Does this sound reasonable to you?  “I wouldn’t be living my life if I couldn’t eat or drink certain things when I want too.” Well I’m a personal trainer and it sounds pretty reasonable to me!

Approx. read time 2.5 min.

Food is one of the best things in life is it not? Food is always around and ready to amplify how we live. Whether it’s a nice cold beer on a hot day, or a big slice of your mother in laws famous carrot cake, or a tub of ice cream waiting for you at the end of a particularly difficult day of work.

Wouldn’t you say it’s reasonable to believe that you wouldn’t be living your life if you didn’t have freedom to indulge in these types of things? I’d say so…

But what if I told you those indulgence made you gain .4lbs per month? or 5lbs in a year? That’s still nothing a couple weeks of vigilance can’t fix right?

Well some quick math will teach you that in a decade that’s 50lbs of weight gain.

If you’ve ever wondering how people get fat, it comes on in two ways… The first is when changes in your life (usually drastic ones) lead to changes in behaviour, resulting in rapid weight gain. The other 95% of the time it just sneaks up on you fractions of a pound at a time.

If you identify with this, then there is one obscure thought I want to leave with you.

If what you believe isn’t serving you well, stop believing it.

If the belief that you can’t live your life well without indulging in food isn’t serving you well… Stop believing in it. We have a choice when it comes to our beliefs.

Where do beliefs come from?

As we build certainty of an outcome we form a belief. Simple (but worth reading over a few times to let it sink in).

Example, you may believe driving on a highway is more dangerous than driving on side streets. Maybe because of how fast the cars go, maybe it’s because of a bad experience? Either way you’ve built a sense of certainty that it is more dangerous on the highway. But the evidence is conclusive, you’re more likely to have an accident on side streets and in parking lots.

Beliefs are not black and white. They are not guaranteed to be true and they don’t divide right and wrong.

Ditching a belief that isn’t serving you well is simple. The trick will always be figuring out what to believe instead, and building certainty around that over time.

 

Couple tips for you:

  • If you can’t demonstrate control with a food, then you need to quit that food… If you were an alcoholic, you can’t just step back into the odd drink here or there. It seldom works that way and I’d highly recommend quitting that particular food for your foreseeable future.
  • If you aren’t sure if an indulgence is appropriate, then ask yourself this. Would me in 3 months look back on this indulgence and say it was worth it?

 

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