A couple of weeks ago, I fell off the bottom step in my house. Actually, the problem was that I was on the second stair and thought I was on the bottom one. The upshot is that I went down pretty hard and my fall was broken by my ribs hitting a nearby doorjamb.
After an Xray determined that I hadn’t visibly broken any ribs (but could have cracked them) I was sent away with a prescription for a muscle relaxer to manage the pain, which was pretty unmanageable for about ten days. As my ribs started to heal, I had days or parts of days during which I felt somewhat better, followed by days where I was right back to feeling like someone was kicking me in the side every time I moved. I’m now in a place where I’m pretty comfortable until I do something stupid like shoveling snow or picking up the dog.
The point is that I know I’m healing, because the pain is mostly better, but it’s not a straight line. You may think that if you’re healing, you should be slightly better each day, but it doesn’t work like that. It can be confusing, because some days you’ll feel like, “Ta Da! I’m cured!” and the next day you can feel like crap again.
Improving with fits and starts doesn’t only apply to the healing process. During January many people make plans to improve their health. They may choose to be to be 
more active, lose weight, quit smoking or to never go through another fast-food drive-up window. Setting these goals may seem simple enough, but more often than not, accomplishing them is a little like my aching ribs—things get better and then you lose a little ground, and then they get incrementally better again.
Making changes, especially those that stick, is also not linear. In fact, there is a whole science behind change making. It acknowledges that you go through steps—and it’s pretty normal to move back and forth between those steps.
Let’s say your goal is to stop eating red meat—this post isn’t about whether you should or not, this is just an example. Before you even know you want to do this, you may have read about the health implications of eating meat, the impact of eating factory farmed animals, the antibiotic issue, or the positive impact to the planet by eating less meat. This is a stage of change in which you’re not really thinking about cutting meat out of your diet, but the issue is on your radar.
The next stage in the process occurs when you actually acknowledge that there’s a problem, but you still haven’t made any decision to change. You may think it’s not doable in your household, or you may lack the confidence or knowhow to change. What follows is another step in which you decide this change is happening, but you’re not there yet. First you need to get some information about how you would actually make it happen. It may involve things like getting recipes, researching restaurant
menus or making shopping lists.
Next comes the big step in which you actually make your change. You’re doing it! Not eating meat, making new meals and finding new foods that work within your new diet parameters. This is a short-term step—about three months or less. After that, if you’ve maintained your meat-free diet for longer than three months, you’re in the zone of maintenance—you’ve done the hard work, you just have to keep it up.
Sounds easy, right? Sometimes, but not always. Behavioral scientists acknowledge that people frequently move back and forth through these stages. Sometimes you begin to make a change, but aren’t prepared. Or once you start your new behavior, you fail for whatever reason, make some tweaks and begin again. Just like my ribs that were healing in their own sweet way, getting healthier isn’t always a non-stop trip from Point A to Point B. So, if you’re making a New Year’s Resolution to improve your health, it’s important to know that implementing a new behavior may not be as simple as deciding and doing. Sometimes it takes a little more thought, planning and fine-tuning once you’ve started. It’s kind of baked into the process. Hopefully it helps to know this and gives you permission to be kind to yourself if making a healthy change takes more than one try.
