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When I was a competitive ski racer, mastering the "whirlybird" spin (here's what it looks like)  was one of the toughest—and most crucial—skills. Skiers repeat this move again and again, so when wipeouts happen, they can handle them with calm and control, avoiding panic or injury.

Your health journey works the same way. Setbacks and obstacles are inevitable, but it's how we prepare and respond that truly shapes our success.

Picture this: you're doing everything right—eating well, moving consistently, feeling confident in your routine. Then life happens. Maybe you're stuck running errands longer than expected without any snacks, or a stressful week at work completely derails your meal prep. Suddenly, you're making impulsive food choices, skipping workouts, and wondering how everything fell apart so quickly.

Most people think they just need more willpower, but the real issue is that we're terrible at troubleshooting obstacles when they pop up unexpectedly.

Today, I'll show you how practicing for those inevitable "wipeouts" before they happen can keep you steady on your health path. You'll discover how to pinpoint your most common derailments, create backup plans that actually work, and build the mental resilience to bounce back fast when life throws you off course. Because the people who succeed aren't the ones who never face challenges—they're the ones who get really good at working through them.

What Ski Racing Taught Me About Recovery

When I was racing down Wisconsin slopes as a kid, one of the drills we did all the time was called the “whirlybird.” If you’ve never skied, it involves zooming straight downhill, then spinning a full 360 degrees with your skis together—and you have to do it balancing on just one foot. First your right, then your left.

I quickly learned most of us are completely imbalanced in our strength and spatial abilities. My right leg could handle it no problem, but my left? Halfway through the spin, I’d lose control and end up sliding sideways across the hill—basically a full-on wipeout.

Why did we keep practicing something that often ended with me falling? Because my coaches knew crashes were coming, no matter how hard you tried to avoid them. When you’re racing fast between gates on a bumpy slope, falling is just part of the game. The whirlybird wasn’t about looking cool, it was about training my body to handle those falls without panicking or getting hurt.

The goal wasn't to avoid wipeouts. It was to recover from them quickly and safely.

Why Most Health "Wipeouts" Happen

Just like those icy patches that send skiers tumbling, health obstacles come out of nowhere and catch us completely off guard. The problem isn't the obstacle itself, it's that we haven't practiced our response.

Think about your most recent health derailment. I'm willing to bet it happened during one of these common scenarios:

• Running errands longer than expected without bringing snacks or water
• Stressful periods at work that disrupt your normal meal prep routine
• Weekend activities like kids' sports events that last hours longer than planned
• Social events where you feel unprepared to make good choices
• Travel days that throw off your entire eating and movement schedule

The pattern is always the same: something unexpected happens, you don't have a plan, panic sets in, and suddenly you're making impulsive decisions that undo weeks of progress.

Building Your Health Recovery Skills

Remember how ski racers practice the same recovery move over and over until it becomes automatic? We need to do the same thing with our health obstacles. Here's how to start building those skills:

Identify Your Personal Wipeout Patterns

Take an honest look at your last few derailments. What situations consistently trip you up? Most people have 2-3 recurring scenarios that cause 80% of their problems. Once you identify these patterns, you can start preparing for them.

Create Specific Backup Plans

This is where most people get it wrong. They create vague intentions like "I'll just be more prepared next time." Instead, you need concrete plans for specific situations.

For example, if running errands is your common derailment, your backup plan might include:

• Always keeping protein bars in your car and purse
• Identifying healthy options at 5-6 restaurants near places you commonly shop
• Planning a specific order at each location ahead of time

The key is making these decisions when you're calm and thinking clearly, not when you're hungry and stressed in a drive-through line.

Practice the "Next Best Decision" Mindset

Sometimes your first backup plan fails too. Maybe you forgot to restock those protein bars, or your usual restaurant is closed. This is where mental flexibility becomes crucial.

Instead of thinking "I've already messed up, might as well go all out," practice asking: "Given where I am right now, what's the next best decision I can make?"

This simple question can be the difference between a minor detour and a complete derailment.

Real-World Recovery in Action

I love this example from one of my patients. She was at a movie theater and suddenly remembered my constant advice about "giving protein a friend" when eating carbs. She wanted some popcorn but didn't want the blood sugar rollercoaster that usually followed.

Instead of skipping the popcorn entirely or eating it and feeling guilty, she remembered she had some nuts in her bag. She ate a few nuts first, then enjoyed her popcorn mindfully. Later, she told me she felt satisfied instead of overly full, and didn't experience her usual post-popcorn energy crash.

That's recovery in action. She didn't panic when faced with an unplanned food situation. She remembered her training (balance carbs with protein), used the tools she had available (nuts in her bag), and made the best decision possible in that moment.

Your Emergency Action Plan

Here's your homework: create an actual emergency action plan for your most common derailment scenarios. Write it down. Put it in your phone. Make it specific and actionable.

For dining out emergencies:

• Research and save 5-7 nearby restaurants with healthy options you actually like
• Decide on your go-to order at each place ahead of time
• Keep this list easily accessible on your phone

For long errand days:

• Always keep backup snacks in your car, purse, and gym bag
• Identify convenient stops for protein-rich options along your common routes
• Set phone reminders to eat every 3-4 hours when you'll be out all day

For stressful work periods:

• Batch prep grab-and-go meals on less busy days
• Know which delivery options align with your health goals
• Keep simple, no-prep protein sources at your workplace

This isn't about becoming obsessive or over-planning every moment of your life. It's about recognizing that obstacles are part of the journey, not evidence that you're failing.

When you practice your recovery skills ahead of time, you stop seeing setbacks as catastrophic failures. Instead, they become temporary challenges that you're equipped to handle. You develop confidence in your ability to navigate whatever life throws at you while still moving toward your health goals.

The people who succeed long-term aren't the ones with perfect circumstances or superhuman willpower. They're the ones who get really good at troubleshooting, adapting, and bouncing back quickly when things don't go according to plan.

Remember: success isn't about avoiding the wipeout. It's about mastering the recovery.

So start practicing your whirlybirds. Identify your patterns, create your backup plans, and build the mental flexibility to handle whatever comes your way. Because just like those ski slopes, life is going to throw you some unexpected curves—but with the right preparation, you'll be ready to handle them with grace.

Want to hear more about building resilience in your health journey? If you're looking for more structured support in developing these skills, consider joining my September round of The 30/30 Program, where we work together to build sustainable habits and overcome common obstacles in a supportive community setting.

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance. 

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are y'all doing today? I have been like, I always say absolutely loving summer. I'm someone that plans out every single weekend, meaning, Hey, let's get to the beach, you know? So we have these lakes around us and my son just loves, we have his little floaty things, and he now loves putting on goggles and quote unquote scuba diving.

So he has the little, what's the thing called? Where you know, you can like. Breathe where you can go underwater, but you can breathe like as long as you're staying within a foot of it. I totally can't remember the name of that piece of equipment, but he, it's like he can't fully swim. Amazing. But he's like, but I want scuba diving classes.

I was like, you have to start with the swimming part. And he's like, no, no, no scuba diving. So anyway, we are working on some better swimming skills. It's a fun summer and I'm loving that. That he likes to find things underwater now.

Oh, and I will say, talk about small pleasures in life. Something that I love about the summertime is at the end of the day, sitting in the backyard and just hearing the birds chirp.

And this is where it's like small pleasures make such a big difference in life. And so I don't know about you, but if there's. Any way that no matter how hard life is right now or. Whether it's hard because of financial situations or hard because of political situations or hard because of pain that you're having or that the scale isn't moving in the direction that you want, you're putting in a lot of work.

There's lots of reasons that life can feel hard. Right? And I just wanna always give perspective for a moment, not to be Pollyanna about it, but that, just to see is there anything, you know, like. Your, your feet in the grass, can you hear birds singing? Is there, are there any things that you can appreciate?

Okay, so today I wanna talk about an episode that I've wanted to make this for a really long time. I'm gonna tell you the background story here so you have context, but it's all about practicing the spin out. And so I'm gonna tell you the story in a second, but I wanna start out with what the lesson is that you're not thinking the whole time.

Why is she sharing this story with us? A lot of the time when people are on a health journey, inevitably obstacles come up and you're not great initially at troubleshooting around these obstacles.

And so what ends up happening is a complete spin out. You totally lose focus. You go back to all your old ways, you're just suddenly like, wait a minute, how did I suddenly stop having fluid and stop getting in the protein and not doing all the movement, just everything yard sale. It's a wipe out, total wipe out situation.

And it's really discouraging, because you think you might have even for months, been doing this stuff and the smallest thing can upset the apple cart, right? And. What this reminded me of though is that this is really normal and the skill is how to really quickly troubleshoot, start to find other ways, whether it be directly through the problem or around the problem, right?

Like there's so many ways to approach these things, but we have to get really good at pivoting, being mentally flexible, realizing there's always gonna be obstacles. This is not that I am the unique chosen one that has this affliction where things affect me. We all have obstacles all day long. Of course, some of us to.

Greater extents than others. Again, I'm not denying the realities of the world a hundred percent, but but the ability to troubleshoot through things is a real skill. So growing up, I was on a downhill ski race team for a lot of years in Wisconsin and. One of the things that we did with training, you have a lot of training practices and then there's so many races per year.

So I was part of kind of the Wisconsin race circuit. There's were so many mountains where, everybody had a team and then you'd go around to these different, competitions. But part of the training was that you had to do something called whirly birds, which is you. Those of you that don't ski, you have both skis on.

You're headed straight down the hill, and then you have to do a 360 turn so your feet are together and you completely turn all the way around, and then you have to keep going down the hill. Not only did you have to do it with both, actually both skis is the easy part. The harder part is when you do it with just the right foot or just the left foot.

And what you learn very quickly is that we typically. Our imbalanced in our strength and our spatial abilities with with both legs. So for example, with the right leg, no problem. Whirly bird, no problem. Left leg, I could hardly do it. I would get half the turn and then go vertically across the hill.

Okay, so, so. Here's the whole point. The reason we did this is because they knew that you were gonna wipe out and you had to prepare for it. You had to have the muscle memory to know I'm gonna be doing grand slalom or slalom. So meaning either little curves where you're going between the gates or really big curves where you're going a lot faster, and the whole part of racing is that you're going really fast and you have to be able to make decisions. In the blink of a moment. And you also need to have muscle memory 'cause you're oftentimes not thinking the next thing you know, you're flying out of a rut means like everyone's been coming down the same thing. And so ice starts to form there start to be ruts in the hill. You have to very quickly be able to handle these situations.

Because they know that you would literally simulate the wipe out and your whole thing was, do the whirly bird make it through? Simulate these things happening and yet still be able to do it. All of this to say that this is a hundred percent what happens in life, it's like we know we're gonna encounter, we are gonna encounter these obstacles.

We a hundred percent, I'm gonna tell you, you're gonna reach a lot of obstacles and yet many people are successful because they will find ways around it. Again, they are not the chosen people. We're all for them just everything worked out for them. Yeah. There are some people where metabolically, they're more flexible, they respond, more things are easier, but you know what?

They still have some things that they're overcoming as well. They might just be really good natured about how they go about it, and you might not know that. 50 times per episode. I'm like, I understand we have different circumstances and different metabolisms and all of that.

Yes. And they might be, will really well practiced and nothing ever is gonna be an obstacle for them. I. So, for example, there's always kind of making the next best decision, or there's planning ahead of time. Like I just saw a video. I'm gonna, I'm gonna link this in the show notes. By the way. This is gonna be an old video by the time you see it.

This was an old one by the way, from, Tanya, Tanya taking your life back at 40. She made a video a few months ago here. I think it was may timeframe, and someone made a rude comment to her, oh, well you don't need to leave the house with two drinks and a snack. And oh, it must be because you're an influencer.

And first of all, Tanya cannot be more down to earth. I mean, she's sharing how to make Taco bowls, cottage cheese bowls, protein, coffees. Okay. So there's nothing. Influencer about her. Yes, she has over a million followers, but it's because she's a really nice person and you know, this person was just trying to really be rude and she said, listen, it's not an influencer thing, it's about being prepared.

It's about me being able to go out and know that I'm not gonna, I don't forget exactly what she said, but not gonna whip through the drive through, not gonna, uh, go by X, Y, z. I know I can get a reduced priced coffee 'cause I'm just getting a shot of espresso and I have my protein drink in it to put it in.

So I know the cost is less when I'm out, I know I'm gonna get the protein that I want. And so do you see how it's like you could say, well, I mean, I'll tell you an obstacle that comes up a lot for patients is they'll be out doing errands and that's the time when they'll be whipping through, drive through or doing other things.

And so a lot of what I work through is, okay, if you're still gonna wanna go to those places, which is fine, we can work anything in, like I have some patients that are ordering out all the time and we just work to uplevel the choices. And the reality is you can find healthy things everywhere. I mean. 99% of the time.

I have been in some parts of the country where it's really hard, but majority of the time you can find something that works. And so I'll say, okay, if you're still gonna wanna do that. Let's work through, what are the places that you go? Let's look at the menus. Let's really decide what you're gonna do, right?

Or you could decide. No, it's totally impulsed. It means nothing to me. On that Saturday when I'm out doing grocery shopping at different places, whatever I'm doing, I could just as well bring a protein bar with me. Half a cheese sandwich, whatever, right? You could do that. You could bring a protein drink.

You can do literally whatever you want. I. A hundred percent of the time have backup options on me. And I have to laugh. It's so cute. I had a patient, this is the best story ever. I hope she hears this episode where this person was out at, I can't remember if it was a movie or what it was, and they thought, oh my gosh.

Dr. Rentea always talks about, I'm mean, I'm fanatical about saying, listen, we're gonna, we're gonna balance the carbs. We're always gonna give our protein a friend. We don't have to. Do this every single time. But these are just principles where people become very familiar with them.

They don't feel like it's diet culture. So this person was thinking, I need to balance this. And then they remembered I have some nuts in my bag, And so they had a few bites of whatever that was. And then they enjoyed some popcorn and they felt better afterward

they didn't overeat as much of the popcorn. They felt good, all the things. So they had learned that principle, they were prepared ahead of time. So how can you if this analogy sort of sticks for you this practicing the whirly bird practicing the spin out ahead of time, how can you prepare yourself for this?

I need you to think through the worst case scenarios. Alright, I'm out and I forget to bring everything with me. What are the things I would do? Can we write now? Make a list in your phone of fast food places that you would go and what you would order. Let's think about it right now. Let's stop pretending that it never happens, and let's just get on board with thinking about, all right.

I might go to Panera and get myself, I'll give you an example. They have a breakfast option there where it's egg whites, avocado, and I forget what else that's on this. The sandwich is completely reasonable as far as calories, the fact, the protein that it has, all the things. We can quabble on the protein intake.

I've made a video on this in the past that it's not quite 30 grams of protein. So sometimes you can say, Hey, can you double up on the egg white? I would usually eat the egg white separately first. 'cause otherwise the integrity of the sandwich, it just doesn't taste good when you're messing with the ratios of what's in there.

But the point is that you might just sit down and decide, this is what I'm gonna eat at all these different places. Write down any place that you and your family ever go to. And I want you to decide right now what are some options of what I would get. And this is the level sometimes that we need to do this work if you're struggling, because we just need to make some decisions ahead of time.

Now, does that mean that every time you go to these places, you're gonna be perfect about it? No, but you know what? You have a fighting chance at it happening in a way that supports you. Or you could decide, I don't wanna be at the women folly anymore, of these fast food places that are always trying to get me to buy more.

They know how to advertise when I drive up. Anyone else have this, you go to a place and suddenly they're menu and they're like limited time, and then you're seeing all these things. You're like, wow, maybe I need to get that. They're doing these things on purpose. They know exactly what they're doing with marketing, how they're positioning things on it, what they're doing.

A lot of them. Their menus are not any more static, like it's, if you look at a lot of places, it's actually digital the screen. Have any of you guys noticed this? And so what they're able to do is they're able to flex it with time of day what they know you're gonna impulse. I mean, there's a lot of thought that goes into this.

So then I need you to have put the thought into what you are gonna do so that you're not at their women folly. I guess that's the, that's the phrase we're gonna use today. Okay. So back to the plot. I want you to think about these times where you, you have wipeouts and it's just happening consistently. Is it evening times? Is it on the weekends when you're doing errands? Is it when you're going to your kids' five hour soccer game on a Saturday? What is the scenario?

There's usually always a wipe out involved. How can we practice something different? How can we put something else in place? I just wanted to bring that example with a sport, because this was part of the regular training. It was not on accident. It was not like, oh man, then she just had a bad wipe out when she did whatever turn.

Sometimes you could get out of it based on your training. Part of working on different things with metabolic health, it's giving yourself different tools, planning ahead of time, decisions ahead of time is a tool that is you helping yourself because you have the choice to pick that first, that not even being an option on the table.

I wanna just leave you with that today. And I do know that a lot of this is really hard to implement. If you're someone that you wanted to join our next round of the 30 30 program, we're starting that in the beginning of September it's a really good opportunity to get help on some of these things.

It's a good chance to work on some new habits, figure things out, get some insight from me as to why does this keep happening? I think I'm doing all the things, everyone has a different challenge and it's really helpful to hear what different people are going through to be in a really supportive community.

One of the things that I love the most, I mean, yes, we have many calls and that's great and I love those, but I love that we have a daily WhatsApp group and it's so amazing when people share the different movement that they're doing or the different wins, what they're overcoming. I'm thinking back to the last round here, it was so powerful what people were sharing and I think to myself, every single time when I run this group.

How incredibly privileged I am to be in this group to get to witness all of this. And I think that a lot of the members hopefully would say this with being in there that it's really powerful to hear from a collection like a small group, right? To hear from a collection of women. What are the wins? What are the struggles?

What support can I give you? What inspiration can I give? It's really powerful. And then of course, also to actually get, you know, medically sound things. Again, I'm not your physician in there, but I do have medical training and we're not talking diet culture, and frankly, there are few spaces anymore where that's the case.

If that's something that you're looking into, I know that we are not necessarily in September yet, but. We always, enroll ahead of time. You can actually watch all the videos ahead of time that are in the course and the bonus stuff, all of that. And then you join us for live calls starting in September.

The reason that we pre-enroll so much is because we send out a sort of like a workbook planner thing and that needs to be ordered at least a month ahead 'cause it can take up to two weeks to come. And I always wanna make sure that everyone has it. We really use it in the program. And so I always wanna make sure there's enough time for people to get that.

And then also we do close enrollment when we're full. And then, we'll, we just open enrollment for the next one then. So then after September, it would be the January round. I think that this one might fill up a little bit sooner. So if you're someone that said, okay, I've been sitting on the fence.

I know eventually I wanna do one. Or you're participating in another round. That's something else too. I know I say this a lot, but I love that we have community members that have done several rounds, because it's just not. I can't stress this enough. This journey is not about information

it's really about why is transformation not occurring or what do I need to continue to go on this journey or to start this journey. Everyone's at a different place, and that too is beautiful, but it's not that you're lacking some pivotal piece of information. Alright, so if that's interesting to you, we'll have the link in the show notes here.

I hope you all have an amazing rest of the day. Amazing rest of the week. Think about one thing that you can do this week to support yourself every day. Just ground yourself in, Hey, what are the one or two things today that are realistic, that are loving, that are kind, that will help me love myself appropriately today and get to those goals that I want to reach.

And you stay anchored in that and not thinking that perfection is needed. Alright, have an amazing rest of the week.