It’s true! Diet is 70% of the battle. The hour you spend at the gym is tough by in reality its nothing compared to avoiding the wrong diet the other 23 hours of the day. I inadvertently did my own experiment with this theory over the holidays. I largely maintained my workout schedule. I went to the gym after work, I did my long runs on Saturday mornings, and I did my typical strength training routine. Eating was a different story. Things went awry and while I didn’t do as poorly as I might have say three years ago, I also was not as diligent in filling up on healthy items at home before going to a gathering as I have been in the past. The result was the scale showed a clear picture of my lack of extra leg work. I entered the New Year up a handful of pounds. A handful of pounds is not the end of the world. I can get back on the horse and get back to where I want to be but the key is turning it around quickly. The minute the holiday schedule changes are over, measuring, weighing, and logging has to pick up essentially immediately. Control is really lost when the poor habits seep into the week after the holiday, then the week after that, and so on. Before you know it, it’s June and you never got back on the horse and it spooked and ran away. Now instead of jumping back on, you have to start by finding it.