Eating For Health-There Is No End

So you are ready to start eating in a more healthy way, or maybe you already are eating pretty well but want to dial it in to shave off those last few pounds or to increase your energy and performance at work. First off congratulations that is a great step in the right direction. Your problem is that you aren’t sure where to start. Everything you hear and read is different and they all seem to contradict each other. The good news is that you aren’t alone in feeling this way. As complex as nutrition, weight loss, and the human body can be, there is a way to simplify the whole thing. The biggest challenge in making changes is knowing where to start. Really the best thing to do is to just start somewhere.

Since you need to start somewhere, you might as well start at the beginning. Then from there it is all about staying the course and trusting the process. This will NOT be a quick and easy solution but it is a tried and true method to initiate change in your nutrition habits that will transform you mentally and physically.

Start Here

If you want to make a change, it’s important to know what it is that you actually want to change. Otherwise you will end up playing a guessing game and those guesses will rarely get the same results as a decision based on facts. So write down everything that you eat and drink (anything that passes through your lips) for the next 3-5 days to collect the facts. The more detailed this is with serving sizes, timing, etc. the more information you have about what you actually need to change. The beauty of journaling like this is that by adding accountability, you will naturally begin to make better choices. Remember this is your journey and your decision to change the way that you eat. Leaving things out of your journal will only hurt yourself. This is not about writing down the perfect diet, it is a tool to help you get to your ideal physical and mental state through making changes to your current diet. Be honest, you deserve that.

Making Changes

Now that you have been journaling and have gathered the facts it is time to start making changes. “But what do I change?” is probably what you are thinking. Here is how we simplify this entire process, go through your journal and find the one thing that comes up again and again that you know is unhealthy. Ok, now that you have that picked out, maybe it’s a soda or a glass of wine each day. Remove it from your diet for the next 7 days. Yup, that’s it just one change for 7 days. Pretty simple right? Now that you have made it 7 days, give yourself a pat on the back and be proud of what you have accomplished. That’s the first win of many. Repeat this process every 7 days, always going back to the journal entries from the past week. To clear up any confusion, this is not always about removing certain foods. You will most likely need to remove unhealthy things some weeks and add in healthy choices on other weeks. For example, one week you may notice that there are no green vegetables in your diet, so you add those in. The next week you notice that you are eating a cookie every night before bed, so you remove that.

Making big changes will a lot of times feel overwhelming and stressful. By using these 7 day increments with just one specific thing to focus on allows for you to feel in control of your journey. The feeling of being in control will set you up to succeed and keep your mind at ease so the changes that are being made can be processed in a way that they begin to create new habits. The constant stream of success or “wins” that this process produces, will increase your motivation to stay the course. Let these “wins” snowball to where your confidence and motivation are so high that nothing can stop you. Eventually you will end up right where you want to be by taking it one week at a time.

There Is No End

You may be thinking at this point, “So far this process seems pretty simple, so why do so many people fail?” Once you begin to look for an end point in this process and all of your focus goes to “when I reach my goal...” This is where the trouble begins. That eye for the end is what will cause you to lose what you really want. The moment you feel that you have succeeded is not the end. That is the start of the next chapter.

The journey of eating for health, performance, or even vanity is a lifetime commitment. Your body is always evolving and changing, so you must continue to work in order to sustain what you worked so hard to achieve. Think of the transformation that you have made to your mind and body with your nutrition, like transforming an old junky car into a perfectly restored classic. You work for months or even years to get the car just the way you want it. Then you finally get to drive it and show off all of your hard work. But what happens when you continue to drive it but never put the work in to maintain it? The car may stay nice for a few weeks or months but eventually it will turn into that same piece of junk that it started as if the work needed to keep it maintained is neglected. This is the same for transforming your body. The initial transformation takes a lot of really hard work, then you have to continue putting in work to maintain the way that you desire to look, feel, and perform.

The choices that you make regarding what passes through your lips and into your stomach can be an amazingly powerful tool to transform yourself physically and mentally. Healthy choices will transform your life in a positive way. Just remember that the work is never done. You must constantly be working to maintain the amazing transformation that you achieved. Making the commitment to your health by changing what and how you eat is a lifelong pursuit. There is no end.