectrum of injury severity, and all types of injuries come with their own challenges.

If you like to run, but get a knee injury, it’s easy to give up working out. If you like to lift and hurt your shoulder, your workouts are going to be really limited. If you have a back injury, you could be limited to just walking.

As awful as injuries can be, there are often situations where you can work around them. Maybe your knee responds better to cycling or yoga. Maybe there’s physical therapy you can do for your back.

Even when it is possible to do some kind of workout, it can be hard. People with injuries deal with all of the same challenges to consistency and motivation—but they also have to deal with the limitations of their injuries.

Because of that, a lot of people who get injured stop working out. And get out of shape.

People who stop working out without changing their eating habits

This final category is something of a catch-all—and it isn’t mutually exclusive with the other categories either.

Let’s take another look at one of the simplest, but most insightful, comments from that Reddit thread.

“Eating and drinking like an animal + college rugby = fit. Eating and drinking like an animal + desk job = fat.”

This is an extremely common experience. As our lives progress and we start picking up new responsibilities, sometimes exercise falls by the wayside.

Even if we do exercise, we aren’t always working out as often or as intensely as we used to.

But anyone who has been super active has at times been a big eater. I know there was a point in my life when I was able to down two Chipotle burritos in a single sitting—without worrying about weight—because working out so much gave me an appetite.

Then you take away the workouts. But you keep the appetite. Suddenly, things start to change.

The story appears all over the place. I had an old martial arts instructor—a really active guy—who said “I eat so much when I’m training. But when I’m not training, I still eat like I’m training.”

Once you’ve established a food habit, it can be hard to change—even if the rest of your life no longer supports the habit.

How can you get back into shape?

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking “ok, all that is great. But it doesn’t tell me how to get back in shape after a long break.”

You’re right. It doesn’t. So let’s tackle that now.

First, it’s important to look at what makes this situation unique—and why it causes unique challenges. If you used to work out a lot, you aren’t starting from scratch. You have experience working out, and you know what it feels like to be fit [link].

That can be helpful—you probably have some useful knowledge that you can use.

But it can also cause problems.

The biggest mistake once-fit people make

There’s one challenge that tends to be relatively unique to formerly fit people, and it tends to be mostly psychological.

It can be summed up in 5 words.

“Why is this so hard?”

If you used to be in great shape, you know what it feels like to be able to do hard things. Maybe you used to be able to bang out a dozen pull-ups—but now struggle to do more than one.

Or maybe you used to be able to run a 15-minute 5k—but now struggle to run more than a mile.

For former athletes and fit people, this can be enormously frustrating. It’s easy to think “I used to do this all the time,” and use that as a justification to jump right into really challenging, technical workouts.

Which, unfortunately, can cause injuries.

I’ve seen this happen for all kinds of different people. From former dancers to football players to runner to weekend warriors—it’s frustrating to take what seems like a massive step back when you’re trying to get back into shape.

Unfortunately, taking that step back is important. Fortunately, progressing slowly can help you get back into shape in the long run—even if it feels like your turtling along at first.

How to scale up your workouts over time

In addition to the frustration of not being able to work out as hard, formerly fit people face the challenge of working out in a new context.

When you try to get back into shape—especially as a former athlete—you no longer have the context of a team to lean on.

That means you need to start over. You need to build habits from scratch—which may not be something you have experience doing.

I’ve written extensively about the psychology of habits, as well as about what you should do on your first day at the gym. Those articles can help you dig deeper into developing your new habits.

But there are also some things you can keep in mind for this specific situation, of trying to get back in shape after a long break.

• Start small. Start with the easy versions of exercises and scale up slowly. You’ll be less likely to get hurt—and seeing progress over time is more motivating than jumping in and failing right away (which gets frustrating).
• Impose restraints. Don’t trust yourself to stay small. A lot of athletes like working hard—and in the middle of a workout you might be tempted to push harder when you really shouldn’t. Go to the gym with a plan that limits you to specific sets, reps, and weights—so you don’t make the wrong decision on the fly
• Build habits into your lifestyle. When you try to get back into shape, it’s tempting to go to the gym whenever you can make the time. That makes it hard to stay consistent over the long term. Instead, start by setting up a regular, scheduled time to work out—even if it’s only a couple times a week at first.

Conclusion: Why People Get Out of Shape

There are a few different reasons that formerly fit people get out of shape.

Context changes. Habits change. Lives change.

After you’ve gotten out of shape, you’re in something of a unique position. Your challenges are different from the ones that most people experience when they try to work out—and there are traps that it’s easy to fall into.

By restricting yourself to smaller, incremental improvements—and building new habits into your lifestyle—you can get back into shape even after a long time away from exercise.

“NOT GOOD ENOUGH”

When I hear this phrase, I think of two things. The first is Jason Segal playing Marshall Eriksen in How I Met Your Mother. His friends are hooking up but don’t want to define their relationship, and he gets a little happy with his Indiana Jones-style whip.

The second is something I saw at the gym a few Januaries ago.

I had managed to find a patch of artificial turf that wasn’t taken—no easy task so soon after New Years.

The gym was packed, with yoga mats practically stacked on top of each other. Every trip to retrieve a new dumbbell was a little adventure, zigzagging between people stretching on the floor and the ones carrying weights back to their own little corners.

I had settled in at my patch with my equipment and plugged in my headphones. As I wrapped up my foam rolling, I heard it: “NOT GOOD ENOUGH.”

Ordinarily, it’s hard to get my attention at the gym. Unless you walk right up to me, I’m probably not going to notice you. But this yell was so loud, so full of anger, that I couldn’t help but pop out an earbud.

Nearby, I saw two women doing some kind of circuit workout. One was on the floor doing push-ups (ouch. That floor is rough, and hurts your palms). The other sat next to her, counting every rep and yelling when they weren’t low enough.

Eventually they switched places.

I saw this pair at the gym a few more times. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that they were hard to miss. But sometime in mid-February I realized that it had been a while since I’d seen, or heard, them—and in fact I never did see them again.

What can the story of “Not Good Enough” teach?

If we’re talking about Marshall and the whip, there are two lessons:

1. If you’re going to use a bullwhip, make sure you aim
2. It’s usually a good idea to define your relationships with people

But if we’re talking about the gym, there are a few different lessons that this story can teach—and in fact I’ve told it before to make a different point.

I could talk about how humiliation is a terrible motivator, and how associating exercise with pain and screaming is a great way to make someone quit.

I could also talk about how going too intense too quickly is one of the most common mistakes people make when they get started with fitness. It leads to burnout, and resolutions that don’t last past Valentine’s Day.

This time the point I want to make is more fundamental.

Habits vs. Motivation

Screaming is a terrible motivational tool. It might succeed at getting you to do something in the moment, but it will probably make you avoid doing it in the next moment.

If you got screamed at every time you went to the gym, how long would you stick with it?

But deeper than that, motivation itself is a misguided approach to fitness!

More than just about any other question, I get asked: how can I get more motivation?

My inbox is filled with emails asking this question, and I get a new email about it on most days. It’s a reasonable question—most people believe that willpower and motivation are the most important steps to building healthy routines.

This believe is widespread. In a poll conducted by the University of Chicago, 77 percent of white people (note: this percentage differed with race, but was always high) said lack of willpower was their most significant barrier to losing weight [1].

But there’s a problem: the research says willpower isn’t actually that important.

Research on temptation shows that people who say they have more self-control don’t actually have more self-control—they are better at avoiding temptation [2].

This finding, combined with other similar research and head-scratching results. People who have healthy habits wind up with more self-control [3]. The way we used to think about willpower, as a resource that we could spend or get back, may not be accurate [4].

If people who achieve their goals are able to do so despite not having more willpower than people who do not, what does that mean for those of us trying to change our habits and lifestyles?

Habit Stacking, Chaining, and Dominoes: A Better Approach to Motivation

It’s no secret that I’m a giant fan of habits.

I’ve written extensively on the psychology of habits, as well as about how to put habits into practice so that you can develop a plan to go to the gym consistently.

In this article I want to zero in on one approach to building habits—the single most effect habit-building tactic in my arsenal.

I call it chaining.

Think about the moment you wake up. Say you get out of bed, wander into the bathroom, and do a few different things in there (shower, shave, brush etc.). You don’t think about the order of these tasks. You just do them.

Now say you want to add a new action into your day: every day, you’re going to stretch your hamstrings.

How could you approach this action?

The Standard Approach

You could just try to remember to do it every day. Maybe you do it in the morning before you get out of the door to work, or it’s something you take care of before bed. You might do it on the days you go to the gym, or try to get to it right after you get home.

The problem with this approach is that it’s inconsistent. You’ll be stretching at a different time each day, so you don’t really ever build the habit.

You don’t have to take my word for it either, because you’ve probably experienced this. Ever tried to start up a new habit, then realized that you forgot to do it that day—once you’re already drifting off to sleep?

Or else you remember, but you have 10 other things to do, and you’re tired, and you still need to eat, and how important is it really to do it every day—surely one miss won’t hurt, right?

That’s what willing yourself to do something feels like.

The Better Approach

What if, instead, you built the new habit into your existing habits?

Every morning, you get out of bed and walk to the bathroom. What if you had a yoga mat sitting there ready for you on the floor? On your way to the bathroom, you stop for a couple minutes of stretching, then hop right into the rest of your routine.

Or say you really want to do your stretching at the gym. But when you come home to get your gym clothes—Netflix beckons! You sit down to unwind for a second, and the next thing you know it’s too late to go work out.

What if you brought your clothes to work instead, so that you could go straight from your office to the gym?

I call this concept “chaining,” and it works because it helps you do things without thinking about them.

When you’re trying to start up a new action out of nowhere, you’re like a rock. It takes a lot of strength—a heavy push—to get you moving.

When you’re already up and doing things—whether they’re workout related or not—you have momentum. Each action flows effortlessly into the next action.

You’re like a rock that’s already rolling down hill. All you need to do is give it a little tap and it moves even faster.

Chaining works because your various actions are naturally connected to each other already. Each action is a link in the chain—all you need to do is add another link.

What are some examples of chaining?

• Stretch right after getting out of bed, but before going to the bathroom
• Go directly from work to the gym, without stopping at home
• Read on the way to work by pulling out a book as soon as you get on the bus/train
• Start cooking immediately when you walk in the door from work

For most people, morning and evening habits will be the easiest to chain. Waking up is a consistent start to a habit chain, as is walking in the door. The rest of day to day life can be messier and less consistent, but those things usually hold true.

Note, habit chains can also lead to undesirable habits: if you eat fast food a lot, I’m willing to bet you pick it up on the way home from work (the middle of an action chain).

Similarly, a lot of the reason habits “inexplicably” fail is that they don’t get cued by anything. Having trouble working out on the weekends? It’s probably because you’re trying to go from lying in bed—with no compelling reason to get up—to the gym.

What do other people say about chaining?

Chaining has been one of the more popular topics on Routine Excellence. Which isn’t too surprising—it’s really effective.

At the same time, I’m not the first person to talk about the benefits of using momentum and habit chains to build healthy lifestyles.

The authors of one academic paper write:

“It seems likely however that in the flow of everyday routines, there may be certain points at which it is easier to insert a new behaviour [5].”

They eventually concluded that it’s easier to start a new habit if you put it at the end of a chain than at the beginning. That makes sense, since at the end of a chain you’ve already built up some momentum (they didn’t study the middle of chains).

Habits writer Steve “SJ” Scott calls this concept “habit stacking.” Using similar logic, he argues that if you’re trying to start multiple habits at once, it’s easier to batch them all together—in a “stack”—than it is to try them all individually.

As he writes:

“If you treated each component of a stack as an individual action, then you’d have to create a reminder and track each behavior, which can quickly become overwhelming. However, if you treat the entire routine as just one habit, then it will be easier to remember and complete on a consistent basis.”

If you need ideas for habits to stack or chain, his book Habit Stacking has a list of 127.

The other interesting analogy I’ve seen uses dominoes to explain routines. Instead of kicking down dominoes individually (trying to do multiple actions on their own), chaining is like putting a new domino in a line of existing dominoes—then knocking them all down in one go.

You can watch a great video explanation of that here.

The analogy comes from a channel focused on living with ADHD—but the advice on habits and routines applies to everyone.

Conclusion: Habit Stacking, Chaining, and Dominoes

I like the analogy of chaining because it makes intuitive sense to most people. I personally picture snapping on new habits like a carabiner.

But other people have used different analogies for similar concepts.

The ultimate takeaway? Relying on screaming and willpower is a bad way to build a long-term habit.

Instead, focus on finding ways to fit new habits into your existing lifestyle. You’ll be able to adopt new, healthier habits without needing to drastically change your life.

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Need help using habits? I put together a 5-step guide to build strong habits using psychology. Just let me know where to send it.

Send me the guide

(You’ll also get the free eBook 51 Motivation Tips, for when you need an extra boost)

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It’s cold out. The days have finally stopped getting longer. The holidays are mostly behind us.

At the end of every year, it sometimes feels like we’re coming out of a different world. The entire month of December is a ramp-up to the holidays, and in the final weeks of the year everything seems…quiet.

And then the year changes, and all of a sudden we’re thrust away from quiet and back into the noise of our day-to-day lives.

As I wrote in last year’s round-up article on achieving your fitness resolutions, most people don’t. Part of that is because of how quickly our lives go from calm to active.

Fitness resolutions aren’t just the most popular New Year’s resolutions; they are the TWO most popular (according to surveys by Nielsen, a market research company). The two most common resolutions are “stay fit and healthy” and “lose weight.”

But only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s Resolutions.

Especially as the New Year approaches, it’s worth taking a few moments to plan ahead. Before you wake up on January 1st and realize “wait, my resolution means I actually need to work out today,” figure out just what you should do on your first day at the gym. Figure out how you’re going to build a lasting habit.

Last year’s article recapped the best advice on Routine Excellence from 2016. This year brought with it a few more articles that you might find useful. These are the top articles and advice from 2017. You’ll learn:

• How to build habits, based on psychology research, that actually last
• Why exercise makes you happy, and how that can keep you motivated
• How to learn new exercises at the gym
• How to cut down on eating unhealthy foods

Stay tuned for 2018. There are some big plans for Routine Excellence in the works.

The Psychology of Habits: How to Form Habits (and Make Them Stick)

Have you ever started a workout routine, then quit after a few days or weeks? 

Most people have (I know I have). But some people eventually learn to stick with it. If there’s a “secret” to consistent workouts, it’s this: turning your workout routine into a habit. This article is a detailed breakdown of the psychology behind habits, so that you can work exercise into your everyday life.

“Man, I can’t wait to finish this workout so I can get home and eat dinner.”

I think that often in the hour-long trip from work to the gym. Lunch was six hours ago by the time I get to the locker room, and it’s going to take me two more hours to work out, sauna, shower, and walk home.

At first, it might seem like I’m complaining, or like the workout is a chore. But take a closer look; the statement is important because of what it isn’t.

It could very easily be “I’m tired and hungry. I’m just going to go straight home.”

For the most part I love working out, and being fit feels amazing. But like anyone, there are days I feel tired, hungry, grumpy, and generally lazy.

And I still work out on those days.

Here’s that first statement again: “I can’t wait to finish this workout so I can get home and eat dinner.” Even though it can seem like a complaint, it assumes that I’ll be working out. The idea of skipping the workout never even enters my mind.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to use every excuse in the book to get out of going to the gym. I was too hungry, I was too tired, or I totally, definitely, suddenly had a new debilitating injury. 

The shift towards automatically working out took time, but it happened. It happened because I grew to appreciate the psychology of habits. It happened because I did more research on how to make something a habit over the long term.

And then applied it to build habits.

Before I knew it, I found myself in the gym. In this article, I want to break down the psychology of habits—using research and real-world examples that demonstrate how to make something a habit that lasts.

By the end, you’ll understand the key components of how to make something a habit. You’ll also have real, everyday examples of principles from the psychology of habits, and everything you need to build habits of your own.

Read more about the psychology of habits.

The Science of Why Exercise Makes You Happy: Barbells, Treadmills, and Bliss

This article started because of a simple question: why does exercise make people happy?

It turns out that there isn’t a simple answer. And the answers I found already written were a bit simplified for my taste. So I dove into the psychology and neuroscience behind exercise to come up with a real answer on the physiological effects of exercise.

Why read this article? I’m biased, but I think the topic is at least interesting. Even if you don’t, really appreciating the effects exercise has on your well-being (instead of just hand-waving and thinking “oh yeah, I’m sure it’s ok”) can help keep you motivated to work out.

On Fridays, I eat Qdoba.

The gym is quiet on Friday evenings. The power racks are empty, bars and plates neatly slotted in their places. The artificial turf is open, the yoga mats that crowd the floor on Mondays nowhere to be seen.

There are people, a few dudes benching or curling or pressing or shrugging, by the dumbbells. Maybe there’s a lone lifter cycling through the machines.

There are more people downstairs, in the cardio room. But the sound is not the endless blended “thunk” of 50 ellipticals. If you closed your eyes, you could count the number of machines by the noise.

It’s Friday night. Of course most people don’t want to work out. But Friday nights are my favorite.

On Fridays, there’s no waiting for equipment. There’s no asking to work in. There’s no maneuvering around people during farmer’s walks, or standing in line at the water fountain.

When I finish my workout, I set aside extra time to stretch and foam roll. I sit back and relax in the empty sauna. I stand under the showerhead and let the water wash away my sweat.

And as I stand in Qdoba, ordering a steak burrito with queso and extra guac, skin still warm to the touch, I feel an incredible lightness that can only mean the week is over.

That’s how exercise makes me feel, but you don’t have to take my word for it.

The effects of exercise on happiness and mood are well established by everyone from lifestyle bloggers to MD/PhD psychiatrists, and (spoiler alert) they’re good.

If you doubt the power of exercise, or even just want to know why it makes you feel the way it does, read on.

Read more about why exercise makes you happy.

How to Learn New Exercises at the Gym Using Training Days

When you’re starting to work out, a long list of exercises can be intimidating. I know it intimidated me. 

Instead of going in and trying to have the perfect workout on day one, then forgetting one of your 20 exercises the next time you’re in the gym, put together a strategy that helps you learn over time.

Training days are that strategy. Remember: results come from consistency. The perfect program doesn’t matter if you quiet after two weeks. Training days can help make the gym more enjoyable and less intimidating, and can set you up to learn new exercises and have long-term success.

“Alright let’s GOOO…oh”

I walked into the gym energized and ready to work out, but that didn’t last for long. True, I was over my first day at the gym  jitters, but I still didn’t really know what I was doing.

Today was supposed to be the first day of my new program. But when I looked down at the piece of paper I had printed off 15 minutes ago, I realized I had a problem.

I had no idea what any of these exercises were.

According to the program, I was supposed to do something called a “renegade push-up.” How was that different from a regular push-up? What makes it a “renegade?” Am I supposed to somehow become a “renegade” by doing it?

(Side note: As you might have guessed, I think a lot of exercises have dumb names)

I had conquered the problem of how to go to the gym, at least for now. But now I had a new problem. How do I learn new exercises?

Read more about how to learn new exercises at the gym.

How to Stop Eating Dessert for 6 Years—Without Constantly Craving Sweets

Alone on this list, this article tackles diet and nutrition.

I haven’t written a whole lot about diet or nutrition, but it’s a crucial part of most fitness resolutions. In this article, I cover (in what some might call excruciating detail) what it takes to stop eating dessert.

As I hope I made clear, I don’t think that you need to totally quit dessert to reach your goals. But the strategies I describe here can help you cut back your consumption of dessert or any other junk food.

I haven’t eaten a dessert in over six years.

One day, I decided to quit—cold turkey. Over six years later, I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the day exactly, or even tell you why I gave it up.

That decision to stop eating dessert wasn’t made overnight, and it was very nearly un-made on quite a few different occasions. Just a few short weeks after I decided to stop eating dessert, some new friends invited me over to bake brownies. The new habit was tested quickly.

Since then there have been quite a few similar decision points, moments where it would have been easy to break my rule and give in to dessert addiction.

But I never did. Outside of accidentally eating some poorly labeled granola that turned out to be laced with dark chocolate, the decision to stop eating dessert has stuck—I haven’t eaten a dessert in more than six years.

That includes birthdays and holidays, donut Fridays in the office, and road trips where every gas station protein bar seems to be flavored “double chocolate fudge.”

I want to start this off by saying that this is extreme. You don’t need to totally stop eating sweets if you don’t want to. Whether you count calories or use intuitive eating, there are other ways to adjust your diet.

But if you do want to know how to stop eating sugar cold turkey, this article will show you exactly how I did it. It includes:

• How to avoid desserts by avoiding situations where you’re always craving sugar
• The biggest challenges I faced (and that you will also face) to stop eating sugar
• How to respond when people offer you dessert
• How to respond when people hold dessert in front of your face (yes, it happens)
• How to use “rescue foods” to avoid constantly craving sweets—and giving in to dessert addiction

Read more about how to stop eating dessert.

Conclusion

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: fitness goals are achieved through consistency.

Specific workout routines can be helpful. Following a specific diet can be helpful. But nothing you do matters unless you can do it over the long term.

Fitness is a long-term goal, and staying fit means structuring your lifestyle to encourage health. That’s the focus of these articles. It was the focus of last year’s articles. And it will be the focus of Routine Excellence in 2018 as well.