There are two things that are hard about starting on the road to a healthier lifestyle: incorporating the new and healthy habits of a healthier life and the seemingly related but really different work of leaving behind the old bad habits that kept us on the literal and metaphorical couch.
Bad habits are sticky
It seems like by incorporating the new healthier habits we would, by definition, be leaving all the unhealthy habits behind. To some extent that's true. But old habits are sticky: they have a way of drawing us back to them when we let our guard down or think that, just because we have started on a better path, the old bad habits will be gone for good. The negative is sticky like velcro while the positive is slippery and shiny like Teflon. It takes constant work to escape the velcro binds and attract the positive for the brief time during which we can hold on to it.
Emotional inertia is always waiting to pull us backwards
Why do these bad habits and bad influences retain such a powerful inertial hold on us, pulling us back like a rubber band when we least expect it? Whether it's food, sedentariness, an unhealthy relationship or an addiction, bad habits are a big part of the inertial tide that we fight against every day with our daily work of staying active.
Just like our bodies are in a constant state of aging and decay, which is an incoming tide that we fight against with good nutrition and daily activity, out emotional state is also prone to fall backwards to the negative and lazy habits that made us unhealthy in the first place.
Healthy habits are a daily, constant practice
I wrote earlier this week on how developing a practice of gratitude is like a workout. Similarly, using our healthy habits are part of a daily practice that can keep us moving forward while avoiding the seductive pull off the bad habits anyways lurking in our past.
So keep fighting the good fight against the negative by a daily embrace of the positive. Always remember that you're worth that fight.