It’s a never ending cycle.

You start to feel a bit chubby and unhappy with what you see in the mirror. So you throw away all of the junk food in your kitchen and head to the supermarket and buy nothing but lettuce and lean chicken breast.

You strictly deny yourself all donuts and forgo your morning late for green tea instead. You buy a gym membership and brand new yoga pants and start sweating it out on the treadmill every single day.

Flash forward to one month later. You are again sitting on the couch in your sweatpants after a hard day at work, eating an entire pizza to yourself and guzzling from a two liter bottle of Coca Cola.

What happened?

If you are prone to going 100% into a fitness routine, and then burning out and resorting to your old unhealthy habits after a short while, it’s time to ask yourself if your weight loss plan is sustainable.

For a change in your fitness to be sustainable, you need to be able to continue it for a long period of time so that it becomes a long term, ongoing habit in your life.

For example, when you strictly limit yourself to 1,200 calories per day and lose 5 pounds in one week to fit into your favorite jeans for a hot date you might have achieved the results that you wanted but this method of weight loss is not sustainable.

If you are starving yourself, you are going to eventually crack and start eating again and all of the weight will pile back on again.

The only way to lose pounds for good is to make changes to your habits which will last for the longer term.

These changes should be:

Achievable: It’s admirable to try to hit the gym twice every day, but you also have a lot of other things to do in your day. Start with every second day instead and your goal will be much more easily achieved, which will help you not give up as easily.

Balanced: Strictly limiting yourself to certain foods will not last long, and this type of withdrawal sets you up to crave a huge junk food binge. You’re not going to give up on ever having another piece of chocolate cake for the rest of your life, are you?  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing! Allow yourself dessert a couple evenings per week, and a cheat meal on the weekends so that it is easier to stick to your routine. You will crave your guilty pleasures less if you indulge in them every now and then.

Healthy: Eating nothing but salads for a week will make you drop pounds quick, but if you continue that diet for the long term you will become very malnourished. You need protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and even a small amount of healthy fat. Don’t starve your body; treat it right by giving it the healthy meals it needs to survive.

Once you make permanent changes to your routines which are sustainable, you will be able to stick to them for the long term and see fantastic results!