First of all, congrats to you all for taking this time out of your busy lives to try something new, think outside the box and challenge yourself with living by our 5 pillars of health. We hope that you were all able to take something away from the experience and apply it to life after the challenge. So, how do you begin this new chapter post challenge? Here are some tips from my experiences with challenges. Hope it helps you with transitioning from the protected walls of the challenge.

• Of course we know the importance of self-reflection. It was part of the bonus activities for a reason. There is A LOT of power in sitting with yourself and reflecting on lessons learned and goals for the future. If you haven’t done that yet, take some time to do it now before you are too far removed from the 5 weeks.
• Be careful when you reintroduce foods you eliminated from the challenge. My first challenge I ever did, I sat with a bowl of ice cream post challenge and while it tasted fantastic going down, I paid a BIG price for it later. Without getting into detail, it was something I’ll never do again. Be careful with reintroducing foods. And if you react strongly when you do reintroduce, maybe it’s something you should consider leaving out for good.
• Don’t undo everything you’ve worked so hard for during the challenge. It’s okay not to be so strict now with going to bed early every night, sprinting once a week and the walks and the nutrition, etc.. but don’t let it all just fall off. So many of you have seen so many amazing changes, it’d be a shame to spend the past 5 weeks building this base to just throw it out the window now. That’s why the reflection piece is so important and making a promise to yourself to continue on with the big ticket items that really made a difference for you. If you worked hard at the sleep thing and are feeling good because of the earlier bed time, keep that going! Don’t go back to staying up late doing mindless, time-wasting stuff!
• Stay connected with the blogs/recipes you fell in love with, podcasts you listened to, books you read etc… When you stay connected with everything it keeps it fresh on your mind reminding you why you are doing it and the motivation tends to stay high.
• Be mindful of things that are “slippery slopes” and continue to avoid them. For me, I can incorporate hummus back into my lunches every now and then with no backlash, but if I start in on the cereal at night, I get into trouble. So, a promise I’m making is to continue to NOT eat cereal at night when I get home. For me, that leads to other unhealthy foods etc.. etc… i.e. slippery slope.

In addition, here is a great download called “off-roading” for you from the awesome people at the Whole9. They deal with nutrition specific challenges with their Whole30 program, but it applies very nicely and is a good guide for making decisions on straying from the nutrition plan. I hope it helps you like it has helped me. I love this and it’s exactly what I coach people on when trying to decide “Is It Worth It”? And making conscious decisions about going off the plan.

Best of luck to you all! We look forward to doing this again!