I don't know how people deal with real traffic every day. It would make me even crazier than I am now.
My wife and I went to pick up my son from a week of camp at a place outside of Atlanta. On the way there we got caught in traffic where it took 45 minutes to go about a mile.
At 730am. On a Saturday.
And what do you do when you sit in traffic for 45 minutes and you finally get past the 3 closed lanes into freedom? You put the pedal to the metal son!
I found myself immediately speeding to make up for the lost time and that feeling of being trapped. Do you do this too?
I think we all do that, whether we want to admit it or not. We also do something similar when it comes to trying to lose weight and get in shape.
Have you ever put yourself on a super restrictive diet? Have you ever put yourself on a 2 hour a day every day workout plan?
What ended up happening?
Chances are you started speeding again. One day you cracked and started eating everything in sight. Or you missed a workout and then didn't workout for a month.
Little piece of advice, never trade short term results over long term health.
Now there are times when you want to be more disciplined with your eating or work a little harder to train for an event, but don't think of that as a long term way of life. You want to give yourself some room for error.
If you think of success as getting it right 100% of the time you will fail. You're only human, born to make mistakes. Get that stuck in your head for a few hours.
Use the 80/20 rule with your healthy eating. Get it right 80% of the time, that way you don't think it is the end of the world if you have a candy bar.
This means that you are eating healthy 8 meals out of 10. High level math is what I'm known for. Then when you are ready to increase your results you increase it to 85-90% of the time.
With your workouts, you use the "don't let a slip become a fall" technique. If you are planning on working out 3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week, but then you miss a Wednesday one week, don't freak out. There are plenty of other days in the week to make one up. And instead of a structured workout, you can go do some fun movement like hiking or roller skating.
Eating healthy should feel good, not feel like a chore. Exercise should improve your enjoyment of life, not something you dread doing every day.
Long term failure lives in that deprived feeling you get from doing things that are not right for your body.
Find ways to cook and prepare healthy meals you look forward to! Find a way to move your body that you look forward to, even when it is hard. When you can find those two things, you have found the key to long term success in looking, feeling, and performing your best.