WHAT ARE YOU EATING FOR?
Have you ever finished a meal and thought, “I don’t know why I ate that.” Have you ever wondered if how you eat aligns with what you want for yourself? Are you on this crazy train of random eating? I think there's a fine line between what we eat and if it’s in line with what our long term health or life goals are. Or even if the way we eat aligns with how we want to look.
This makes me think of folks that complain about their bodies and continue in the same way while they outwardly grumble about how they look and feel. I find it a bit like when a friend is dating a crappy guy and moans about him with no intention of ever ending it or telling him how she feels. You just have to sit and listen to the complaining.
If you find yourself continually on that complain train you need to stop. Get off that train and do something. It doesn’t even have to be a major change, just something that will help change this negative narrative you have going. It may seem that complaining is some sort of action, sadly it is not. Action is doing. If you speak and speak on this hatred you need to save yourself and the people around you and make a step toward that change. You’ve wasted enough time and energy moaning on, let’s move on now. .
To make a change, I always say start small. I am a major contemplator or pre contemplator. Which one are you? It’s like I need time to adjust to the impending change, honestly for me it has a lot to do with an aversion to doing anything I “should” do. I have to get to the point where it's something I want to do. It has to feel worth it if you will. It can feel impossible to just insert a new thing right away so be patient. Also rushing into something new can increase the chances of you not being able to make the change. So don’t rush yourself.
These small changes are the base to completely fooling yourself into majorly changing your life long term. These small changes will be the seed for your life to align with what you want. These little goals can be sneaky little ignitors for the future you. With accomplishing these small changes you will see what you are capable of. You may become even more intune with what you want for yourself as you begin to see the possibilities. If you’ve downplayed your actual ability you may have been living under your own radar. The fact of the matter is you can totally have what you want, it starts here with this small thing.
But what does “make one small change” mean? It can be anything that you normally do that has room for improvement. If you eat out five nights a week, where can you maybe improve that? Maybe you cook at home once a week. The small change can be substituting one meal for a “healthy meal” each day. It could be you order a salad when out to eat instead of your typical fried food. It may mean only consuming alcohol on the weekends. It can be bringing your lunch to work for two out of the five days. It can be changing candy for fruit. It just depends what is needed.
If you can’t see where to make a small change, I suggest keeping track of your eating and any pertinent information based on your goal. You can keep the intake diary for three days or so. You can see your tendencies and analyze them properly. You could think of it as taking notes on your week. If your goal is weight loss, keep a food log for a few days and then have a look. From there you can see where you can make a small change.
What’s great is you can build off this as it will feel like an accomplishment. Good things lead to more good. Nothing bad happens from small positive changes. The smaller the better, as the success rate will be high. Also with a small change it will be easier to achieve as there will be less stress around it which is a built in safeguard for success in this change. Executing a small change will provoke a sense of accomplishment that’s needed to keep motivation on the up.
Failure will happen. Prepare for the fact you may let yourself down in your efforts. It’s okay to feel frustrated or disappointed, but move along and don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t deserve brooding or a lot of negativity. That would be a waste of time. In being curious about the failure you will learn what happened for you, and what caused you to not be able to carry out your plan. Try not to see failure as a negative. Think of it as having game film on an opponent and learning all you can to beat them. If that doesn’t make sense, think of it as watching an episode of a day of your life and seeing what actually happened. I’m saying it is important to see failure as a complete learning moment, it is not a moment to berate yourself, as that literally accomplishes nothing.
Just look at what happened and try to see that constructively. With a constructive lens you can really take something from this initial experience and learn what happened and make that adjustment to try, try again. Being constructive will give you the concrete accommodation that’s needed. It can even provide necessary actionable steps to achieve your goal that you hadn’t thought about. It may take several attempts so don’t get frustrated, keep at it and be kind to yourself.