{ Can you relate? }
You have an event or vacation coming up.
You want to look smokin’!
You know “abs are made in the kitchen” so you want your diet to be on POINT from now til then.
That quickly ends up turning into all or nothing and black and white thinking, either really good or really bad, gotta be perfect.
While the motivation of the upcoming excitement might work short term, like for something coming up in a couple weeks/months, but what happens after?
What about the deadline of forever? 🙂
How intimidating does that feel?
Eating. Healthy. FOREVER! It sounds hard, boring, unappealing, and pretty impossible if you still want to have friends and a social life, right?
That can all be true with that same mindset, thinking you have to be perfect with your eating habits. Eating really healthy foods all the time. If you do “mess up” and eat unhealthy food, to you that means that you failed. You may also fall down the hole of “oh well I already ruined this week, I’ll just start again Monday.” (over, and over!)
A better approach: Tweaking your mindset and actions to things you can actually do forever. Things that make sense for your lifestyle, that are realistic for you.
A sustainable, balanced approach.
Forever doesn’t seem so impossible when things aren’t super strict. When you don’t have harsh rules to follow (“eat this/don’t eat that”) and when you don’t feel guilty for eating non-nutritious foods sometimes.
You’ll be way more likely to get/stay motivated to eat healthy forever by:
- taking a moderate route. No crazy deprivation and because of that no crazy binges.
- educating yourself about nutrition and what’s lurking in the foods/drinks you’re putting into your body.
- tweaking your mentality (thoughts/feelings) around WHY you’re doing it
- having fun with healthy foods, experimenting in the kitchen, discovering new delicious and nutritious foods that help you look and feel fantastic
- healthy swapping your favorite foods/ingredients for more nutritious versions that don’t sacrifice on flavor
- practicing eating mindfully, giving your brain and body a chance to realize when you’re eating and tell you when you’ve had enough
This is the difference between external, endpoint-focused motivation versus internal, inherent and forever inspiration.
The former is easy, event or vacation coming up in 1 month.
But the latter takes a lot more introspection work, patience and perspective.
Give up the urgency. Look at the big picture, down the road. How do you want to be looking, feeling? Put those thoughts down on paper. Wrap your head around the fact that you actually don’t need all the results RIGHT this second. Lasting health, looking and feeling your best, is a marathon, not a sprint.
Your motivation will be consistent because you are showing yourself compassion, you are staying flexible, you are adjusting as needed and you are allowing “your best” to be good enough.
Ditch the all or nothing and black and white thinking.
Every little bit actually DOES count. For example by simply drinking 1 less can of soda a day you’ll save yourself 38 POUNDS of sugar per year (or 76 cups of sugar).
Reminding yourself of this and truly believing in it gets a lot easier to stay consistent, because it’s not full-steam or bust. You are able to feel accomplished more easily, which feeds into the desire to keep going.
Be a little less perfect to be a little more consistent.
