Are you Black and White?

Have you ever thought or said these things?:
1) I am either "on track" or "off track" when it comes to my eating and working out.
2) I was so bad this weekend. I ate __________. (Fill in the blank with your favorite treat like chocolate cake.)
3) Fatty foods are bad for you.
4) I have a terrible sweet tooth.
5) I had a stressful week. I am going off my diet because I deserve a big steak, a big glass of wine and a big piece of cake.
6) I have eaten so bad today. I might as well eat this ______. (Insert one of those foods again.)
7) I will start over with my good eating and exercise on Monday or even better, on the 1st of the next month. Until then, I will eat everything I can!
8) If I stray from my diet, then I binge.
9) I feel so guilty if I miss a workout.
10) Go hard or go home. All or nothing....black or white....

In my previous post, I made reference to a few thought patterns that must change as a part of the secret to losing the extra weight forever. The "black and white" mentality is one of the most common and one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I see with my clients (and even with myself.)

Food is not "bad". You are not "bad". A sweet tooth is not "bad". Missing a planned workout is not "bad". Here's the thing, there are things that we do in life that are either "beneficial" or not. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is constructive. I Cor. 10:23 If we eat a piece of Halloween candy, it is neither bad nor beneficial. It is not constructive as it doesn't help us towards our goals. Did it taste good? Did you practice self-control and not eat the whole bag? Is your craving gone? Are you living life or running from it because you're afraid of being "bad"?

If your overall goal is to lose weight, maybe you should rephrase your goal by saying you are working towards making "beneficial", healthier choices every day so that you can enjoy life to the fullest. If you phrase your goal like this, then right now is a good time to start. You don't need to wait until Monday. In fact, if you ate something that wasn't beneficial at lunch, then give your body the nutritional benefit it needs at dinner. If you weren't able to workout for whatever reason, make a healthy active choice to take the stairs, park far away from Wal-mart's door and walk the dog around the block. Any activity is "beneficial" for a healthy lifestyle goal. You have the rest of your life to become healthier. Why are we rushing and why do we think we need to reach an end today? I am a firm believer in the process of things. If we can learn in the process of becoming healthy then we'll stay healthy for life with what we've learned and we'll continue to get more and more healthy. If we're always focusing on the end result or reaching a destination, then we find ourselves disappointed when it's over, or because we can never quite reach it, and quite possibly we learned nothing along the way.

A friend of mine commented on the last post saying she felt like with "diets" she doesn't learn to think for herself. That's so right. What's amazing is that when we were born, we were born with amazing things like metabolism, a digestive system, taste buds, and hunger signals. We mess them up, misread them and confuse them for other things. We have to unlearn some things and relearn others. This "black and white" mentality has to be unlearned. No more saying "bad food". Yes, foods that are high in saturated fat are not beneficial and eaten in large quantities can cause multiple symptoms and malfunctions of the body. But, french fries in and of themselves are not bad. A birthday cake is not bad, it can be a tradition of celebration to be enjoyed through self-control and proper perspective. If we just follow the "rules" of a "diet", we never learn to think about things like this, why we think a certain way and when and how we apply self-control. All we learn to do is follow "rules" which seem to be easily broken. No one likes to feel like a rule-breaker.

I've struggled with this mentality, but I have to say that I am much much better in this process and journey. If you know me, you know I have no problem eating a brownie sundae for dessert. Am I bad? Do I eat bad? No. I just know that eating a brownie sundae for every meal, or even one time per day is not beneficial or helpful towards my goal of being healthier and losing the baby weight so I don't do it. I will be honest with you, I skipped the Plank Challenge workout yesterday. Why? Because I was feeling like I was fighting off sickness. Am I bad? Did I fail? No. I listened to my body and thought that doing the workout would be less beneficial than resting. That is what my body needed. The decision was based off of what was going to be the most beneficial. In years past, I would've felt guilty and I would've felt like I didn't "stick with it". The "rule" was that we were going to do this every day for 2 weeks. I might've just dropped the challenge all together since I didn't do it everyday like I wanted to originally. Rather than thinking of it as a "rule", it is a general guideline to shoot for. If I do it today, it will be more beneficial than if I just quit.

Do you have this thought pattern? Maybe the most beneficial, healthy choice you can make today is to commit to change your vocabulary and change your thoughts. It might be the single most influential choice you make that will help you lose weight.