Complacency to Zeal and back again

I have been exposed to Orthodox Christianity for about 2 years now and I have dealt (and are dealing with) the ups and downs of the spiritual life. I have noticed in my spiritual walk that their are definitely times when you are more motivated then others. Bouncing back and forth between zeal and complacency is something I feel is not very healthy. This reminds me of people who jump back and forth between dieting and over eating. By taking it to the extreme they lose weight quickly and then they quit because it is to hard to maintain, in which they gain the weight back. As we know shifting from overweight to underweight repeatedly is unhealthy for heart. This is the same in the spiritual life as well, except it is our soul that pays the price. I only speak of this because I have done both, numerous times in fact, and will probably continue until I find the right balance. I guess the thing to remember is that this struggle we are in is a journey. Many people also use the analogy of the spiritual life as a race or marathon (thank you St. Paul), so I’ll try and not make up any more witty parallels. What I want to point out is the practical, are we really running the race? To answer this question we have to both know ourselves and look at our lives. We have to first off know how much we can handle. For example, if someone is not keeping up with their daily prayer rule, then they should probably not try to follow extremely difficult cannon laws. Hopefully we all can be honest with ourselves and know how much we can truly do and what we can't do (of course our spiritual father can help us as well). Next we have to look at our lives. What are we doing with it? Are we killing ourselves to do absolutely everything the Church tells us or completely ignoring everything that we learn from the Church? This is different for every person, which is why we combine this with the first point to see if we are be complacent or over zealous. The goal of course is that we have enough zeal to make good progress, but not to burn out or slack off. May the Lord have mercy on us all and help us find the balance.