Some days are different. Maybe you didn’t sleep well, work has been relentless, or someone's needed you all day and there's been nothing left over. Or maybe nothing's obviously wrong, you just don't have much to give. On those days, just getting through your basic to-do list can feel like enough, let alone fitting in a workout, especially when the list only seems to keep getting longer.
Fitness culture rarely makes room for days like these. It celebrates consistency, discipline and routines, but rarely talks about what to do when life inevitably gets in the way. Health isn't built on perfect weeks. It's built on how you handle the hard ones. Research into habits consistently shows that making a habit smaller, not bigger, dramatically increases the chances you'll keep doing it.
When I first started running, I'd tell myself I was only going out for a walk, there was no pressure to run at all. Once I was outside and listening to my favourite podcast, I'd often find myself jogging without even thinking about it. The hardest part was never the running itself. It was opening the front door.
The Evessa Minimum
On hard days, try choosing one thing that feels easy to do:
Take a ten-minute walk
Eat protein with one meal
Stretch while the kettle boils
Go to bed half an hour earlier
None of these has to fix everything, they're just there to keep a habit alive. And if today simply isn't a day for exercise, that's okay too. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is be kind to yourself, if you know me, you'll know that means sitting down with a cup of tea, enjoying a piece of chocolate if you fancy it, and allow yourself a few moments to yourself without guilt.
I think healthy people don't succeed because they never have hard days, if anything, they just get better at knowing how to start again the next day. Research on habit change backs this up too, people who respond to a lapse with self-compassion are more likely to get back on track than those who respond with guilt.
One thing worth saying gently: an occasional hard day like this is completely normal, and nothing to worry about. But if low energy and low motivation start showing up most days rather than occasionally, that's worth mentioning to your doctor, hormonal changes like perimenopause can be part of the picture too, among other things, and a pattern like that deserves real attention beyond what a newsletter can offer.
Your health doesn't disappear because you had a hard week, and neither do your fitness levels or your progress. Be kind to yourself, do what you can, and remember tomorrow is another chance at it. This was never really about perfection, it's about finding your way back each time. That's what Evessa is being built around, being honest about the hard days too, not just the good ones.
More soon.
Next time: the surprisingly simple measure researchers use to assess healthy ageing, and it has nothing to do with a blood test or a scan.
