September Is The New January. Please Don’t Fuck It Up.
September.
The kids are going back to school.
Summer holidays are finished.
Work starts returning to something resembling normality.
The evenings are beginning to darker again.
Winter is coming!
People start to shout.
“Right. Time to sort myself out.”
Apparently, this isn’t just something I’ve noticed over the past few years.
New research suggests 44% of Brits now see September as an ideal time to restart healthy habits. So when you’ve fucked it from starting in January you now have a second chance to start those goals. (Now you could just start them anytime but for some reason Humans and a lot of people need a time, a particular time to do this sort of thing)
There’s something about September though that does naturally feel like a fresh start.
New school year.
New routines.
Summer chaos disappearing.
Drinks in the pub garden seem a distant memory.
For a lot of people this is a good time to get back into some good habits.
There’s just one small problem.
If you started in January and ended up fucking it up then you’re probably going to fuck it up in exactly the same way,
The September Personality Transplant
You know the story.
You’ve had a lovely summer.
Holidays.
Barbecues.
Pub gardens.
Ice creams.
Meals out.
Training became slightly more sporadic.
Your normal routine went wandering off somewhere around the middle of July.
Which is fine.
That’s called having a life.
But September arrives and instead of simply getting back into a decent rhythm, we decide we need to become an entirely different human being.
Starting Monday:
Gym five times a week.
10,000 steps every day.
No alcohol.
No chocolate.
Meal prep Sunday.
Protein target.
Five portions of vegetables.
Eight hours’ sleep.
Three litres of water.
Two runs.
Yoga.
Meditation.
Mobility.
Possibly journalling.
And because someone on Instagram mentioned cortisol, apparently we’re now trying to get sunlight directly into our eyeballs or arsehole at 6:13am as well.
This lasts approximately 7-10 days.
Then there’s a busy Tuesday at work.
You miss the gym.
Someone brings cake into the office.
You have a glass of wine on Friday.
And:
“Oh well. I’ve fucked it.”
See you in January.
You Don’t Need A Reset
You need a rhythm.
You need consistency.
That’s the difference.
A reset sounds dramatic.
Everything stops.
Everything changes.
New programme.
New diet.
New you.
A rhythm is simply something you can keep doing.
And that’s considerably more useful.
If summer knocked your normal habits sideways, you don’t need to punish yourself for enjoying it.
You just need to start putting a few useful things back where they belong.
Training.
Walking.
Meals.
Sleep.
Routine.
Not perfectly.
Just consistently enough that they become normal again.
Stop Trying To Make Up For Summer
People feel as though they need to compensate.
“I’ve eaten loads on holiday.”
“I’ve drunk too much this summer.”
“I’ve hardly trained for six weeks.”
So, September must involve suffering.
Absolutely fucking not.
You don’t need to repay some imaginary health debt.
You haven’t been naughty.
You haven’t failed.
And you don’t need to spend the next month surviving on chicken, broccoli and regret.
You had a summer.
Hopefully you enjoyed it.
Now we’re moving into autumn.
So, let’s move on.
Start With The Thing That Will Make The Biggest Difference
Rather than writing yourself a twelve-point September manifesto, ask:
What’s the one thing that’s slipped most over summer?
Maybe you’ve stopped training regularly.
Start there.
Maybe your meals have become chaotic.
Start there.
Maybe you’ve barely walked anywhere.
Start there.
Maybe bedtime has slowly moved from 10:30pm to 12:47am because you’ve been sitting outside drinking wine and talking bollocks.
Start there.
You don’t have to fix everything simultaneously.
Get one thing moving in the right direction.
Then add another.
Two Workouts You Actually Do Beat Five You Don’t
This is particularly important with training.
September motivation is high.
Fantastic.
Use it.
But don’t build a training programme around the most motivated version of yourself.
Build it around the busy Wednesday in November version of yourself.
Because that’s the person who actually has to maintain it.
If two gym sessions genuinely fit your life…
Do two.
If you can consistently manage three…
Do three.
You can always do more occasionally.
But starting with five because you’re currently fired up, then feeling like you’ve failed every week you only manage three, is completely arse backwards.
Three workouts aren’t a failed five-workout week.
They’re three fucking workouts.
That’s a win.
Your Diet Doesn’t Need A September Detox Either
Obviously.
Your liver didn’t go on holiday.
You don’t need a cleanse.
You don’t need a juice programme.
You don’t need to remove gluten, dairy, sugar, seed oils and anything else currently upsetting the internet.
Just get your normal eating habits back.
Get some protein into your meals.
Eat some fruit and vegetables.
Get some fibre.
Drink some water.
Cook a bit more often.
Maybe reduce the number of Wednesday evenings that accidentally become a bottle of wine and a Deliveroo.
That’s probably enough to get started.
The boring stuff works remarkably well when you actually do it.
Motivation Is Lovely. Routine Is Better.
The first week of September is easy.
Everyone is motivated.
New trainers.
New programme.
New water bottle big enough to hydrate a small village.
Let’s fucking go.
But motivation is temporary.
At some point you’re going to wake up and not particularly fancy it.
Work will get busy.
The weather will turn shit.
It’ll be dark outside.
Social things appear in the calendar as we get close to December.
That’s when the routine you’ve built matters.
Because ideally exercise isn’t something you only do when you’re motivated.
It’s just something that happens on Tuesday.
Like putting the bins out.
Hopefully slightly more enjoyable, and you’re not waiting around to see what everyone else is doing on the street so you get the weeks right.
Don’t Wait For Another Monday
This is probably one of the most useful habits you can develop.
Learn how to restart quickly.
Miss Monday’s workout?
Go Wednesday.
Had takeaway Tuesday?
Eat normally Wednesday.
Had a massive weekend?
Fine.
Monday morning, back to normal.
You don’t need a clean slate.
You don’t need the first of the month.
You don’t need to wait until Monday.
And you certainly don’t need to wait until January.
One slightly chaotic day doesn’t require a seven-day sequel.
Imagine Where You Could Be By The End Of The Year
And I don’t mean:
LOSE THREE STONE BY THE END OF 2026
Fuck that.
We’ve got roughly four months.
Imagine what happens if you simply train two or three times most weeks between now and then.
Walk regularly.
Eat reasonably well most of the time.
Sleep reasonably well.
Nothing extreme.
Nothing worthy of a transformation montage.
Just boring consistency.
By the end of the year, you could be stronger.
Fitter.
Moving better.
Sleeping better.
Feeling more confident.
Lifting heavier things.
Walking further.
Maybe your clothes fit differently.
Maybe you’ve lost some body fat if that’s one of your goals.
But more importantly…
You’ve built something you can carry into January.
And then January doesn’t need to be another fucking reset.
It’s just another month.
So Yes, Use September
There’s something useful about drawing a line under summer and thinking:
Right. Let’s get back into it.
Just don’t confuse getting back into it with trying to become an entirely different person by next Tuesday.
You don’t need a September transformation.
You don’t need a detox.
You don’t need punishment.
And you don’t need twelve new habits.
Start training again.
Move a bit more.
Sort your food out a bit.
Get your sleep back into some sort of routine.
Then repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat.
Because the people who get results aren’t usually the ones who have the biggest September reset.
They’re the ones still doing the boring stuff when November arrives.
September is the new January.
Please don’t fuck it up by treating it like January.
