The Key To Achieving Your Health Goals
We often think it’s just a matter of finding that perfect diet, at the right time, under the right circumstances, and everything will fall into place. You open up Facebook and see an add pitching a diet that sounds reasonable. You watch the video testimonial of someone who got ripped by following this “one easy step” and you’re convinced that you’ll have the same results. SOLD! So, you get yourself the diet plan and give it a shot. It goes well for a few days, maybe a few weeks, hell, even a few months! Then… a brick wall. Something just isn’t working anymore or maybe you had a rough week and went off the rails. Now, you’re trying to get back into that diet, but you’re just not feeling like it’s working. It’s run its course. You think to yourself, “What a waste of time!”. Why not take a break and have that burger you’ve been craving and maybe even the pastries that you’ve been neglecting. Before you know it, you’re several pounds heavier. Back to square one; looking for the next diet that might be the one you can stick with.
It’s about BUILDING HABITS that stick. The problem we often run into with diets or any health plan is that we’re so eager and so desperate to lose weight that we take a herculean effort to drop all of our bad habits at once and believe we need to follow some extreme diet plan. Be realistic with yourself! How can you expect to turn your life upside down and be perfect within a day, or a week, or a month? It takes a lot of courage to accept the fact that losing weight, gaining strength, and developing a healthy lifestyle that makes you happy will take time, effort, and a whole lot of reflection and repetition. You are going to get dirt on your hands and scrape up your knees because you will fall. It’s all about getting up again and figuring out what went wrong. Just because you trip and fall, doesn’t mean that you don’t know how to walk. If you’re learning how to juggle for the first time and start with 4 balls at once, you may never figure it out. You might spend a lifetime throwing 4 balls into the air, sometimes catching two, maybe even three, and just MAYBE you’ll somehow catch all 4, but you’re not going to be able to repeat that without a whole lot of luck... If you start with tossing one ball at a time, getting comfortable with each addition before adding another element to the mix, you might just find yourself in the circus juggling 5 flaming swords on top of a unicycle… that’s also on fire.
So, what’s the point of all of this? Recognize that if you can’t do something simple such as having breakfast every day, or cooking dinner at home at least 3 times a week, chances are you’re not going to be able to follow a ketogenic diet or some alternative strict meal plan. Take it easy, give yourself permission to fail, recognize your limits, and realize that it takes time to make habits stick. The more habits you try to change at once, the more frustrating it will be and the harder it is to gain real traction.
Here’s my advice: Don’t try and jump into a brand new diet or lifestyle plan without taking baby steps. Want to eat better? How about you work on cooking more meals at home. Find yourself overeating at lunchtime? How about you try to eat breakfast at home before surging off to work. Are you tired of sitting on your couch as soon as you get home from the end of the day and feeling like a lazy bum? Why don’t you start by choosing a couple of days a week to be active, even if that’s just a walk? Change is difficult enough without being hard on yourself. So, the next time you decide it’s time to make a real change, start with something that you can handle. Practice that until you feel confident in your abilities to sustain it (most of the time), and then set your sights on the next challenge. Rinse and repeat. It’s not flashy, it won’t give you thousands of viewers on your youtube channel, and you won’t have any jaw-dropping answers to people who ask you, “Wow, what did you do to lose weight?” It’s not about finding a way to lose 10 or 20 pounds by beach season. It’s about being in a better place a year from now, or 2 years from now. If you only lose 10 pounds in a year, that might feel like nothing (to some)… But keep that up for years, and you’ll look back and thank yourself for being patient and not giving up.
Interested in starting your health journey to become the person that you know you can be? Work one-on-one with the dietitian, Dan Chase, and develop a realistic, effective, and manageable plan to start living a healthier life, today.
