episode 210: The most underrated and overlooked part of behavior change
Kicking off year 5 of The Diet Diaries today!
So many of us create these perfect plans for eating better, exercising more, or making any kind of change. And then life happens. You miss the grocery store, work gets crazy, or your kids need you, and suddenly, your plan goes out the window. Without a backup, it’s easy to fall into the all-or-nothing trap, swinging between doing everything and doing nothing. Sound familiar?
In this episode, I’m sharing:
Why a backup plan is the secret to consistency and staying on track long-term.
How I work with my clients to identify potential obstacles ahead of time.
Real-life examples of backup plans for food (like keeping frozen smoothie ingredients on hand) and workouts (a pre-planned 5-minute session for busy days).
Why small efforts, even just “0.01,” add up over time—and how this mindset shift can change everything.
If you’re working on New Year’s resolutions or trying to build healthier habits, this episode will help you feel prepared and confident no even when life gets lifey.
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210
[00:00:00] Welcome to the diet diaries, a podcast where we have candid, heartfelt conversations that will help you figure out what, why, and how to eat. So you can feel amazing in your body because it's time to break the all or nothing mindset of yo yo dieting, food obsession, and feeling ruled by the scale. I'm your host, body image and nutrition coach, Jordana Edelstein.
I'm so happy you're here.
Hey everyone. Happy new year. Welcome to 2025. This is the first episode of the Diet Diaries in 2025, going into our fifth year, which is so super cool. Um, I'm gonna keep it short and sweet today. I think last year I did kind of like a what's coming in 2024 episode. I don't know. I didn't do that this year.
We're just gonna kind of keep on truckin Um, and I wanted to, I skipped last week, took a little bit of time off, which It feels a little bit uncomfortable, but I was like, you know what, just give yourself a break. It's fine. Um, also everyone has so much going on [00:01:00] that I feel like it's kind of nice not to have new stuff to listen to, not that there's a schedule in which you have to listen to these.
And so I wanted to keep today's episode kind of short and simple and also very timely to uh, Kind of like the vibe around, you know, January, which is very often around wanting to make some changes to food and exercise and all of that. So whether you are working with the New Year's resolution, changing something about your eating, trying to work out more, whatever it is, I want you to think about What your backup plan is.
Because when we start making changes, we kind of come up with like the idealized situation. We come up with the meals we're gonna make, we come up with the gym classes, and the schedule, and the growth, when we're gonna grocery shop, and what we're gonna buy, and when we're gonna meal prep. But what we don't think about is, well, what happens when something gets in the way and that thing can't or doesn't happen?
Um, Because what happens when that thing canter doesn't happen [00:02:00] is we, quote, fall off the wagon, right? That's when we say, Shit, I screwed up. I can't stick with it. Here I am again. It didn't work. And we swing in the opposite direction and basically don't do anything. And that's the endless cycle, until we start feeling like shit, and then we're like, oh my god, I've got to do something, this is terrible, and we swing the opposite direction and try to do all the things until something goes wrong when we're trying to do all the things, and we swing back.
So if you can start to think about what your backup plan is, when the things that you have planned don't happen for any reason, I'm not even going to get into the reasons why they don't happen, whether they are within your control or out of your control, what is your backup plan? What are you going to do?
Because this is the key to consistency. You have struggled to do anything long term because you don't have a backup plan. You only have a plan when things are going well, when things are perfect, when things are going exactly the way that you need them to go, and you are in your day to day routine, and no kids are sick, there's no work [00:03:00] deadline, there's no travel, there's no sick parent, there's no nothing going on.
It's just kind of like, The usual, the usual chaos, right? Baseline chaos. Having a backup plan is the most underrated part of change. Because it is the thing that is going to help you keep going when your plans go awry. So, the way that you can figure this out is to think about what are the possible obstacles that could get in my way, right?
Let's say that you are working on eating more protein, right? It's always my go to example. You're working on eating more protein. And you are working specifically on eating more protein at breakfast. Because when you start to make changes on these things, we don't go all in, we don't do three meals a day.
We go slow. We work on one meal at a time. So you're working on a protein at breakfast. And you have a bunch of meal ideas, right? That you are, that sound good to you, that could work. And then you don't get a chance to go to the store, right? So you have basically nothing in the house. And again, the reason that you [00:04:00] don't go to the store, I'm not even going to get into that.
But you don't go to the store and you don't have the things in the house that you need. What is your backup plan? Well your backup plan could be something like where you buy Early on, stuff to keep in the house as your backup food. Things, not something that you have to buy every week, not something that has to get prepped, something that basically sits in your freezer or your pantry that is just kind of always there, that you don't have to think about that you can turn to.
That could be something like a bottled protein shake, that could be, um, having frozen fruit because, and, uh, a bag of protein powder in your cabinet and being able to make a smoothie. Something that you don't have to think about, that again, doesn't require um, a trip to the grocery store, that isn't reliant on kind of like, you know, freshness or expiration or food that's going to go bad, stuff that you can have around.
Um, if you are planning to go, let's talk about exercise. If you are planning to start strength training three times a week and you [00:05:00] have a program to work on, right? And, you know, day four or five of this rolls around and something happens and you cannot get your workout in? What is your backup plan? Can you do five minutes of your strength workout?
Can you do one or two of the sets? Um, can you, do you maybe have a backup plan workout already established for when this happens? Right? Like you already know, oh, when this happens and I can't do this, I already have like my mini workout. It's already programmed. It's good to go. I follow that. The idea behind this is thinking ahead.
It's not figuring out your backup plan in the moment. It's as you start to identify whatever it is that you're working on, figuring that out, figuring out the actions you need to take, whatever you need to do. And then as part two of that saying, well, what am I going to do? When and if not even gonna be if because it's gonna happen because that's life when I'm not able to do this What is my backup plan?
It is [00:06:00] as important to identify the backup plan as it is to identify the original plan Because the backup plan is a huge part of the original plan. It's what allows you to keep the plan at all going. So again, do not wait until you are in the crappy circumstance to figure out what you're gonna do because you won't be able to.
Because you won't have the pieces in place. It'll feel like even more work at that point. Have the decisions, have the prep, have the thing, whatever it is, done in advance so that it's just like, You can turn to it. You've got your pivot. Pivot. If you know, you know. Um, and you can just go and do that thing.
So I had, I was having a conversation about this with a client recently. At this point, it was probably well over a month ago. And this is what we were talking about. Like, we had, we were talking about her breakfasts and She brought up, she brought up the idea of like, what's my backup plan? Because I know that some days I'm not gonna be able to do this.
Like, something's gonna happen. I've watched it [00:07:00] happen enough times, right? That's the thing. Like, you've seen things get in the way enough times to know that everything is not gonna go, quote, perfectly. Shit is gonna happen. That is life. And if you're only able to follow through and do the things you want to do when shit isn't happening, nothing will ever change.
That's why you are where you are. So she identified, she was like, I need a backup plan, because I know that stuff is going to come up. And that's what we identified. And for her, I think it was like chomp sticks and like an apple. I don't, I don't even remember something to do with chomp sticks. Um, because that was an easy protein that she could keep in her pantry that she could stock up and not have to think about, right?
That's like a restock once a month or maybe even less frequently kind of thing. Um, so whatever it is that you're working on right now, Figure out your backup plan for when things don't go according to routine or the way that you want them to. And I guarantee you, that's how strongly I feel about this and how important I know this is, I guarantee you [00:08:00] that will allow you to be consistent over a long period of time.
Because using your backup plan to keep you going versus stopping doing everything at all, I is what is going to add up to changes, right? It goes back to the 0 0 is always 0, but 0. 01 plus 0. 01 always adds up to a bigger number. Your backup plan is your 0. 01. If you don't have a backup plan, you're going to swing from doing everything to doing 0.
So I'm going to keep this short. I said what I wanted to say. Um, I felt, again, I feel like this is really timely given that a lot of people are in a headspace right now where we're trying to make kind of significant changes. And so as you're doing that, again, figure out your backup plan, figure it out in advance, not in the moment when suddenly you realize you're not going to be able to do the thing.
All right, that's it for me. I will be back next week. Thank you for listening. You're the best. I so appreciate your time and attention that you [00:09:00] share with me and the diet diaries. Okay, see you next week.