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Summary
On episode 227 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan shares 11 situations where quitting is actually the smart move for your health and fitness.
He argues quitting isn’t automatically failure. Sometimes it means dropping a bad habit, stepping back from a workout because of illness, injury, or overtraining, or walking away from a food, situation, or even a person that isn’t serving your goals.
Each reason comes with a practical cue for recognizing when it applies and what to do instead once you’ve quit.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com
Key Takeaways
- Quit unhealthy habits rather than only adding new ones. Allan argues that cutting something out, like sugar, often does more for weight loss than piling a new workout on top of habits that are working against you.
- Quit a lesser food source when a better one is available. He points to research showing foods like apples and kale absorb pesticides that washing can’t remove, so switching to organic or locally sourced versions of those specific foods is worth it even when the food itself is already healthy.
- Quit a program when a better opportunity shows up. Temporarily trading a current routine, like weightlifting or CrossFit, for something more motivating, like joining a friend’s tennis league, still counts as progress if it keeps you engaged and moving.
- Quit workouts during illness. A fever, nausea, or trouble breathing are clear stop signs, but Allan says even a mild cold is reason enough to skip the gym, both to protect your own immune system and to avoid getting other people sick.
- Quit the activity that caused an injury and follow your physical therapist’s plan. Pushing through pain around an injury risks re-injury, which is often more traumatic and harder to recover from than the original problem.
- Quit when you’re overtrained. Repeating the same hard workout every day without real recovery leads to adrenal fatigue; trouble sleeping or persistent lethargy away from the gym are the clearest warning signs that it’s time to back off.
- Quit when your priorities shift, and quit environments where you have no self-control. Switching your training style when your goals or vision change keeps you engaged long term, and deliberately avoiding a break room stocked with donuts is a legitimate strategy, not a cop-out, when willpower alone isn’t enough.
- Try an elimination diet on purpose. Cutting out common trigger foods, milk, nuts, grains, nightshades, for about four weeks and then reintroducing them one at a time helps identify which foods are actually causing digestive or health issues.
- Quit eating once you’re full, and quit an activity that adds unnecessary risk. Eating slowly and without distraction gives ghrelin and leptin time to signal that you’ve had enough before you overeat, and skipping a run in extreme heat, cold, or ice, or during a heart or lung issue, trades a single workout for avoiding real injury.
“Every time you quit, you have a great opportunity to restart.”
Coach Allan
