I’ve started to feel the itch.
I usually feel it after a long weekend, or a holiday, or, in this case, at the end of a happy, sloooow summer.
I’m talking about the itch to “get back at it”.
Is it just me or do you feel it too?!
September is approaching fast, and with it the pull to get serious is kicking in hard. I can’t help it, making lists and planning getting back to a post-summer routine.
Especially since, in my case, autumn also means my impending return to Singapore.
It’s a bit like cleaning your house before the housekeeper arrives. I want to make sure I arrive back in Singapore looking absolutely fabulous. Refreshed eyes and clear skin, and like I haven’t spent the last 8 months eating my body weight in tacos.
But honestly, it’s not really about tacos. What I’m really doing is checking-in: did I let go too much? Did the old version of me sneak back in while I wasn’t paying attention?
Because there is a real, specific terror that comes after getting your life together.
I wrote about it a few months ago:
“I’ve rebuilt myself into someone who has her shit mostly together, but there’s still a quiet fear that the smallest leeway means sliding back. That if I’m not constantly monitoring, tracking, improving, the old version of me will somehow creep back in. She won’t, because I’m a completely different person now, but the fear doesn’t care about logic.”
So when we left Singapore back in December last year, I was committed to bringing my perfectly designed little routine on the road with me.
Strength training on Mondays and Fridays. My newsletters & podcast production on Mondays and Wednesdays. Cardio Tuesdays. No food after 8pm daily. I tried REALLY hard.
I’m a health coach, I help people with that stuff, surely I need to show that I can maintain great habits, right?
But it’s not that simple with a heavy travel schedule. With flights and packing/unpacking/repacking, with shitty hotel gyms, or being in the middle of nowhere with only 1 restaurant, and very much at the mercy of what they’re going to feed me.
So when we arrived in Mexico City for a whole month in early June, I was totally ready to have some fun!
I decided I was going to fall off the wagon, on purpose. To allow myself to just be, to chill, to let go of constant control and monitoring.
Basically, to have an absolute bare minimum summer.
I was bracing for the consequences. The physical ones, the mental ones, the “ohh I knew this would happen” ones.
But none of that happened.
We had the best time in Mexico, exploring beautiful old towns and eating the best food (I still have dreams about chile en nogada).
We chilled in the Peruvian Sacred Valley (no other option given how DEAD I was from altitude), enjoying the cinematic landscapes while sipping mint tea.
We also did the Inca Trail, which meant not giving a fuck about washing or brushing my hair for 5 days (delightful).
And now we’re chilling in Arequipa before flying to Lima (though I’ll be on a plane to Lima when you read this).
Turns out that letting go was wonderful, and nothing actually happened.
The fear has a name in the relapse research: the abstinence violation effect.
A lapse only cascades when you read it as a verdict on who you are (“I have no willpower, this is just who I am”) rather than information about a situation. The progression from lapse to relapse is not inevitable.
From my experience, the people most committed to all-or-nothing rules, the ones who felt the most guilt after a lapse, are usually the most likely to relapse fully.
This comes from addiction research, which I’m extending to ordinary habits here. Though as someone who gave up alcohol 3 and 1/2 years ago, I feel it explains a lot about my patterns honestly.
It’s been super freeing to realise, this summer but also this year in general, that I can let go. And that I’ve often been bracing myself for something that will never come.
Which is exactly the reason to enjoy the last few weeks of summer.
We’ll have enough time to worry about going full steam ahead over the next few weeks, so let’s enjoy the last few weeks of a happy, joyfully bare minimum summer.
I’m still learning and unlearning a lot of patterns from this. I try to practise giving myself some slack. And every time I do and nothing dramatic happens, my brain collects a little more proof that slack isn’t equal to sliding back.
That I can smash some carbs, miss a workout, go to bed without washing my face, and that it’s not an indication that I’m slowly returning to my old ways.
When I introduced this summer series in A Health Coach’s Case for a Less Impressive Summer, I said that to me a bare minimum summer was not about trying to optimise summer, but not abandoning yourself either:
“You can enjoy the summer meal and keep a tiny sleep anchor. You can travel and still move your body in a way that feels good. You can miss your routine without turning it into a personality crisis. You can have days that look nothing like your usual life and still feel connected to yourself”.
And while I start feeling the pull of September energy, I’m also hoping that we can bring a little bit of that energy to our rentrée.
Which leads me to this:
📆 Something new starts next Tuesday: the Wellbeing by Design Rentrée!
5 weeks. 5 small experiments. We’re riding on September’s natural momentum instead of fighting it, with a small experiment weekly, to help us design wellbeing that will carry us into autumn and beyond. Subscribers will get each weekly experiment by email, plus follow daily with notes on Substack. Warm-up reading: last year’s rentrée.
So report card verdict: passed with FLYING colours! ;)
The tacos didn’t break me this summer.
Honestly, they might have made me better.
Refreshed eyes and all.
With love,
Noemie x
P.S. How was YOUR summer? Fun? Exhausting? Full on? Chilled? I’d love to hear from you, let me know in the comments below!
Key Sources
Mary E. Larimer, Rebekka S. Palmer and G. Alan Marlatt, ‘Relapse Prevention: An Overview of Marlatt’s Cognitive-Behavioral Model’ (1999) 23(2) Alcohol Research & Health 151 <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6760427/>.
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.