I admit, I’m just like everyone else who’s desire to lose weight fluctuated with the availability of good food and lousy but addictive television programs. I’d try exercising every day, just to catch a cold a week later (if you can’t breathe and standing up is a chore, chances are you won’t feel like exercising), or suddenly pick up old hobbies.

I latched on to information like “Don’t check your weight every day, because it’ll fluctuate. Only check once a week.” and “Exercise is only effective if you do it 2-3 times a week.” as an excuse to not exercise… that day. It’s just that “that day” turned out to be every day.

But what it came down to is that I like my routines. They wouldn’t be routines if I didn’t like them, would they? And as I always told my husband “I only have so much time in each day to do things that I don’t like, and work takes up most of that!”.

But like I said in My Story, I always seem to lose weight while I’m at Walt Disney World. I even had a Freudian slip there and originally typed “Walk Disney”. Obviously the weight loss came from walking several miles a day, since eating chicken fingers and bacon cheeseburgers isn’t exactly diet food (though I did do much better on this trip, and I may write a post about the delicious, healthy foods that I had).

I usually stayed active for a few days once I got home, but it never lasted past the second or third day of the return of my routine. But this time, I realized that.

Vacation broke my routine. A vacation lasting longer than one week will totally break your routine. I’ve heard studies that said it takes 3 days, 7 days, or 21 days to make an activity, thought, or whatever become a habit. But it usually takes much less to break a habit. Not to mention how most of us re-evaluate our lives and goals while on vacation.

You’re not trying to make a habit of eating healthy and exercising- you’re trying to break a habit of not eating healthy and not exercising. Exercise and healthy eating are supposed to be our natural habits, right? They didn’t have cheese balls and pizza (as we know them) in the 14th century. They didn’t ride in cars to get to work. I wouldn’t say that they all ate healthily (research shows that most didn’t, but it was all natural!), but junk food and leisure time are relatively new phenomena.

I’m getting totally off track here, but my point is: The best time to break a routine or habit is while you’re on vacation. The best time to start a new habit or routine is upon your return from a vacation.

And if that doesn’t convince your partner to whisk you away to a wonderful somewhere, I don’t know what will!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under general, weight loss tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.