136. Busy Days Don’t Break Consistency—This Does

Do you feel like you’re actually pretty consistent… until life gets busy?

In this episode, Dr. Stacy breaks down one of the biggest reasons people feel stuck in the “start over” cycle:

Most health plans are only designed for ideal days.

When schedules change, stress increases, weekends get loose, or life becomes unpredictable, the plan disappears—and it can feel like everything falls apart.

But the problem is not laziness, lack of motivation, or lack of discipline.

The real problem is that most people do not have a version of their plan for busy days.

In this conversation, Dr. Stacy explains:

• Why the brain struggles during chaotic schedules
• How cognitive overload affects decision-making
• Why “I’ll start again tomorrow” is not a willpower issue
• How to create realistic “busy day” and “bare minimum” plans
• Why small actions matter more than perfection
• How flexible systems help build self-trust and consistency

This episode is practical, compassionate, and deeply relatable for anyone who feels like they do well… until real life happens.

If you want more support building sustainable systems that work in real life, come join Lifestyle Support Monthly.  www.sugarfreemd.com/LSM

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

If you feel like you’re actually pretty consistent until life gets busy, then this episode is for you.

Because I hear this all the time:

“I do great when things are normal.” “I do great during the week.” “But when I get busy or when the weekend comes, it all kind of falls apart.”

And so I want to offer you a little bit of a different perspective on this.

It’s not that you’re bad at consistency.

It’s that your plan only works on the easiest days.

And today, we’re going to fix that.

Okay, so welcome back to the podcast.

Today I want to talk about something. Look, I know this is incredibly frustrating because it feels like we’re not consistent and it feels like we’re fighting against ourselves and then we can’t trust ourselves.

And we have had stretches where we’re consistent, right?

We’re eating well. We’re following through. Things feel pretty good.

But then life picks up and we get busy.

And most of us are already very, very busy.

Work somehow still gets busier and the kids’ schedule changes or something unexpected happens and then suddenly everything we were doing just kind of disappears.

So if you have ever thought, “Why can’t I just keep going?” or “Why does everything fall apart when I get busy?” I want you to hear what I’m saying.

Of course it does.

Of course it does.

Most plans are built for ideal conditions and our lives are not lived in ideal conditions.

Now yes, we can love our life and be happy with our life, but the day-to-day is not repeatable and dependable and predictable.

That is just not life.

And so we are capable, organized, motivated, and we can follow a plan really well.

We are good at it, right?

We are type A. We did great. We can follow the rules as long as the rules are clear and there’s not a lot of chaos.

But that is not life.

So what it actually looks like is we have this great normal weekday and we wake up and there’s a rhythm and our schedule is pretty predictable.

There’s some structure to it.

And we’re doing great.

But then there’s a really busy day, right?

We have back-to-back meetings. The kids are running around. Our clinic runs long. Or the school calls and says you’ve got to come pick them up. Whatever.

There are no breaks.

Suddenly maybe we miss a meal.

Okay?

It happens more often than probably most of us would like to admit.

Then we start grabbing things randomly and we don’t move and we don’t rest and then we feel really reactive.

Okay, so we go from this place of:

“We were planning.” “Things were good.” “We could be intentional.”

And then we’re just reacting.

So it’s like fire everywhere.

I’m just putting them out. Just barely treading water. Whatever visual works for you. That’s what I’m talking about.

And so it’s not that our goals—we didn’t decide to stop and not pay attention to them.

But we didn’t have a plan for that version of the day.

Weekends are the other place I see this a lot.

Where we have this structure and time blocks and routines and work and home and school and home.

And then the weekend comes and it’s really loose, right?

Maybe we’re social and we’re less scheduled and we like that.

There’s this part of us that’s like, “I don’t want to be scheduled. I want it to be loose.”

And we kind of drift.

Nothing dramatic happens, but our plan is not as tight as it is during the week when we’re scheduled.

Because we went from this really structured plan to kind of no plan.

Like: “I’ll just wing it.” “I know what to do.” “I’ll be fine.”

But our brain actually really likes structure.

Especially our type A brains.

We like it.

We like when our day is predictable. When decisions are easier. When decisions are fewer. And when habits can become automatic.

Remember, our brain wants things to be on autopilot.

And when we do things repeatedly, it gets to do that.

So when we have this beautiful weekday routine and maybe we took some advice from the last episode and we have predictable meals and everything’s going great, our brain really loves that.

But when our day gets super chaotic, our brain now has to adjust, decide, and respond.

And it does not like to do all that work.

It very quickly creates cognitive overload.

Because most of you are really high achieving.

So cognitively, you’re maxed out or pretty close to it most days.

You’re doing really important things. You’re juggling lots of stuff. There’s a huge mental load.

And so there’s not a lot of excess. There’s not a lot of cushion there.

So when you take away the autopilot piece where things have been structured and lovely and your brain doesn’t have to think and now you’re asking it to plan and decide and adjust, it doesn’t want to.

There’s not room for it. There’s not capacity for that.

So our brain simplifies things.

And it drops anything that is not essential.

And unfortunately, your plan is usually one of the things it considers optional.

So you drop it.

And it’s not that it’s not important.

That’s not why it gets dropped.

It’s because your brain is overloaded and trying to manage it.

And the common thought I hear is:

“Today is just crazy.” “I’ll get back to it tomorrow.” “Forget today.” “Today is a one-off.” “Don’t worry about it.”

And again, that thought is not from laziness or lack of willpower or lack of discipline or lack of caring.

It’s a lack of options.

We didn’t plan for this version of the day.

And this version of the day doesn’t have a plan.

So our brain exits the plan entirely.

It’s like, “See ya. I’m out of here.”

So what I want you to maybe think is:

Instead of thinking: “I need more time.” “I need things to calm down.”

Think: “I need a version of my plan that works on days like this.”

Consistency is not about doing things 100% all the time.

Perfection is nonexistent.

That’s not a thing.

So it’s not necessarily about doing your full routine every day.

But it is about having some version of a routine for the day that you actually have.

We do not have to do the full routine that’s built for ideal days every single day.

But we do need to have a plan for the day we’re actually having.

So instead of one plan, you might need multiple plans.

If our plan is our normal day plan—and that’s what most of us have planned for—that might be:

“Here are my three meals.” “Here are my snacks.” “Here’s around when I eat them.”

Because we go back to our protocols:

How many times a day am I going to eat? What kind of things am I going to eat?

So if I’m saying: “I’m going to have protein, veggies, healthy fat three times a day.” “And if I snack, I’ll try not to snack, but if I do, it’s going to be these things.”

That’s my normal day plan.

What if we had a busy day plan?

That’s the one most of us are missing.

That might be: “What do I do if I don’t have time?”

That plan should be simple, fast, and pre-decided.

That might be:

• grabbing something from the freezer
• doing shorter movement
• standing up five times during the day
• drinking one glass of water
• hitting a couple of anchors

It’s not going to be what my normal day looks like.

But it’s enough that my brain has evidence that I can be consistent.

So when my brain tries to tell me: “You can’t do anything.”

I can say: “No, I totally did.” “On my busiest day, I followed my busy day plan.”

Maybe we need a bare minimum plan.

Like: “I’m really sick today.” “Everything is chaotic.” “It all feels like it’s hitting the fan.”

What’s my bare minimum plan?

These tiny things that we’re doing are so we can give our brain the evidence it needs to prove to ourselves that we didn’t quit.

Where people get caught up is they do the bare minimum and then say:

“But it didn’t really count.”

I do not want you to think that way.

If you think of it as: “I just need enough to give my brain evidence that I didn’t quit.”

That shift changes everything.

Your brain is going to say it doesn’t count.

That’s okay.

We have too many programmed rules and reference points that tell us things are supposed to look a certain way.

So when we stretch at the end of the day, our brain says: “That’s not exercise.” “That doesn’t count.” “That’s not enough.”

That’s okay.

We do not have to work through all of that for this exercise.

We just need to know: “Nope. I decided stretching counts.” “I have evidence that I didn’t skip.” “I didn’t do nothing.”

Our bare minimum plan is simply the plan that gives us enough evidence that our brain can see we were consistent.

That’s it.

We just want to counteract the bully brain.

So if you are one of my weekenders, maybe make a weekend plan.

Or at least use the bare minimum plan.

And if part of your brain really resists making a weekend plan, understand that weekends are usually more predictable than we think.

We tend to do many of the same things over and over.

Maybe you wake up later. Maybe you go to church. Maybe there’s a routine.

There is usually more structure than your brain wants to admit.

So maybe we make:

• a normal plan
• a busy day plan
• a bare minimum plan
• a weekend plan

And if you want to make more plans, make more plans.

Maybe you want a migraine plan. Maybe you want a hormone plan. Maybe you want a period plan.

The point is to create plans for predictable situations that are going to happen.

And your plans need to feel easy.

When you look at the plan, it should feel at least eight out of ten easy.

Hopefully ten out of ten.

If the plan feels hard, rework it.

The whole reason we have plans is so we do not have to think about them all the time.

So the plans need to fit real life.

We do not need more time.

We just need a version of our plan that works with less time.

Consistency is not broken by busy days.

Consistency is broken by not having a plan.

That’s it.

We just need to adapt.

And when our brain is overwhelmed, it is hard for it to think.

So think of these plans like a love letter to future you on your hardest day.

Like: “Here’s your minimum, sweet girl.” “Here’s how we stay on track.”

That’s all this is.

It’s to make things easy.

It’s to give evidence to the brain that fights change.

If you want to do this with more support, that’s what we’re doing inside the membership this month.

It’s amazing in there.

If you haven’t come and tried it out, you absolutely should.

The first 30 days are free.

You can go to: www.sugarfreemd.com/lsm

LSM stands for Lifestyle Support Monthly.

I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes.

But for this week, I just want you to think:

If you do not have a normal day plan, start there.

If you already have that, think about one of these other plans.

You should have:

• a normal plan
• a bare minimum plan
• some safety nets

And maybe some specialty plans.

The key is to follow them.

If this was helpful, please rate and review the podcast.

A couple months ago we hit 10,000 downloads, so thank you for that.

Make sure you share this with a friend if you think it would help them.

And hopefully I’ll see you inside the membership.

Until then, I’ll talk to you next week.

Bye.