Do you have an all-or-nothing, perfectionist attitude when it comes to food? More specifically, healthy eating?
Does eating something you consider “bad” make you fall off the wagon, sending you into a downward eating spiral the rest of the day/weekend?
Do you tell yourself you’ll start again on Monday – repeatedly?
I have simple technique – an acronym – for you to help you STOP this 🙂
F. A. I .L. which stands for: First Attempt In Learning
Keep this in mind when you find yourself in that situation, after eating your “bad” food and feel guilty, and like you’ve failed yourself.
SO many times when we fail, we feel like giving up. We see our failure as a sign for us to throw in the towel, no use in stopping the downward spiral now. And this just pushes you further away from your health goals. Instead, re-frame and shift your thinking a little.
See each failure or slip up as an opportunity to learn from yourself. Evaluate what went wrong, identify what thoughts pop up in your head, think through what you could do differently, and try another approach next time.
When you fail at something, that just means that you haven’t learned everything that you need to know in order for you to succeed at whatever you’re attempting to do.
It’s common for people to jump from diet to diet, thinking a new approach might stick for them. But really, they’re just doing the same approach over and over again, with slightly different food rules.
How are you supposed to see lasting results by doing the same thing, with a different candy coating on it?
A part of that is whenever you leave a diet, those rules do not leave too. For example, once you try eating the Paleo way, and hear “carbs are the enemy,” even after you stop following Paleo so closely you still feel icky deep down eating grains, like rice and bread.
So pay attention to your tendencies. If you find yourself having this all or nothing, perfectionist mindset when it comes to food, and if it derails you and you fail. Apply that acronym to the situation and see what you can learn from it and do differently next time.
Let me know how this resonates with you!
If you’d like to get rid of the wagon all together and learn about a new approach that does NOT revolve around diets or food rules, I’d love to chat with you about it.
Eating intuitively FREES you from all of the mental time and stress you’re putting into your eating habits. This way of eating teaches you how to start to trust yourself around food, and effortlessly live in a way that is in line with your goals – instead of forcing it through willpower or calculating what/when/how much you “should” eat next.
