EVERY DECISION ADDS UP

Happy New Year! New Year New MEEEEEEE!
It’s Monday it’s a new week! I
I’ll start fresh tomorrow!
In case you were wondering these phrases are all bullshit. The concept of a new year, new week, or even new day is a lie. Every new day is a continuation of the decisions made yesterday. Whatever you didn’t finish yesterday will have to be dealt with today. It’s kind of like leaving your dishes in the sink overnight.  When you wake up in the morning they are still there. The same rules apply to your nutrition, your health, and your fitness level. Every decision you make day to day will either positively or negatively impact each of these areas. For example take the 65- year- old man listening to his doctor telling him he needs to get his diabetes in check. The disease didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a culmination of the decisions he made over his lifetime (and genetics). A little side note on genetics as I go off on a tangent. Knowing your genetics and what types of disease run in your family is included in this topic. Sure, none of us can completely outwork our genes, but if we know our lineage has a predisposition to high blood pressure and we pile on the salt, we are basically asking for it. And for those of you that may get angry with this statement there are cases where people did everything right and still succumbed to their genetics. This post is not directed towards those few and far between cases, but towards those of us in the middle that can influence our health.
This concept of everything adding up is vastly overlooked by many undertaking a fitness journey. In my work I define “current fitness level” as: The sum total of decisions made during your fitness journey. Let’s look at it from a weight loss perspective. So many times in my career people have come to me and said I used to do X (Intermittent fasting, Keto, A designed meal plan, Weight Watchers, Atkins, Etc) and I lost a TON of weight doing it and it worked so well. To which I respond with “Did you gain any of the weight back?” MOST OF THE TIME the answer is either some, all, or more than the original weight came back.  Same thing with exercise. All too often I hear “I used to max deadlift X” or “I used to bench press Y”. What can you do now? Anything close to what you used to? Now, again I understand life is a rollercoaster and nothing is ever certain. But, even if something worked short term it may not have necessarily “worked”. 
In my experience this cycle of commitment and indifference is caused by being too rigid about things. People start up a diet and when things aren’t perfect they revert back to old ways. Or they start a workout routine and when it isn’t perfect they skip workouts or stop altogether. That is asinine. That’s like having a fire start in your living room and not putting it out because the living room is already ruined so why not let the rest of the house burn down. Would anyone do that? I hope not. Yet, ALL THE TIME this happens with people’s health. Well I can’t follow this diet perfectly so I may as well not do it. Or even, I messed up today so I may as well keep eating and start fresh tomorrow. Tomorrow will be ten times harder if you eat yourself into a food coma the day before. There’s no such thing as tomorrow, there is no such thing as perfect, and whatever you choose to do today will effect you forever. When looking at weight loss and fitness every single decision we make is tallied up either for or against what we are trying to work for. Just like a smoker can quit cigarettes but the chemicals they ingested during their addiction will change their body in a way forever. 
If we can arm ourselves with this knowledge I believe we can make long lasting changes to our lives. Imagine if every time you were faced with a nutritional decision you thought about how it would effect you long term. Do you think your decisions would be different? Probably. It is the same with exercise. Skipping the gym sounds amazing some days, but it will only make it harder to get back the next day. Especially if you planned on going. The best decision I ever made in my fitness career was to shift my perspective to thinking long term. My eating habits changed. My outlook on my workouts changed. The way I started coaching clients changed. If you plan on undertaking a fitness journey whether you like it or not it is a lifelong commitment. I am not saying that you have to devote your entire life to training and eating like a pro. But, if the decision to better yourself from a health standpoint appeals to you odds are that mentality will not leave you while you are here on this planet. So, remember every decision adds up.