about three times a year, i pack a suitcase and stop following my training plan. depending on the trip, that’s one week, sometimes two, where i don’t log a single set. over a year it adds up to three or four weeks off. if i can, i’ll go for a run or two, and if there’s a gym nearby i’ll do one full-body session, but only because i like moving my body when i travel, not because i’m scared of losing anything. and the older i get, the more at peace i am with the idea of doing absolutely nothing for a whole week.
food works the same way when i’m away. no tracking, no rules, i eat what i love and what i feel like eating. the only things i hold on to are drinking enough water and having some protein and fruit at breakfast, mostly because that’s what makes me feel good in the morning.
if you asked me to describe myself in one word when it comes to training, i’d say consistent. but it wasn’t always that way.
i used to think being consistent meant never missing a session, never eating “off plan,” and never taking a week off unless i had a very good reason. it took me years of starting over to realize that consistency and perfection are two very different things, and that only one of them actually gets you anywhere.
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what being consistent really looks like
before i learned how to be consistent, i was very good at starting. i’d find a new program, get excited about it, follow it to the letter for two or three weeks, and then something would happen. maybe i’d come across another program online that looked smarter, or hear a coach explain why what i was doing was all wrong. and just like that, i’d drop what i was doing and start over, convinced the next program would finally be the perfect one.
i was always looking for a better plan, and i almost never made it to the end of anything.
until i realized that consistency is a lot less exciting than trying to be perfect. there are no fresh starts, no clean slate, no shiny new program every month. it’s following the same plan for months even when it starts to feel boring, doing a shorter session when you only have forty minutes, and eating a normal dinner after a big lunch without trying to make up for it.
when i look back at my six years of training, they’re full of imperfect weeks. there are the three or four weeks i take off every year for trips, the months when work gets busy and i train less than i’d like, and plenty of sessions where the weights feel heavier than they should. if you plotted my progress on a graph, it would probably go up and down all over the place. what makes the difference is the average of all those weeks. in a normal year, i train around 48 weeks out of 52, and when i take a break, i come back without turning it into a whole thing.
your body doesn’t really know what happened on one random tuesday. it responds to what you do most of the time, over weeks and months. and that’s good news, because it means one missed session, a weekend of eating out, or even a week at the beach barely makes a difference. what actually holds you back is the cycle of going all in, burning out, and starting over. every time you start from zero, you’re back at week one.
when you look at the numbers, it makes even more sense. twelve weeks on the same program, even if you only follow it 80% of the time, is enough for your muscles to adapt and for you to gradually add a little more weight to the bar.
now take those same twelve weeks and split them across four different programs that you drop after three weeks each. on paper, you trained just as much. but in practice, you spent most of that time learning new exercises, figuring out a new routine, and starting over before you ever had a chance to see your lifts go up.
the five changes that finally made me consistent
𖥔 give every habit a minimum version. for each thing you want to do regularly, decide what the full version looks like and what your bare minimum would be. if you take your training as an example, the full version could be four one-hour lifting sessions a week, and the minimum, two forty-minute full-body sessions. the minimum is what you do in the weeks when life gets in the way, and it’s what keeps you from falling back to zero. it’s exactly how i built the 50-day challenge i’m running right now. if you want to join me, i explain all the details in this post.
𖥔 finish the program. pick a program that makes sense for your level and your schedule, and follow it for eight to twelve weeks before you judge it. it will probably start to feel repetitive at some point, and that’s usually when it starts working, because you finally know the exercises well enough to push them. the perfect program doesn’t exist, and a decent one you actually finish will always do more for you than a brilliant one you drop in week three.
𖥔 after a slip, just eat your next meal. no skipping breakfast the morning after, no extra cardio to “burn it off”, no stricter plan starting monday. you go back to your normal way of eating at the next meal, as if nothing happened, because nutritionally almost nothing did. the compensation is what turns one meal into a bad week.
𖥔 put your breaks in the calendar. i know i’ll take three trips a year, so i plan three or four weeks off training from the start. when they’re part of the plan, they stop feeling like failures, and coming back is just the next step instead of another fresh start. the same goes for busy periods at work, exams or holidays with family: if you can see them coming, decide in advance what your minimum version will look like during those weeks.
𖥔 judge the month, not the day. at the end of each month, count how many sessions you did and how many of your meals looked like what you wanted. if the answer is “most of them”, you’re doing well, even if one week was a mess. looking at a whole month makes it much harder to decide you’ve ruined everything because of one bad day.
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when i think about the version of me who started over every week, i wish someone had told her she was already working hard enough. what she needed was a plan that still worked when life got in the way, and permission to have an average week: to train a little less during a busy month, or to eat pizza on a saturday and have a normal breakfast on sunday without calling it a failure.
six years in, those imperfect weeks are the reason i’m still lifting today. so if you’re getting ready for yet another monday reset, i’d skip it this time and go back to wherever you left off, even if that means starting with the minimum version. all those ordinary weeks you’ve been dismissing are the ones doing the work.
if this one hit close to home, tap the ❤️, tell me in the comments where your “perfect” usually breaks down, or forward it to the friend who restarts every monday (we all have one, and sometimes it’s us).
thanks for reading,
—glicia ⋆˚✿˖
about the writer
i’m glicia, a personal trainer and dietitian in training based in paris. six years ago, i got over my fear of getting bulky and decided to give lifting a try. back then i couldn’t do a single push-up, i was scared of carbs, and i was surviving on rabbit food. today i eat more than i ever have, plenty of carbs included (gasp!), and i’m stronger and leaner than i was at 25.
at never not hungry i translate research and complex concepts into clear, relatable insights you can actually use in your everyday life. from the science behind lifting to habits, mindset, and the practical frameworks that make change easier, every post is designed to help you make sense of fitness without making it your whole life.
when i’m not writing, i’m designing workout programs, trying overpriced cafés, reading romantasy, or lifting heavy things. welcome to my little corner of the internet. i hope you’ll stay.
Great post. So easy to go all in on a new program, then stop, then start again. Just showing up, in whatever capacity you can, for a long (loooong) time, yields the best results! You put it all to words so well. Once I realized the power of consistency, it took the pressure off of each workout. I stuck with strength training (sometimes barely breaking a sweat, but feeling challenged enough) for two years, and paired it with an eating pattern that works for me (not perfect!) and I feel like the strongest version of myself!