Are You Driving Your Health at 100mph? Why Slowing Down Gets You There Faster

If you’ve ever thrown yourself into a strict plan to “finally sort your health out” - only to burn out, give up, and end up back where you started - you’re definitely not the only one.

Whether your goal is to lower your cholesterol, improve your fitness, lose weight, or just feel more like yourself again, it’s very easy to treat health like a sprint:

• New rules

• New habits

• Go harder, go faster, do it properly this time

But that “all in” approach is often the very thing that keeps you stuck.

I want to offer you a calmer, more realistic way of thinking about change - using a slightly stressful drive home, a nearly empty petrol tank, and a very unhelpful dashboard.

The drive home that turned into a health metaphor

Last weekend, I was driving home from visiting my best friend and her family.

When I started the car, the fuel gauge told me I had 80 miles left in the tank.

When I pressed “Home” on the sat nav, my journey was 86 miles.

It was cold, it was wet, I was tired, and I had a lot to do when I got back. The last thing I wanted was a detour to get petrol.

If you don’t know much about fuel efficiency, it’s easy to think: “If I drive faster, I’ll get home quicker and beat what’s left in the tank.”

But if you do know a bit about it, you’ll know that driving a little slower - even though it takes longer on the clock - actually makes each litre go further. Your miles per gallon go up and the fuel you have lasts longer.

So I settled into driving slightly under the speed limit, constantly checking two things:

• the fuel gauge: how many miles left in the tank?

• the sat nav: how many miles left to go?

Really, I was asking myself: “Is what I’ve got still enough to get me where I’m going?”

And then my car did something annoying… which turned out to be very relevant to health too.

When the numbers disappear

In my car, once the predicted range drops to about 25 miles, the display stops giving me a number.

Instead of saying “25 miles” or “20 miles”, it just flashes: Fuel low

No more updates. No neat little number to keep comparing with the sat nav.

Up until that point, I had live data: “40 miles left in the tank, 32 miles to go - fine. 30 left, 24 to go - still okay.”

Once it switched to “fuel low”, I lost that feedback. I had to drive the rest of the way without knowing exactly what was left.

At that point, all I could do was trust:

• the way I’d been driving so far

• the logic of going slower to make the fuel last

• and the plan I’d chosen

And this is where the metaphor really kicks in.

You can’t live-track your cholesterol. You don’t get a daily LDL number popping up on your phone. Most people are waiting months between blood tests.

The scales aren’t very helpful day to day either. They’re influenced by water, hormones, salt, time of day - all sorts of things that have nothing to do with long-term fat loss or heart health.

So there will be long stretches of your health journey where it feels like your “dashboard” has gone a bit blank:

• No new blood test yet

• No dramatic change on the scales

• No fireworks of obvious progress

That doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

If you’ve got a solid, heart-healthy plan in place and you’re following it most of the time, there comes a point where, just like on that drive, you have to trust the process - even when the numbers aren’t updating every five minutes.

Crash plans, empty tanks and “pulling into the services”

A lot of people come to me with a history of extreme plans:

• crash diets

• strict “detoxes”

• 28-day shreds

• “I’m being good now” phases that last a few weeks

There’s usually a clear goal: lower cholesterol, lose weight, have more energy, get fitter. The instinct is to get there as quickly as possible.

So they slam their foot down.

The trouble is, just like with your car, you only have a limited tank of:

• energy

• motivation

• focus

• willpower

When you try to live at 100mph with your health - perfect food, perfect steps, perfect workouts - you burn through that tank very quickly.

And then what happens?

You “pull into the services”.

Not in the literal sense, but in your behaviour:

• You stop the plan completely

• You “refill” on all the foods you’ve been restricting

• You tell yourself you’ll start again on Monday, or after the holiday, or in the New Year

It’s the classic all-or-nothing cycle: 100% on it → exhausted → 0% on it → guilty → repeat.

Just like stop–start driving in a car, that pattern makes the journey feel longer, harder, and a lot more draining than it needs to be.

Why going slower actually got me home quicker

Back to the car, just for a moment.

When I set off, the sat nav said I’d get home in 1 hour 35 minutes, assuming I drove at 70mph on the dual carriageways and motorways.

Because I was trying to save fuel, I drove slower. In the end, I arrived in 1 hour 42 minutes.

On paper, that’s 7 minutes slower than the “ideal” journey.

But I know from experience that pulling into a service station - leaving the motorway, filling up, paying and getting back on - takes around 12 minutes.

If I’d driven faster, run out of fuel and been forced to stop, the overall journey would actually have taken longer, even though I was technically going “quicker” for parts of it.

By going a bit slower and keeping things steady, I avoided the extra stop and got home sooner overall.

It really was a tortoise-and-hare situation. Slow and steady won.

Exactly the same thing happens with health.

What this means for your heart and cholesterol

When you’re trying to improve your cholesterol or look after your heart, driving at 100mph might look like:

• cutting out entire food groups overnight

• putting yourself on a super strict, joyless diet

• forcing yourself into intense workouts you dread

• trying to change food, movement, sleep and stress all at once

You might see or feel some quick changes, but because it doesn’t match your real life, it’s incredibly hard to keep up.

Sooner or later:

• life gets busy

• someone gets ill

• you go away

• or you just can’t maintain that level of effort

And because you were operating at full speed, when something knocks you, you don’t just slow down - you tend to stop.

The alternative is not as dramatic, but it is far more effective.

A “slow and steady” approach might look like:

• gently increasing fibre and plant foods: Things like wholegrains, beans, lentils, fruit and veg that help support healthy cholesterol levels.

• easing saturated fat down, rather than banning things: Being more mindful of processed meats, fatty cuts of meat, butter and cream - and tweaking quantities and frequency.

• finding movement you’ll actually repeat: A couple of walks, some strength work, a class you enjoy - not an unrealistic six-day gym routine out of nowhere.

• taking sleep and stress seriously: Because your heart and blood vessels care about those just as much as your plate.

It’s not flashy. It’s not dramatic. It’s not easily packaged into “before and after” pictures.

But these are the kinds of changes that genuinely improve heart health, and - crucially - can be kept going.

Three questions to gently check in with yourself

If any of this is ringing a bell, here are a few questions to mull over:

1. Where are you “driving at 100mph” with your health right now? Is it food, exercise, or trying to be perfectly on-plan every single day?

2. Where could you ease off the accelerator a little? Could you focus on adding more heart-healthy foods before you start cutting things out? Could you aim for 2–3 realistic movement sessions a week instead of an all-or-nothing routine?

3. What would “slow and steady” look like for the next 12 weeks? Not for the rest of your life - just this next phase. What would be doable, not just exciting?

And remember the “fuel low” moment: there will be stretches where it feels like nothing is changing because you’re not getting new test results or big shifts on the scales.

If your plan is sound and you’re sticking to it most of the time, that’s exactly when you need to keep going, not give up.

Why I work in 12 weeks, not 28 days

This is why none of my programmes are 28-day “quick fixes”.

All of my options are based around 12 weeks:

• enough time for new habits to bed in

• enough time to notice and gently change old patterns

• enough time for real life to happen - meals out, stressful weeks, celebrations - and practise navigating them without going back to square one

The aim isn’t just to get your cholesterol down once on a blood test.

The aim is to help you:

• lower your risk over the long term

• feel better in your body and your day-to-day life

• and feel confident you can keep going without needing to “start again” every few months

Ready to stop flooring it?

If you’re reading this thinking: “Yes… this is me. I go all in, burn out, and end up right back where I started,” then it might be time to try a different approach.

If you’d like support to:

• slow down without giving up

• protect your “tank” of energy and motivation

• and still make real, meaningful progress with your heart health

you can find more details about my 12-week Heart-Healthy Living options here on my website:

👉 www.thecholesterolcoach.co.uk/work-with-me

Or if you'd like to book a free, no-pressure discovery call to talk it through, you can book that here.

You don’t need to be faster. You don’t need to be perfect.

You just need a way forward that you can actually keep going. 🧡