What are you eating for?


I find myself so often saying/thinking: “That’s a dieters mentality.”

This is what the diet mentality looks like. Too much restriction. Leads to cravings. Giving in creates guilt. It is really just a downward spiral of emotions when you diet.

Do you find yourself eating the kids’ food and getting mad at yourself? If it isn’t good for you, why is it good for the kids?

Are you tired of chicken, broccoli, and salad? There are thousands of healthy foods for you out there, and eating a limited number of food adversely affects the nutrients you are receiving.

Are you afraid of missing out on the fun at a party or what other party goers will say? Enjoying food and alcohol is not the only way to enjoy yourself. Try having a script on how or why you are changing. If expressing your why won’t change their line of questioning, you can either not attend functions with those people or you can ignore them. Why waste your breath and energy on someone unwilling to listen to understand?

When you are making changes to your lifestyle, you may find small changes building on each other, each week, works for you. You may find it better to make drastic changes and scale back after a couple months. The second person is me. When I wanted to get healthy, I gave myself 12 weeks to:

1. Only eat food I cooked at home 2. No alcohol 3. Exercise: 6 days a week of cardio and 5 days of strength. I knew I couldn’t maintain that forever, so I adjusted after the 12 weeks. When I switched to paleo, I followed a strict 6 week plan. Again, I knew it wouldn’t be the way I could eat always. I only needed to last those 6 weeks, and then I could make the adjustments I felt I could live with and still be healthier.

Are you the small changes person or the all in kind? If you haven’t been totally successful, have you tried the other way?

Are you with a dieters mentality? Or are in tune with your eating habits and needs?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s go back to the sometimes people are afraid they’ll miss out. Take cake as our example. Can you celebrate a birthday/baby shower/retirement without eating the cake? Of course you can. If you ate cake every time it is offered, would that be once in a while? Probably not. You need to weigh the pros and cons of eating certain foods against each other. As you get healthier, some foods are no longer worth the brain fog, body achey-ness, swelling of joints and abdomen to eat even once in a while. You will need to determine for yourself which foods you need to totally abstain from because of the way that they make you feel.

As you are on a journey to lose weight, sometimes the focus is too much on the scale. Yes, losing weight may improve your overall health, but it goes deeper than that. Every choice, action, inaction you take will affect your health. Sometimes our efforts are not directly correlated to the scale. I much prefer goals that are eating so many servings of veggies, drinking so much water, eating food prepared at home, portion control. If everything else is right within your body, the weight should come off just by making healthy choices. Also, you won’t be healthy if you lose the weight and then go back to all your bad habits. So, while it isn’t that you can never have cake again, look at the effect of the cake on your own health and determine how often you will indulge.

What are your thoughts on food? Do you have foods you abstain from? What are some of your “eat in moderation” foods? Share in the comments with me!