21 January 2020 in Motivation, Nutrition, Nutrition tips

How to Deal with a Crisis? 5 Simple Tips

You used to work out every day, but now you’ve been exhausted and haven’t done anything for a week. You used to eat regularly, you even followed your diet and now you can’t stop thinking about sweets and you’ve almost forgotten what it means to have a healthy breakfast. Everything seemed to be fine, you were full of energy every morning and now something’s changed, you have no power and shudder at the very thought of going back to the diet and workouts. If this description matches how you are feeling, then you are now aware what it means to have the dreaded… crisis.

Easy. I have some good news for you. First of all – you’re alright, crisis is a natural thing and happens, happened or will happen to many of us. Secondly, crisis will pass and you can deal with it 🙂

Personally, I don’t know a person who has never been through a crisis, it’s a perfectly normal phenomenon. Sportspeople also have their bad days and probably more often than you would even think. However, if you want to get back on the right track, it’s not enough to just accept that it’s natural and we all go through it. How can you do it? You will find the answer below 🙂

Where does the crisis in dieting and workouts come from?

You decided to go by the All Or Nothing rule, and have suddenly transformed from a couch potato into a marathon runner
You imposed too much strain on your body at the beginning and this in turn has led to overtraining
You didn’t eat enough calories to achieve better results and your body has lost its strength
You only focused on external motivation (e.g. you kept thinking about your fit body or about other people’s reaction) at the same time forgetting about the internal motivation (i.e. how your body would change and how your well-being would improve)
You’ve recently been stressed out or had a lot of different problems
You indulged yourself too much while on holiday or over a long weekend and now it’s hard to go back to good habits
You focused on physical activity because you wanted quick results and not because you really enjoy it

Crisis is also common when a big change is ahead and it’s natural for our body to defend itself before we take the next important steps. But it’s also good news that if we deal with it now, then later it can only get better.

It’s time to answer the most important question: how to deal with it?

Actually, you can find the answer in the word itself. Crisis comes from Greek and means choice, decision, struggle or a fight which involves acting under time pressure. And what is the conclusion? If you want to deal with a crisis, you can’t just wait patiently for it to go away, but instead… you must act!

When dealing with crisis, you may find these 5 simple tips helpful:

1. Stop and think

Crisis can help you develop so long as you think what happened and draw conclusions from it. Crisis doesn’t equal failure for me, it is rather an important lesson which teaches me something. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to develop. Mistakes are like feedback which tells you something went wrong. Try to think what caused the crisis. Maybe you took on too much responsibility? Maybe you needed support? Think what you want to change so that you can cope even better with any potential future difficulties.

2. See how far you’ve gone

We are often taught to focus on what we don’t know yet, on the things we still need to do. It’s important and helps us grow. But you should remember to focus just as much on what you already have, on how much you’ve managed to change and how far you’ve gone. Even if you return to old habits, you are never at the same point as at the beginning. And it is for one simple reason: you have lived through one experience which you can make use of in your journey. And no-one can take that away from you.

3. Motivate yourself again

Ask yourself this question again: what do these changes that you have started give you and what will you lose if you give up now? The reasons we go on a diet or start working can change with time because motivation is just a process. A smaller size of your dress may have motivated you at the beginning, but now it can be something totally different.

4. Recharge your batteries

Did I mention how important it is to rest? Yes, I did, many times. And I will keep repeating it over and over again :). Every part of your body needs to rest, regeneration is key not only for your abs, legs or arms, but your HERE.

5. Change something

If you have found some time to think about your crisis and you’ve drawn some conclusions, then it’s time to do something differently. Remember that if you want to achieve a different result, you have to try different methods. If you didn’t enjoy running and you quickly burnt out, why don’t you try something else? Or if you went jogging 6 days a week and you’ve had enough, you may want to do it less frequently. On the other hand, you shouldn’t forget that sport teaches you to break your limits. It may sometimes be uncomfortable because or bodies don’t like changes. But I can assure you that the satisfaction you feel after you’ve overcome an obstacle and after you leave your comfort zone is really worth it.

Finally, remember one important thing that is true not just in sport, but it works in any crisis situation 🙂