Getting out of a slump: What to do when your fitness level suddenly drops to nothing

We are all guilty of it. I know that I certainly am. There are things that happen and it could be a big party weekend, being too busy at work, or suddenly just finding yourself much more interested in a TV show on Netflix or a new video game but your fitness level suddenly drops and you find it difficult to get started back up again.

This has happened to me on many different occasions in my life and each and every one of those times I almost certainly put on weight, start ignoring my diet and probably coming up with excuses such as "ok, I'll get started tomorrow." Of course I end up telling myself exactly the same thing again the following day and I think a lot of people get into this same rut.

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There are very few people out there that are actually too busy to exercise: I know that I am not one of those people and there is a good chance that you are not either. I realize that the average person doesn't have what it takes to wake up 2 hours before work to get a workout in and for many people it is either too cold to something outside or the gyms are closed for covid reasons.

My situation is one of I just had a couple of heavy days of drinking and then felt too hungover to go for a run or to the gym, then the next day I was feeling lazy, and so on.

I do not own a scale so I couldn't determine this for sure but it is almost a certainty that I was putting on weight because that is what happens to everyone who stops exercising.

The above image is funny because the person who originally posted it obviously meant for it to be presented in the opposite way but also it is extreme because when I am referring to myself I have only been out of the game for a few days.

I was in a slump: What is at rest tends to stay at rest and that which is in motion tends to stay in motion. So I came up with a solution to ending any slump that a person might have.

Put your shoes on and head out the door

That's really all there is to it. When I wasn't feeling like exercising or knew it would be easier to just stay on the sofa I just put my exercise gear on, put on my shoes, and then headed out the door. I didn't know how much exercise I was going to do or if I was even going to run at all. Once I hit the bricks outside I didn't have a plan other than getting outside and doing something, anything. It started out as a walk, then I did a brief jog and then "gassed out" pretty quick, the I had another go. The next thing I know I had hit my stride and the run was easy - just like it had been before.

The hardest thing about exercise in my opinion isn't the physical aspect of it, it is the mental aspect of it. We are just so likely to tell ourselves that we can't do something to the point where we don't even try, hence the first image that I put on this page.

We are all capable of getting out there and doing some exercise, yet most of us don't even give it a go.

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The above image represents the most difficult portion of every workout that I have done in the past 2 years. The part where I decide to leave my house and actually have a try at doing it. Once I am in my run, or at the gym in the weight stacks, I find that this difficulty slips away, and I am finding it easy to do something, anything other than just sitting on my ass.

This mindset is what got me in fat-ass trouble in the first place, and the hardest part about breaking out of it is simply lacing up and getting out the door. Once you get there, you can worry about how intense the workout is going to be later. It all starts with a single step or for me, hitting the button on the elevator - with my fitness shoes on of course.