Did you know that the average diet lasts 5 weeks?

That means, in your attempt to lose fat and improve your health, something will derail you and you will give up and go back to your nightly glass of wine and choosing Netflix over an evening walk.

Habit change is HARD.

On average, it takes about 30 days to form a new habit and 60 days for it to become automatic.

When midlife women come to work with me, they’ve gained 15-30lbs without changing anything to their nutrition or exercise routine, have belly fat that seemingly popped up overnight, they’re struggling with a variety of perimenopausal symptoms from bloating, inflammation, and constipation to anxiety, depressed feelings, debilitating fatigue, and joint aches and pains without injury, and they feel the worst they have ever felt in their lives.

They know they have to:

• Kick their nightly wine habit
• Start lifting weights more and stop doing moderate exercise 4-5x/week that is “kinda hard, kinda not so hard” like cycling and running
• Stop fasting until noon and then snacking on processed food until bedtime
• Double their daily steps from 5k to 10k
• Clean up their sleep hygiene and get to bed earlier

BUT, just because they finally pulled the trigger to invest in themselves and work with me that doesn’t mean that any of these things come easy.

These changes are HARD and you have to tackle them in clusters of 1-3 changes at once.

Last week on the weekly group coaching call for my group, Midlife Muscles & Macros, to get ahead of self-sabotage and becoming a diet statistic where you last 5 weeks following a new plan and then give up because it’s “hard”, we talked about “Expectation Management”.

Somewhere along the journey of implementing new, healthy habits for sustainable change, there will be a moment when you want to disengage.

Maybe it will be the day you decide to eat that donut at work.

Or the night you give into your Mexican food craving and go out for a greasy, fat filled meal at your favorite Mexican restaurant with Margaritas.

Or the Saturday afternoon you decide to have a piece of cake at a birthday party for one of your children’s friends.

Or maybe you get sick and you’re out of your routine for a week and when it comes time to get back at it, you don’t know if you can do it.

Whatever the event, excuse, or “reason”, there will be something that will come up that you will need to overcome, and re-evaluate your priorities and what’s most important to you.

No one said this would be easy. You will have moments where you will say to yourself, “F-it all!”, and consider going back to old, unhealthy habits.

When that moment happens, what action will you take to get excited again and re-engage?

You can see it as pain or a puzzle.

You can’t “fall behind” or “mess up”, because since this is the long game, there is no such thing.

Know this: If you get past those moments, and stick with it, there is a point that it does get easi-ER and that it actually becomes automatic.

When you work with me and I help you to integrate my 6M Midlife Metabolic Method for your long term health, you’re not just following a diet for 4-6 weeks like Whole30. You are creating new habits and routines that become your LIFESTYLE that you follow whether you are at home or on vacation.

You get to the point that if you are not doing these things, you feel like something is missing from your life and that when you are choosing whether or not to eat a donut or a greasy meal at a Mexican restaurant, or have a glass of wine, you stop to think about how you will feel afterwards and realize that the aftermath of feeling like crap is not worth it.

At midlife, making these changes is not just a “diet”. It’s about making sustainable lifestyle changes for your long term health.

If you have been procrastinating about pulling the trigger to make a change, and feel ready now to get after it and want to make some headway before the holidays, I have some NEW and exciting things to share with you this month that will help you to make the change.

Stay tuned, you’re gonna love it!