How to Get Back on Track in 7 Days Without Starting Over

If you feel like you fell off, you didn’t lose everything. You lost momentum.

In this episode, I break down a simple 7-day system to rebuild consistency using structure, not motivation. This is built on the Lifestyle of Fitness framework of awareness, intention, action, and accountability.

We focus on what actually creates immediate results, including sleep, nutrition, hydration, and daily execution.

If you want a clear plan to reset your routine without extremes, this is it.

Get support and structure here!
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💭 Thanks for listening to The Lifestyle of Fitness Podcast with Coach Mike Caulo - NBC-HWC health coach, retired pro Muay Thai fighter, father of 4, and founder of the LOF 100-Day Comback System, 

Transcript

Parents, do you hear that? It's bedtime, is what that means. And if you're like us, you are potentially trying to get back from a break, a break in your routine, a pattern disruption. And here's the number one thing I see people, especially those that have some sense of routine, make a mistake on. Right, Hope Bear? The number one thing they do is try and remove things right away, when realistically what we wanna do is add the right thing at the right time. Let's take Hope right now. I'm gonna give you guys a perfect example. We could try and remove, for example, I could remove her, put her in the bedroom. I can say, hey, we're gonna go in the bedroom. But ultimately, she's just gonna cry in the bedroom, right, Hope Bear? Come here. But if I add some relaxing... either music or conversation or environments, she will allow herself to move energy and relax. We're going to go over today what your first seven days looks like when you are getting back from a routine. And ultimately, I'm going to give you something out of five options that you can implement tonight that will literally change. And you can see weight loss on the scale as of tomorrow. I'll be honest with you guys. It's not going to be body fat, but you will see the scale go down because of this. Or you will feel a difference in your sleep, your energy, your stress, and ultimately your hunger and your cravings. That sounds good. Let's dive on into it. If you have to dip out, be sure to save this. Make sure you're following, subscribing, all that good stuff. And actually, before Hope goes to bed, Carrie's going to tag in on this and give us probably, I don't know, what do you think, ten, fifteen minutes, depending on where Hope's at. And maybe she'll join back in. Let's get into it, y'all. Also, if you stay to the end, I'm gonna be talking about products that I use or have used in the past that can relate to these things. But number one, again, let's talk about what has even got us here. We're talking about the first seven days. The first seven days of what? First seven days after some type of pattern disruption. You either went on vacation, spring break winter break uh you got sick you maybe had an injury something came up and you want to get quote unquote back on track people tend to do this again by cutting things out what i want to invite is picking one of these things that you're going to add at the right place at the right time the number one window we're going to look at is this window right here which is the three hours leading up to bed so for us it's I'm going to be honest, I'm not going to bed in the next three hours. I might be, Kerry, you probably are, but I'm probably going to be up for the next five hours. But the point is looking at the last three hours is one of the most impactful wonders we can look at. It's a three, two, one method. You could Google it. You can look it up. I'm going to break down my version of that, but it's basically looking at things we're taking in three hours before bed, two hours before bed and one hour before bed. And instead of removing things, what we're going to do is we're going to focus on what you can add especially hope oh hopes to throw in things we're moving so you could add movement for example to get some energy and to tie yourself out you could add some potential hydration or some intentional swaps you could also add in some supplementation like some melatonin or magnesium some sleepy time gummies as we like to call them you could also add in some reading or journaling that allows you to move energy just like hope's doing and that's honestly what she's doing if you guys can't tell she's moving energy with her physical movement but also with her voice so you can actually pull a cue from that with hope one of the things that i found really helpful is literally just get a pillow and yell into it it's kind of fun or you could just go out into the ether or toss the kids around or yeah yeah or we do tickle monster we've talked about on Two, three, three, three. Yeah, I don't know if you guys can hear. So she really likes that. So the point is, again, moving energy, adding in something that allows you to get into the state that you want versus removing it. So we could, yeah, we could just remove TV. That's one option. Or I could add in some reading that is low stimuli, but still feels good and appealing because ultimately the reality is, If you are focusing on something you don't want to do anyway, or it's hard to do, you're more than likely going to fail, and that's not going to build to a sustainable lifestyle. So again, thinking about the three, two, one idea, especially before bed, here's one thing I want you to start tonight. I'm not going to tell you to eat more food or add a meal or a closing meal to your evening routine. So instead of saying, hey, do not eat, what I'm going to offer is where you're going to add this into your day. So The cutoff is gonna be about three to five hours before bed. So if you're expected or goal sleep time for me, for example, say it's midnight, I'm gonna shoot for anywhere from seven o'clock to nine o'clock. I'm gonna add in one more meal and I'm gonna comprise it of high protein, I'm going to add in some fiber and I'm going to have in a, preferably some aspect of pleasure. And what I mean by that, it doesn't mean I'm going like, I personally like chocolate peanut butter cups. So I'll take a homemade chocolate peanut butter cup. I'm not going to eat the whole bag, which can be tempting. Trust me. But I'm going to take one or one serving. And then I'm going to have like my personal favorite. Check this out. I actually have it saved here. So this might look like you don't even know what you're looking at, but it's basically like, spinach, ground turkey, chili powder. We got peppers, onions, and we have a little bit of a hot sauce mixed in there. So I got my veggies for the fiber. I got my high protein with the turkey bowl. I got some good seasoning. I actually really enjoy it. Just that alone to me hits the protein mark. It hits the produce mark and it hits the pleasure mark. Those are the three Ps, especially I add in for my evening closeout meal. And the point of that is then you're feeling satisfied. You're feeling satiated. So you're not being restricted on something. Oh, you're calling me out on the prerecorded. I see you. I think that's prerecorded. That's a good AI test, actually, to say, hey, prerecorded. But trust me, I got you. It's not prerecorded. And with that being said, I mean, for those that actually end up watching a replay of this, yes, then it is prerecorded. But right now, I'm actually live. So I got you. Don't worry. Yeah, call it out. But I got you. And if you want to ask questions, I got you also in the chat. Speaking of which, I'll actually pause before I continue to just speak at you guys. One thing I've learned is speaking with people. And that's why I kind of want to have Kerry tagging in. I'm curious your thoughts, Kerry, actually. What do you find helpful? So the idea here is, right, let's say your routine gets disrupted and we're focusing on the first seven days. I wanted to really double down on something we add. That's kind of the whole theme here. What is your thoughts around what you add, especially in that first week when you want to implement a routine that might have been disrupted? so i might for sure add in our mount tracks foot massage coming back foot massager so yeah my focus is always what can ground me because if we've been traveling if we if someone's if i've been sick if there's been a pattern disruption typically what i'm looking for to bring me back to having the energy and motivation to get back into my routine is grounding. What does that mean? Some people may hear you say that and not know what that means. I know what you mean by that, but please elaborate. Grounding would mean adding in a foot soak. We have a little foot spa or a foot massager. Or even adding in tea. I have the Rasa tea I like or just different teas. Specifically things that might have some earthy stuff in them, like earthy herbs like cacao or chicory or... Anything that I, you know, I feel is grounding. I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to give medical advice. What about produce? What's some produce? Because I was just talking about, so there's three P's I like to implement for people for like nutrition, protein, produce, pleasure. But when I'm thinking about grounding things, like produce can be grounding, right? Oh, potatoes for sure. Anything that's like going to be a root vegetable. What about peppers or onions? For me, carrots, potatoes, that is very grounding. Peppers are great too. And anything that adds fiber is going to be, is going to help grounding. It's going to help move things in your body and eliminate any toxins, which can also be grounding as a by-product. But if you're looking specifically for like nourishing foods that are grounding and also high in fiber and that are fresh, I would go with root vegetables like turnips or carrots, or I really like potatoes. So those are the main things I think that... There might also be things like body brushing. Ooh. Okay. So yeah, you can get the body brushes that can be before your shower. So if you shower at night, I often lately shower in the morning, but if you shower at night, which I've done in the past, I'm doing a little body brushing or about your toothbrush routine or your skincare routine, those types of things. Self-care is ultimately what I'm hearing. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And sometimes it's like, to your point, I think it can be overwhelming if you're like, oh, I want to do all these things, but like, really it's just pick one that's accessible to you or pick two that are accessible to you that feel good, that are like low barrier of entry for me. But bond foot massage, that's like, you know, twenty, thirty minutes, forty five max of very grounding, nourishing, you know, something that I can do at night with more energy. Otherwise, you're going to be like Hope Bear here. Every time you hear that noise, I'm going to prompting to that into something. And I kind of want to say this. One of the things I also wanted to put in this time window, especially right now, what I'm talking about is not only things you can do in your day, but we're looking at especially the evening time routine that becomes some live streaming this at night. And when you guys watch the replay, you can be watching it anytime. But really, I think the next day, a win starts with the night before, the prep before. Yes, how you start your day sets the tone, but really how you start your day starts the night before. Right. So if I'm staying up till two in the morning, smashing mangoes and Reese's and like all types of processed stuff. And I'm like watching cop case videos. And these are all things, by the way, that I've actually done and can do. And I noticed like, OK, what can I do instead? So instead of saying I'm going to remove these things, what I find helpful to your point is like, yes, we take self-care. Right. So you have foot soaks, massagers. I also have like a variety of journals I put in if you're watching on like Amazon or anything like that. Um, being able to have journaling reading again, different types of things like that become low stim and helpful. Um, but you also like, I talked about hydrating, ideally hydrating a little bit earlier in the day. So you're not like getting up to pee and whatnot. Um, also, yeah, I'm just going to randomly go through the, the comments in the chat. So it's actually really funny block of cheddar cheese or steak sauce. I love it. They're just like a block of cheddar cheese or a stegosaurus. Twenty two dollars. Oh, yeah. All that stuff's legit. Yeah. For your grounding. But ultimately, actually, even the cheddar cheese, like. I don't know, man, if that feels like pleasurable. Cool. Like I go back to the three P's, right? Yo, what's going on? Being able to have protein, being able to have some sense of produce and then some pleasure. If cheese brings you pleasure. Cool. I'm talking about food when it comes to nutrition. Cheese is grounding. And cheese can be grounding. Look, so they know. From an Ayurvedic perspective. There you go. And meet in general. So Stegosaurus technically, if we have access to Stegosaurus or could have. The other thing, so this is another piece. I kind of jotted down some notes ahead of time with, again, we're looking at this three hour window before, then the two hour window before, then the one hour before. That's something you can literally do tonight. And again, the goal of all of this is to give you guys one thing to focus on. Don't try and do five different things. Don't even try and do two different things. Do one thing, especially in that first week and just do that. Refine that. Your success rate will be exponentially higher. And here's a pro tip to kind of make this one thing you're going to do even more successful is have an accountability buddy and then have a scheduled check-in. So for example, Carrie, you're going to be my accountability buddy. So for next week, Or even tomorrow, if my goal tonight is I'm not going to drink caffeine or I'm not going to eat all the chocolate peanut butter products we have in the fridge, Carrie, I'm going to actually have some leftover for tomorrow. I'm not going to eat all the mangoes that we have. We have... Two bags. So I may have like a half a bag or even a whole bag. We'll get crazy. I don't know. I like mangoes. But the point is I'm sharing with Kerry. We're going to have a scheduled check-in tomorrow. So tomorrow after you get back from work, that's going to be our check-in. I'm going to have up to a ninety five percent higher success rate just because I did that. That's the one thing I want to invite you guys to do what I just did in real time. Figure out your goal and then share it and then be able to have that actual check-in. We started going to the gym three times a week. I'm starting to watch how many calories. Nice. I see you. Okay. Get it. Hope is excited about it. She celebrated for you. That's awesome. Kudos to you. So even taking that, for example, so let's even saying, Hey, like, I want to give you another example. If you don't mind, I'm going to use that real time. Let's say you've been getting to the gym three times a week and you're feeling good, but then you went on vacation or your pattern got disrupted for whatever reason. What you can do is my version of that is do that same thing. But I would cut it down to one or two days for your first week and then build two to three and then back up to three days. So the other part of how we structure this is whatever your measurable goal is, especially in your first week, make it super low resistance, super low friction, very accessible. Right, Hope Air? Yeah. All right. So Hope Air, it's time for you. You're going to turn into a pumpkin if you don't go to bed. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All right, ready? We're going to say goodnight. Everyone say goodnight to Hope Bear. Goodnight, Hope Bear. Goodnight, everyone. So this is a good example of, again, we got her some movement. She's going to be a little bit more chill. She's going to go to sleep a little bit easier now than if we were just trying to force it. Fifteen minutes ago. Yep. Okay, so let's pause, see if we have any questions on that. That was a great example of even hitting the gym. That's another routine I hear a lot that comes up. And this is something I want to give you again. The things I wanted to give you today is in your first week, what you can do right now that you'll see an immediate measurable impact. So one of the things that will impact your gym performance or your fitness performance is your sleep. So being able to, again, I'm not going to tell you, hey, get seven to nine hours. You probably know that. Again, information isn't the thing here. It's what you can do to help facilitate that. So here's the one thing I want you to do instead of removing things. I want to offer you guys to add fifteen to eighteen minutes of reading, journaling or some artistic expression in the three hours leading up to bed. If you find yourself wanting to just binge watch TV, which I can do as well, I break it up by adding in fifteen to twenty minutes of structured either reading or journaling or lately I've been getting back into the guitar. The point is that's going to help with the sleep. If we have quality sleep, we're going to have more energy for working out. On top of that, we're also going to have less resistance in making logical decisions with our nutrition. So these are all things that we can do. Another layer, even movement, we were kind of talking about with hope, is you can add in a ten-minute wind-down ritual that's movement-oriented. If you're like me and you like movement, or you can keep it predictable with the journaling. and the reading what i like to do is actually have a very specific stretch routine that i'll do three movements i might even do it on a video series one part if you guys are interested in that but i find it helps move energy wind down and then i can relax do the foot uh spa so the massager is a daily nighttime routine that's part of my routine i do that with my journaling every single night if you guys want to see that you can go on our amazon um i have it on the live stream you can see it in the carousel if you guys are watching the replay you can hop on over and see it i have it linked wherever you're watching this The other thing is also using a foot spa. That's really nice as well. I haven't been doing that. I'll be honest, as consistently, I got it over a year ago for Carrie, something I'm working back in and being able to have warm water, especially with like an Epsom salt combo is just what we know from a neurological system, from a cortisol control, relaxing. So that's another access point. So again, I'm going to pause here, grab a little swig and see if we have questions. I appreciate the comments, even the funny ones. And also, yeah, Jesus loves you too. And I love you guys too. Appreciate the spiritual love here as well. And again, you can either have questions or even recommendations or anything like that. What I'm actually going to do is while we're here, speaking of recommendations. One of the things I always like to share on all of our office hours is if you go to our website, lifestyleoffitness.com, we have a tab where you can actually vote on any week's topic. I give away a hundred dollar gift card to anyone that votes. We randomly pick a winner. Lately, we haven't actually had anyone really pick a topic. So I'm going to go in right now live with you guys, see if anyone's actually picked a topic or voted on a topic. And if they have, we are going to pick a winner from that with secondary submissions. Let's see the last one. Yeah, the last submission we got was March, we haven't had one in over two weeks. And this is actually, I can tell you it was my, this was one of my VAs actually just testing to see if this functionality works. So, Point is, if you're watching this live, you can literally go vote right now and you'll probably win a hundred dollar gift card to LOF for any kind of coaching or clothing or apparel that we have. Or if you're watching the replay, you can vote for next week's jump on. And again, I don't even use the name. We have your email. I'll just shoot you an email and announce that we have a winner and that I'll email the winner in real time. So you guys know what's going down. But that's, again, the focal point for the first seven days is picking one thing you're going to do, pick an accountability buddy or way you're going to be held accountable and schedule a check-in, whether it's the next day, whether it's three days in, seven days in, have a scheduled check-in that will increase your success rate up to ninety five percent. Could be your coach. It could be a friend. It could be a loved one. It could be your kids. It could be your doctor, whomever on social media. It doesn't matter. But schedule a check-in and stick to it. The other piece that we can explore, this is another option, is having a two minute tomorrow plan that helps set up the morning or the structure of the day. For example, what you can do is know what your workout time is going to be, what your actual workout is going to be, what's the first thing you're going to eat, what's a non-negotiable you're going to have set for the day. Being able to have a clarity sense for your following day on the one thing you're taking action on becomes massive because then it lowers friction. Again, it creates clarity and it takes the guesswork out of it. And then you can think about, oh, wait, like, for example, tomorrow, I really enjoy it. A friend of mine has a home church I like going to with the kids and myself. I'm like, oh, cool. I really actually want to go tomorrow. So last time I was able to go was Eastern. I hadn't gone over in like, it's probably been two years since before that. And so what I like to do is saying, okay, let's consider what's going to get in the way tomorrow. Hope's sleep schedule. Okay. If she has a weird nap time, we might not leave and we might be a little late. So the other caveat to that that allows by having a two minute tomorrow plan is you can have a plan B. Have a plan B. So my version of a plan B is if I don't make it to church, I do Bible study at home. I'll throw on a live stream on YouTube, similar to this, but for church. And I'll also read my Bible. And when my kids are here, we go through a particular topic and do it together. So the point is, if you're, for example, trying to go to the gym and you don't make it, but you still want to stick to your three time a week workout, have a plan B. Have a body weight or a maybe resistance band, home workout, have something that you can do as your backup. And just taking two minutes the night before helps set you up for success with that. It'll help put you in the right place to make that happen. All right. Now here's, let's tying all this together. Here's what I want to tell you. I told you, I want to give you things and take action. How it's going to actually impact your weight for tomorrow. Okay. Now I'm going to be honest with you guys. You're going to see a difference on the scale if you do a couple of these things, but it's not because it's pure fat loss. What's really going to happen, especially if you don't eat, um, three hours before bed and you have your last meal at the timing I'm telling you to, you're probably not going to be snacking as much. And if you're not snacking as much late right before you go to bed, your body's A, going to have more time to process, digest, and go to the bathroom. And you're going to be lighter because of it. You're also not going to be most likely taking in sugary things and fluids connecting to that because water or... Glycogen and water are going to bind together in our body, which is going to up our weight on the scale in the morning. So literally just by having that meal, your protein, produce, and pleasure meal, our added closeout meal of the evening will help you not eat as much sugary BS and processed stuff later in the evening. You'll add food to your meal in your evening time, and you'll actually see lower weight on the scale the next day. So if you want to lose weight and see the scale go down tomorrow, I want you to eat this meal tonight. You're gonna add this meal into your routine. It's a high protein, it's a high fiber vegetable meal, and it's gonna be something enjoyable that you have as well that allows you to feel fulfilled. So you're not gonna be snacking throughout the night. I talk, I have like, especially for my ADHD peeps, I have a couple of clients specifically I talked to about this and they're like, man, I just like, I eat sugary things at night and I'm eating more. I'm like, yeah, so let's intentionally have dessert, have something we intentionally enjoy. So then you're not as likely to have an entire bag of candy at night. That's the key component of it. And then guess what? You're going to wake up the next day lighter because of it. Now I'm not saying you're going to lose ten pounds overnight, but even if you lose or you're down half a pound, Honestly, it's going to be mostly water and a little bit of like just mass and digestion. It's not going to be actual body fat. The key is it actually psychologically generates momentum for you. That's I think the cool part. But again, I'm going to stop. One of the things I learned, I get on these rants, I'll start speaking at everybody. I want to pause, see if we have questions. And if not, that's okay. I'm going to kind of bring it home. I lately have been kind of keeping the topics and the talking points kind of short and sweet. So I don't rant and just get into the weeds. And it's Saturday night. So I want you guys to be able to still enjoy whatever fun plans you got. Lastly, what I'll talk about is not only the like lower scale is related to your body, not retaining as much water and the glycogen, but also in the long term, when you're getting seven to nine hours of sleep, your body's going to have higher levels of leptin most likely and lower low levels of ghrelin. And what does that mean? As the fancy are saying signals, leptin is going to tell you that you're full. Ghrelin is what tells you that you're hungry. So if you have a bunch of ghrelin in your system, guess what? You're going to be eating more. If you eat more, you're going to be eating more calories in your burning. You're going to be putting on weight. If you have more leptin in your system and you're getting fuller, either faster or more often, you're not going to be eating as many calories. You combine that with weight training and all the other types of fun training that you could be doing. You're going to have your body fat go down in the longterm. And that's how you see the scale compound over time, especially in your first week. The thing you, from most experience I've seen with others and myself is like, you don't want to see getting back into your routine and the scale going the opposite direction of your intention. So set yourself up for success by picking one thing, have an accountability buddy. And if that one thing is anything you don't know where to start, start with what the three hours before bed look like. That's the key area you can hone in on. That's where I'm going to even focus in on tonight. That being said, that's also going to help me not being as stimulated before bed. So I'm going to start to wind this thing down now. It doesn't look like we have any questions. I'm going to stop speaking at you guys here. We'll leave it at that. And if you're uncertain, again, even based on all this, again, you can have all the information, but if you're not doing it and you find yourself struggling and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do it and you just don't, get a coach, get support. That's what we do. That's what I, and even if it's not with myself and the team, we will send you in a direction. If even we have a great network of medical professionals, medically integrated coaching is what we do. And nowadays we can even incorporate your insurance possibly, but we have a medical director as a physician overseeing what we're doing. I have myself leading it as the head coach. I have a great team to implement on the trainer side. We have both male, female, everything in between from our coaching side to give you what you need. Um, Go to lifestyleoffitness.com. Get on a console call on me. It's not going to cost you anything. We'll chat. We'll be able to figure out a direction. If you're a good fit, cool. We'll go over those steps. If not, we'll send you out with some great free resources and a direction, at least with someone in our network or where I would recommend to get started. So you at least know you have clear action. At the end of the day, I want to create action for you guys, but you have to actually do it too, obviously. So that being said, cheers. Go get some action in. I'll see you on the next one. I'm going to be back on Tuesday. And speaking of for our office hours, we actually have a really, one of my best friends, Rob is going to come on. He has gone through this. cycle in his own life three different times and when he's actually used our kind of protocols he's had the weight stay off and then obviously we'll talk about things that have come up where maybe this didn't work on the routine and where he kind of veered off and maybe what he's learned along the path and how you guys can gain from that experience so That's it. I appreciate you guys. I love you. God bless all that good stuff. Keep getting after it. I see you in the gym three times a week. Keep getting after it. Get that stegosaurus meat. Yep. And yeah, Jesus loves you guys, right? Peace.