36. How To Stay Disciplined Without Letting It Control Your Life

Your routine looks “perfect” on paper, so why does it suddenly feel like a weight you’re dragging around? We’re getting honest about the moment consistent women hit a wall: you’re working out, eating well, staying disciplined, yet your healthy lifestyle starts to feel heavy instead of supportive. That shift isn’t always a sign you’re doing something wrong. It can be a predictable psychological change where your identity as “the healthy one” pulls you away from what your body and mind actually need.

To ground it in real life, I share how breaking my finger and getting stuck in a cast forced me to face that fear of “falling behind,” even though I know a few days won’t erase years of progress. The takeaway is simple but nuanced: keep the discipline, but widen your identity so flexibility and recovery are part of what it means to take care of yourself. If this hits home, follow the podcast, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find evidence-based, sustainable wellness.

I am happy we can share this journey of leveling up, together. Send me a text by clicking the link at the top of the description. I would love to hear from you :) See you next week! 

- Alita <3 

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This podcast is intended for general educational purposes only. The content discussed does not replace professional medical, nutritional, or fitness advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual needs and responses vary, especially with exercise and nutrition. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making significant lifestyle changes.

Transcript

Welcome And Quick Housekeeping

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's up? Welcome back to Vita with Alita. This is a podcast about evidence-based wellness for real life. I'm Alita and I'm here to talk about fitness, health, mindset, and building a strong and sustainable life. But doing so without extremes, guilt, or perfectionism. If you care about your health, but you also want a life that you can actually live, you're definitely in the right place. Now before we jump in, I just want to say thank you for being here. It genuinely means a lot that you choose to spend your time listening. And I don't take that lightly. If you've been enjoying the show, following the podcast really helps it grow and lets me know that you're enjoying what you're listening to. And it will actually help more people find these conversations, which means I can keep bringing you new episodes every single week. Alright, let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is for a very specific type of person. This is for the girl who is consistent. You know you work out, you eat well, you're disciplined, but maybe lately it starts to feel a little a little bit heavy. Like instead of your habits supporting you, leading this healthy lifestyle, being the best version of you that you can, you feel like you're constantly trying to keep up with them. And I want to talk about maybe why that happens. Because maybe this isn't something you are doing wrong. It's I think actually a very predictable psychological shift. Now this episode came to be because your girl broke her finger, yes, and she's in a cast. And ironically, the one time I played basketball, I broke my finger. The point is it has hindered a lot of my movement, it has kind of gotten the way of a lot of the things that I maybe take for granted that I always kind of do. And you know, these this idea of living this healthier lifestyle, whatever, started to feel heavy. It's like I'm I'm falling behind somehow. So that's what's kind of sparked today's episode. But before we get into it, of course, word of the week that ties into the episode. Today's word is disjunctive. B-I-S-J-U-N-C-T-I-V-E. Disjunctive basically means something that causes things to separate or to exist apart from each other. And I think, as always, and I think this usually, this word is perfect for today. Because what we're talking about is that moment when your identity and your well-being start to become disjunctive. Well, the person you feel like you have to be and what your body or mind actually needs start pulling in potentially different directions. And that disconnect, this is where things can probably start to feel a little bit heavy. So, first, let's ground this in something I talk a lot about, and that is identity. There is solid behavioral science behind this, research in psychology, and you may have heard also work by James Clear. He's the author of the Atomic Habits book, bestseller, the one about habits and whatever. And a lot of work in identity-based behavioral models actually show that when your habits are tied to your identity, they become more automatic and more consistent. So this is important because instead of relying on your motivation, you're acting in alignment with who you believe you are. There's also research in self-determination theory showing that internalized behaviors are much more sustainable than external rules. So this means when you're shifting kind of that mindset from, let's say, I'm trying to be healthy to I am a healthy person, you're reducing the friction, you're building the consistency, and that's the first part of being able to build sustainable habits, and that's the first phase of growth. But here's where things can potentially start to shift, and something that I've noticed. And over time, your identity might become disjunctive, where your behaviors are no longer aligned with how you actually feel or what you may need in that moment. And research on psychological flexibility shows that when people become too rigid in their self-concept, it can actually increase stress and reduce well-being, which is sort of ironic because that's kind of the opposite of what we want. We're probably setting ourselves up here to live a life that is healthy and well. But let's kind of look into what this rigidity might kind of look like. So feeling guilty for missing one workout, I'm guilty of that. Anxiety when your routine changes, guilty of that. Thinking you have to earn rest, kind of guilty on this one too. And feeling like one day off means you're completely off track, you're completely off the rails, and years of progress just down the drain. Now it's not I take care of myself, it starts becoming I have to maintain this version of myself. That's the disjunctive state. That's where things maybe are not where they should be if we are truly trying to lead a whole and flexible life. There's also a social layer to this. Now, the more consistent you are, the more people start to see you a certain way, right? And this is this is okay. Like this can build in some ways accountability. It's nice to kind of have the reinforcement that what you are doing is is being seen, and maybe you get to be known as the fit one, the disciplined one, the healthy one, that friend. And I personally enjoy it. It's again, it's positive reinforcement to me. And research on self-concept and identity maintenance shows that once an identity is reinforced externally, we do feel pressure to keep performing it. So now missing a workout doesn't just feel like rest sometimes. It feels like you're breaking character. And for example, if you've built a community in the gym that you go to and you miss a few days, obviously when you're back out of concern and out of care, people may ask, where have you been? We haven't seen you. That's come, that's not, of course, I'm assuming intentions here, but I know that usually I've done this, it comes from a place of care, like, oh, we noticed you weren't here. Is everything okay? But I've also noticed that being on the other end of that, it's like, oh my god, I am not keeping up. And that creates distance between who you are and what you may actually need. So, from a brain perspective, this actually makes sense. Your brain is wired for efficiency, for predictability. And research shows that habits become automatic over time, and breaking them can actually cause discomfort. Even when it's intentional, even when you tell yourself you're going to do it, you have to do it, it can it creates that kind of disconnect. So when you try to rest or be flexible, your brain flags it as, oh my God, something's wrong, we're off routine, even if it's actually what your body may need. So the goal here isn't to lose your identity, it's to bring things back into alignment, to move out of this disjunctive state where your identity and your needs are separated and try to move it back into something a little more integrated. So, for example, instead of I'm a disciplined person who never misses a workout, you can potentially shift it to I'm someone who takes care of myself and that can look different day to day. You're integrating that flexibility into your identity, into what you're telling yourself. And it's it's very nuanced. I personally am somebody who thrives on routines and something to some what I the way I conduct my life may seem rigid, but it also just helps me stay consistent. And the goal of this episode here is not to say just wake up and do how you feel, and that's your identity. You never, I never want to make discipline not important. You shouldn't just be going off of how you're feeling, but I'm talking about at a point where you have built-as I mentioned in the beginning, where I'm referring to somebody who has built discipline, who has integrated those habits. We already know that you are making the choices that are leading you into a healthier lifestyle. But part of a sustainable, healthy lifestyle is being able to understand when you have to step away from those rigid routines. Very simple example. I broke my finger and I have a whole cast, and my finger is hurting so much more than I thought it would. And it's actually kind of funny because it's just my pinky, and I feel like a little wimp, but it hurts. And I tried taking my dog on a walk, and it just I got like this sharp swelling pain in my hand, and I know you can work out with a cast, but I was just not feeling it today, like at all. And I did not sleep last night from the pain, and even if I was taking meds, right? So the point here is I am already somebody that I know I've created those habits, and I technically know that logically, rationally thinking about it, that taking a few days to rest while I wait for my next doctor's appointment is not gonna completely throw me off the reels and deter everything I've ever done over the past, I don't know, eight and a half years. But like, there is still that little part, that little tiny part in the back of my brain, that's like, well, maybe it will. And I today's episode I hope to share that. Not that it's I don't want to say it's normal, but it is, and that being aware of it is this first step to try and to realign ourselves to understand, like, okay, it kind of is what it is, and I'm still here. I know that maybe I'll be a little more bloated or be holding a little more water because I'm not moving as much. But if it took eight and a half years to get to where I am today, it's going to take much longer than a day or two or a week to completely just revert to my original. So a little bit of a tangent here, but let's let's let's wrap things up. So if things have been feeling a little bit heavy, it's not maybe because you lost discipline, it's because something maybe has become disjunctive. And your next level of growth here is learning how to bring it back into alignment where your habits don't control you, they support you. Alright, I'll talk to you guys in the next episode. Have a great rest of the week. Bye bye. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate you being here. If something in the episode clicked for you, send it to a friend. Or you can reach out to me directly using the link in the description. I genuinely love hearing from you. And if you want more evidence-based wellness, you can connect with me via my Instagram. Again, that link will be in the description below. Take care of yourself this week, and I'll talk to you soon. See you on the next one. Bye bye.