Do you constantly mess up on your diet, and find yourself starting over and over with your weight loss journey?

Many people are stuck in the cycle of doing really well with healthy eating for a few days or weeks, but then falling off track and starting over at a later time… and ultimately find it too difficult to stick with healthy eating for long enough to lose weight.

Everyone who tries to lose weight, including those who succeed and those who do not, will go through this on several occasions… but to succeed with weight loss you must break free of this cycle at some point, and make more forward progress than you do backwards… so that you can finally reach the weight that you want to live your life at, and attain the body shape that you want to see yourself in.

There are several different factors that go into making us either mess up with healthy dieting, or feel like we’ve messed up.

From the addiction to junk foods, to the overwhelm of trying to be perfect, to the doubtful thoughts and feelings that you have, it can all stack up to make being healthy difficult, and can sometimes cause us to give up.

But I have a few methods and mindsets that I would like to share with you to make your healthy diet easier to stick to!

In this article I am going to show you what to do when you mess up your diet, and how to make being consistent with your healthy habits easier so that you don’t slip up or quit as often.

Eating healthy and making constant weight loss progress will be much easier when you stop letting “messing up” lead to giving up… and when you go about your journey in a way that gives you room to make mistakes and to indulge occasionally.

You may be amazed at how easy it can be to make consistently exciting weight loss progress, when you don’t expect perfection from yourself, dedicate to a pace that will lead to definite success, and get back on track right away when you “mess up” with healthy dieting.

Don’t be hard on yourself

One of the most important things to do when you mess up on your diet plan, is to be kind to yourself.

When you give in to your cravings once in a while or have an off day here and there, the impact is usually extremely minimal at first… but if you are hard on yourself and it results in you giving up for a while, then that’s when a little mess up can really hold you back.

Lots of people will cheat on their diet and feel horrible, not realizing how amazing they are actually doing overall, despite that one unexpected unhealthy meal/snack.

If you feel like you messed up when you really didn’t but at least you quitting, and it’s basically messing up anyways.

A slice of cake isn’t going to ruin your diet, so don’t feel like one cheat meal or snack is going do undo all of your hard work.

Don’t let an unexpected turn end your journey send you packing for home when you were well on your way to reaching your goal!

Not letting mistakes get you down is very important, but before that even happens it’s best to make sure your definition of messing up isn’t overly strict.

Another part of being kind to yourself is not just forgiveness for mistakes, but also allowance for imperfection… so that occasional indulgences and side tracks aren’t even considered mistakes.

To give yourself this wiggle room, you have to realize how much you can achieve by being far less than perfect… yet consistently dedicated.

You don’t have to be perfect

One of the biggest things that causes people to mess up is the thought that they have to be perfect.

If you feel like you have to have a perfectly healthy diet and a perfect exercise routine to succeed… when any little thing on according to plan it feels as though you have failed.

When you pressure yourself to be perfect… you can actually be doing all of the right things to cause rapid weight loss and still give up because you didn’t realize how good you were actually doing before you “messed up.”

So many people will assume that they have failed when they have one unhealthy snack, miss a healthy meal, or miss a single workout… when in reality the setback that they are perceiving is very tiny, nearly unavoidable for every person, should be expected, and should NOT stop their momentum.

I understand the thought and feeling behind wanting to get the best results possible, and also not knowing how much effort is really needed to make a difference… when you don’t know how much effort it will take to change the shape of your body, it seems logical to default to trying to be perfect, because you feel that any less has a chance of failure.

But I’m always excited to tell people how much weight they can lose by being way less than perfect, as long as they are consistently improving.

What matters the most is taking more forward steps towards your weight loss goal than backwards ones. Every successful weight loss transformation has backwards steps!

Whether those backwards steps manifest in the form of mistakes, intended cheat days, or just the daily wiggle room that you allow yourself… plan to be less than perfect on your weight loss journey, and embrace it, as this is what will allow you to make amazing progress but still live your life and have the ability to stick with your healthy habits.

When you are just starting with losing weight you can simply make a few small changes in the areas of healthy diet and exercise, that will help you begin burning fat right away without the overwhelm of feeling like you need to be perfect.

Focus on eating more and more healthy food every day/week, but never pressure yourself to eat healthy 100% of the time, since you don’t need to reach that level of perfection to reach even the best physique that you can dream of.

Would you rather stress yourself out with the notion of perfection, and lose weight a little bit faster while risking that you won’t be able to maintain your habits… or would you rather still lose weight pretty fast while simply striving to eat healthy about 80% of the time, and having the confidence that you will not give up?

When I was changing my diet and losing weight, I chose imperfection and consistency, and it made all the difference in me being able to finally stick with my habits and lose a significant amount of weight, permanently.

So as you move forward on your weight loss journey, go at a pace that will lead to success. Know that you can be imperfect, but still be a very healthy person with a thin and strong body.

Get back on track right away

So we have talked about how to get rid of the feeling that you’ve messed up when you really haven’t… which goes a long way towards keeping you confident, on track, and making consistent fat loss progress.

But let’s talk about what to do when you really do mess up your diet, and there’s no arguing that you are falling off track or already did.

Perhaps you ruined your diet for one day, and then messed up for two days in a row, and then it carried on into a full week.

They key in these times is to get back on track quickly, instead of feeling hopeless and giving up until weeks or even months later.

Above we discussed how occasional indulgences and slip-ups are okay and to be expected… and it’s also normal to have even larger periods of struggle and backwards progress sometimes.

It’s not ideal, but it’s something that happens to everyone, even the most successful… and so knowing this will help you get back on track faster when this happens to you, because you will know that you’re facing a bump in the road to success, rather than outright failure.

So instead of “pressing the reset button” when you mess up, and coming back later to start over with your diet at square one, accept your losses and get back on track quickly, so that you can keep making progress towards your goal, despite any intermittent setbacks.

Don’t over correct, just move forward

A small but important note that I want to mention, related to getting back on track as well as not being perfect… when you get back on track don’t feel like you have to “make up” for lost progress by working twice as hard.

I know it’s maddening to think of where you could have been if you didn’t mess up, and that it’s very tempting to go all out trying to make up for it, but it’s just not worth the stress, and the risk of putting yourself in a position where you might feel like giving up.

How to reset after a bad day of eating

If you had one bad day of eating, remind yourself that you can’t actually gain that much weight in one day even if you ate very unhealthy, and that the more important thing to concern yourself with is the big picture of your habits over the long-term.

After a bad day of eating, simply start your next morning in a healthy way with a balanced breakfast of natural and healthy foods.

Doing a workout is also a great way to get back on track again. Making time for an exercise session on the day after you mess up your diet will help you get your confidence back and move on from your previous day that didn’t go as well as you planned.

How to recover from a bad week of eating

Even if you ate unhealthy for a whole week, do not be hard on yourself, and do not feel like you have to go into overdrive to make up for any lost progress.

Simply wake up tomorrow, ready to continue your journey, proud that you decided to keep reaching for your goals instead of giving up altogether. Remember that this is something that happens to everyone who transforms their eating habits and body.

By choosing to continue your journey you become one of the people who does what it takes to succeed, and that fact should give you confidence that you will reach your goal, despite the occasional bad day or week.

Use this opportunity to prove to yourself that you can keep striving towards your goals even when time get tough.

Think of the great position that you are in to make lots of healthy decisions and lose lots of weight in the months to come!

Don’t tell yourself that you’ll never fall off track again, just dedicate to staying on track more often and getting back on track sooner the next time you slip up.

Keep focusing on eating healthy consistently, and not perfectly… go at a pace that you can handle and you WILL reach your goal!

Find deep motivation

Sometimes messing up, falling off track, and the struggle to begin again, has to do with motivation rather than the more technical aspects of messing up your diet.

If lack of motivation is what keeps you from making healthy choices and making progress towards your goals, then there are actually ways to actively motivate yourself.

Nobody is ever going to feel motivated all of the time, which is where discipline comes in to fill the gaps… but I have found that by making motivation an important aspect of your journey, you can build stronger, more consistently reliable, and more deeply felt motivation for yourself.

Sometimes motivating yourself to eat healthy or exercise can be as simple as putting on music, or reading an inspiring story.

Another very motivating thing to do is think of what life will be like after losing weight. Think of all the rewards that will come with your success, and how great it will feel to be thin, and strong!

The best way to motivate yourself for weight loss, is to look forward to reaching a very specific and meaningful goal.

Among the countless things that there are to look forward to after getting in shape, each of us has own own goal and dream that we want more than anything else.

If you think of the one thing you want more than anything else, the one source of motivation that stands above the rest, focus on this idea that drives you at all times.

Let the image, thought, or idea that makes you want to improve yourself more than anything else you can think of, be your unbreakable source of power for healthy decision making.

Finding this most important source of motivation, is called “Finding Your Why”. This method and mindset is one of the most important keys to success in many people’s major weight loss transformations, including myself.

Whatever it is that fills you with excitement and willpower to get healthy and lose weight, keep it close to you and remind yourself of exactly what it is that you are working so hard for, when times get tough.

Identify what made you mess up

When you mess up on your diet, use it as an opportunity to prepare yourself to make a better choice in the future.

Think of what it really was that made you mess up. Perhaps social pressure, or lack of having access to convenient healthy food, or maybe simply putting more pressure on yourself than was needed.

When you identify what it is that caused you to fall of track, think of how you can make a healthier decision the next time that situation pops up.

Remember that the solution doesn’t always have to be perfect, it can also be a compromise.

When I have thought about how to make healthier decisions in my future, I have thought things like the following:

“The next time someone wants me to go out to lunch, I am going to (politely) refuse, no matter what.”

“The next time I can’t help getting fast food, I am going to skip the fries and the shake, and the soda!”

“The next time I have a bad day, when being healthy is too hard, I am going to wake up the next day, forgive myself, and move forward.”

Literally make a plan for these situations that you know make things hard for you, so that when the time comes you can instantly make a good decision, even if it’s not the perfect one.

Do you want a simple but very effective weight loss plan to follow, that will help you be consistent with healthy eating (and exercise too) without feeling like you have to be perfect? If so, you’ll love the 8-Week Weight Loss Challenge! This challenge is designed specifically to help you build permanent healthy eating habits, step by step so that you don’t feel overwhelmed with trying to make too big of a change all at once.

If you want to get started, simply sign up below to get your free 8-week healthy eating/ exercise plan, or you can also read more about the challenge by clicking the link above. I can’t wait to see you in the challenge, and to see your amazing transformation!