This is it. You are going 100% strict paleo as of tomorrow. No more junk, sweets, processed foods, cheats or alcohol. Everything is going to be clean and natural. Cold turkey you are going to cut it all out for good!
The next day comes. You wake up super motivated and determined that you are going to do this! You want to lose those 20 extra pounds. Breakfast is good, clean and simple. Lunch you miss because of a meeting
but you manage to get in a few nuts. Long day at work packed back to back with unexpected meetings. Finally you leave the office one hour later than your usual time. Rush hour is heavy. You are starving! You only had a tiny breakfast and a few nuts all day. You still have to prep dinner for you and your family. It’s going to take at least another 45 min from when you get home to get food on the table. You pass multiple fast food and pizza joints on the way home. All that food looks delicious. People look happy eating it in the pictures. It’s so easy. It’s so tasty. It’s so fast! It’s just telling you to buy it. It’s the right thing to do at this time… Ok, tomorrow I’m going 100% strict paleo for sure!
How many of you go through this on a daily basis? The struggle to commit to healthy eating and scheduling work and family life? How many of you go through this vicious cycle and can’t seem to travel in a straight line? How many of you take your straight line for a curve consistently?
Food can be dangerous. It can trap you very quickly and unwillingly. The struggle to get out of this entrapment can be the hardest thing you experience in your life. It’s not the fact that you just have to cut out the bad and supplement with the good. It’s all of the baggage that comes along with it.
FEAR OF FAILURE – You can’t fail something you don’t start right? Yeah you know you’re becoming
unhealthy and see the negative impact of it but you aren’t failing anything. You haven’t started anything. You haven’t made any goals or commitments to yourself. This way of eating is easy and comfortable. It makes you happy when you’re doing it. Why change that?
Guess what? You really have nothing to fail. It’s all in how you look at your situation and your decision to change. It’s all in how you approach it. If you approach this change as a burden and make it impossible for you to do, you will never do it. Find ways to make healthy eating fit into your lifestyle. Maybe it’s not jumping into it full on? Maybe it’s just changing one thing for a couple weeks? Changing another thing the next couple weeks? Just keep slowly adding things in and taking things out. You don’t have to make it difficult. If you go back to how you were, you didn’t fail. You just didn’t take the right approach. Learn from it, get excited and try to find another option to make you reach where you want to be!
COMMITMENT – First and foremost, make this to yourself. Forget about family, friends, work and anything else influencing you in your life. If you commit to yourself you will stay on it. Why? Because you are making the decision for you and not forced to do something you don’t truly want to do.
This doesn’t mean you can’t and don’t reach out for help and advice. You do! The more the better. Use the resources you have available. Learn as much as you can and go get it. If I am your nutrition coach, I’m helping you and care as much as you do about your success. If you slip one day, you didn’t fail me! I will understand what happened and help you see how to get past this. I will help you in making sure it doesn’t happen again. We will work through it together. Remember, you committed to this yourself; you just gave me the pleasure of being part of your commitment. This is for you!
GUILT – This tends to happen after you slip on a meal or have a cheat meal. Even a scheduled cheat meal will make you feel like this. We want to ask you why? It’s a meal! You think all of your hard work is going to
be thrown away because you had one bad meal? We actually give my clients cheat meals for two reasons… 1) It keeps you sane; 2) It actually will increase your metabolism and take you out of a plateau. What you just ate will be burned off instantly and your metabolism will stay revving high. The key to a cheat meal is to not over indulge and to get right back on your healthy ways the next meal or day. If you plan for a cheat meal and approach it properly and with the right mindset you have nothing at all to worry about.
If you look at junk and it’s staring back at you making you think of rational reasons to eat it, you will cave in. If you know that you have a meal once a week that you can enjoy of foods you shouldn’t be eating, those foods won’t be as hard to pass up. You may even find that you just want more of a healthier food for your cheat. A big steak with some sweet potato fries and a glass of wine may sound much more intriguing and desirable. Whatever you decide, decide it guilt free. Your mind will be at ease and you will keep on the right path.
DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE EXCEPT YOU – Who cares about other people. You can’t be someone you are not. It’s impossible to look at someone and say you want to be like them. You are who you are and they are who they are. You can see someone do something and say you want to do that one day, or see how someone looks and say you would like to look like that but you can’t be exactly like that person. Goals are a necessity, but they have to be realistic. If you are 5’5” tall but want to be 5’8” tall, I’m sorry to say that’s not going to happen. Don’t care about what other people do or how other people look. You can only do what you can do to the best of your abilities. As soon as you start comparing yourself to others, failure is going to start creeping in. Usually this has to do with looks and body physique. Sometimes it has to do with lifestyle. Other times it has to do with food.
We are who we are. Look in the mirror and compare yourself to that person. That’s how you will succeed.
HEALTHY EATING 80%/20% – The scenario at the beginning failed because it was unrealistic to keep. The 80/20 rule is the general rule for healthy eating. Paleo is easy if you incorporate it properly. Doing it
full fledge 100% when you are coming from a fast food and simple sugar lifestyle won’t stick. Be smart about it. Learn about paleo eating and learn how to incorporate it into your lifestyle successfully. Maybe that means keeping something that isn’t really paleo into your regime a couple times a week. Maybe it means taking a couple months to ease into it slowly. Use it as a tool for nutritional success the best you can to work for you. Paleo has different levels…80/20; 85/15; 90/10; 95/5. The higher number being paleo eating and the lower being not so paleo. I’ve known people who do well on two cheat meals a week but the rest of the time they eat paleo clean. Others like to do a cheat meal once every two weeks. Others like to have that one food or drink on the weekends but are good the rest of the week. Find what works for you and what you can stick with. Live a little and be healthy a lot.
THE DESIRE TO WANT IT – You have to want to change, like really want it, where nothing will stand in your way. You will make it work no matter what. Food that entices you and smiles at you to cave in makes you smile back and walk right by. You are going to succeed no matter what you have to do. If you truly want something for you, like I mean truly want it, nothing will stop you from succeeding. Every step and decision made is for you to get to where you want to be. Excuses don’t exist. Bumps in the road are used as learning experiences to not happen again. You will get what you want. You will get to who you want to be. You will succeed because your desire only has one option, and that is success.
THE NEXT STEP – The next step is up to you. How do you want to make yourself succeed? We’re here to help you. We offer ‘Transformation’ weight loss programs, nutrition consultations, meal plans, accountability programs, personal training and small group training for weight loss. We’ve had numerous clients who have had great success. We can show you their results so you know it is possible! Whatever you want to accomplish we can get you there. You just have to be open to the help and take that first next step.
