On a coaching call this past week, one of our members expressed her frustration with one of the lessons that asked her to “Imagine a really awesome, healthy, delicious meal.”
The problem was that what her brain told her a “really awesome, healthy meal” should be didn’t at all look like something delicious to her.
For something “healthy”, she was picturing something like this:
…When something “delicious” in her mind looks more like this scrumptious gourmet burger and fries:
You can see the difficulty she was having, and have likely faced something like it yourself.
In fact, we have ALL faced this same challenge when it comes to “eating healthier.”
We don’t want to give up the foods we enjoy and eat nothing but baked chicken breasts and steamed green beans for the rest of our lives to achieve and maintain the body we want, and we feel like being “perfect” at that stuff is what it’s going to take. The prospect of doing that is so daunting and unappealing that we instead give up on improving our health and body composition so that we can continue to enjoy the tastes and textures we love.
Forget About What OTHER People Might Consider “Healthy”
Long-term success with your eating and relationship to food won’t come through trying to follow some picture in your head that tells you what OTHER people consider healthy, no matter how many followers that other person has on Instagram. That approach of constantly restricting and depriving yourself will only lead to another inevitable crash and burn, and late night Skip The Dishes calls for Dairy Queen treats!
Achieving the health and physique outcomes you want and maintaining them is all about finding the balance that works for you between what you’re doing now and that unattainable “perfect” ideal.
Do you remember playing on the see-saw (AKA teeter-totter) on the playground as a kid, and having another friend (or mom or dad) shuffling back and forth in the middle, trying to balance it perfectly so you and your partner were just floating there in mid-air? It’s kind of like that.
Imagine on one end of the see-saw, you have the uncontrolled debauchery of an all-you-can-eat buffet of all the “red light” foods you can think of (those things that you just CAN’T STOP EATING), and on the other end you have the monotony of baked chicken breast, steamed vegetables and brown rice, day in, day out for the rest of your life.
The less appealing the “ideal healthy” end is to you, the more difficult it will be to sustain, so that end of the see-saw will have more weight to it, and you’ll need to stay further away from that end.
On the flipside, the harder it is for you to maintain control when faced with your own particular “red light” foods, the more weight that end has, and the further away from that end you’ll need to be for success.
Finding your own personal answer to what “healthy eating” looks like is like being that person shuffling back and forth, trying to find the balance, and where you end up on the see-saw can be totally different from everyone else depending on how much weight either of the two options at the ends carry.
One friend and client of mine is an AMAZING cook, and makes the full on, authentic versions of many delicious, but calorie-laden dishes. There are no “healthified” versions in her repertoire. She is someone, though, for whom those things are not “red light” foods. She can have a reasonable portion of that awesome, tasty food and then stop effortlessly. She is not tempted to just keep eating and eating. She could be WAY over to that indulgent side of the see-saw, and still be balanced.
That is not me. When I make or otherwise encounter certain foods, it is a STRUGGLE for me to control my intake. My family and I joke that I will have “curry belly” or “taco belly” or “pasta belly” and just keep eating…and eating…and eating. For me to be successful in maintaining a balance, I have to be MUCH further away from that side of the see-saw most of the time.
The answer to how to find what sustainable, healthy eating is FOR YOU is to make small, almost too-easy changes, one step at a time. If you move too fast in either direction, you’ll just keep crashing down on either end, over and over! Make small adjustments and eventually you’ll reach the point where you are still able to enjoy meals with family and friends but keep moving towards or maintaining your health and physique goals.
Sometimes, like me, you’ll take a step too far towards one end or the other, and THAT’S TOTALLY OK. The trick is to recognize it, adjust, and find your way back to that balance you’re after.
—Coach JP
P.S. That same see-saw example holds true for how you approach exercise, and indeed, for how you define your goals when it comes to your health and physique. Everyone’s balance for each of those things is different, because only you are YOU.