Add Don't Subtract
Don’t worry, I’m not about to give you a maths lesson.
I don’t know about you, but I always think of giving something up as quite a negative thing to do. Of course I’ve done it before; (thankfully I gave up drinking Diet Coke about 4 years ago but it seems like as soon as you tell yourself you can’t have something, you want it even more.
When you are trying really hard to be healthy, the first thing you usually do is focus on taking something away and you think about the things you can’t have anymore; no more pizza, no more chocolate. Subconsciously, you feel deprived and then a sense of failure when you give in to the thing you were trying so hard to give up.
Let’s look at this a different way- it’s easier to add something to your life that will benefit your health rather than trying to eliminate something that you think is detrimental.
As my Nutrition page says:
‘Food is about passion, performance and pleasure not about deprivation and willpower’
When you start to add something, it automatically replaces something that’s not so good without you even thinking you have given it up; (my Diet Coke was replaced with Sparkling Water.
When Laura started her 12 Week Challenge the first thing we discussed was her nutrition plan. I gave her a shopping list of all the food she could eat. Anything on the list she didn’t like was taken off. The rules were simple; eat from the list, in any amounts and at any time- but only when you are hungry. If you wake up and don’t feel like eating breakfast-don’t. If you want to eat six times a day, do it, just stick to the list.
There were so many new foods and food combinations that Laura had not tried, that she didn’t even think about all the things she had ‘given up’
Start today. Think of 2 things you can do to positively affect your health. It’s too vague to say: ‘I’m going to eat more healthy or do more exercise’, because what does that actually mean?
*Focus on adding specific ‘good’ foods to your daily diet
*Cook at home rather than eating out
*Start a daily Yoga routine
*Walk 10,000 steps a day
*Sleep at least 7hours a night
*Drink at least 2 litres of water a day
*Try a new food/recipe every week
These are all things you can start doing that will give you a sense of accomplishment; a positive feeling that will keep you motivated and ultimately lead to healthier habits you can sustain for a lifetime.