How to eat healthy...let's do this!
I'm going to break this up in installments, because we all know I can be a little...wordy. But before we can start with the physical actions -the "doing," we have to prepare the mind first. As I've said before, you cannot have a healthy body if your thoughts are filled with poison.
I'm going to assume you've read my post on "Inspiration." If not, read it -because you need to identify your reasons for wanting to be healthy. It may sound trite, but if you don't write down your goals and inspirations, then you're really just "winging" it. You're giving yourself too much leeway to get away with NOT doing something -which MAY be, after all, a good part of the reason why you're not healthy in the first place. I emphasized the word "may," so don't attack me for speaking in generalizations.
So step 1: Goals and inspirations...write 'em down and post them on your refrigerator.
Next, acknowledge that in this whole process -you have the freedom to choose. YOU decide what goes in your shopping cart. YOU decide what meals to prepare. YOU decide what goes on the stabby end of your fork and into YOUR mouth. If you have kids, YOU decide for them too. Take ownership. Tell yourself that whatever happens from here on out is your responsibility...not your spouse's (unless you're dealing with kids)...not mine. Yours. Everybody that's in your life needs to either be on board and supportive of you, or they need to disappear.
Step 2: YOU are responsible for choosing to live your best life. YOU are also responsible for choosing to live your worst life. Choose carefully.
I also want you to forgive yourself. Personal judgements are swift and fierce, and they need to stop. If you feel silly or foolish for trying every diet out there and only receiving poor results, that's okay. I've never seen one single diet be appropriate for everyone, and most of them are dealing in manufactured "science," anyway. If you've been to one "expert" and another and another, only to be told "there's nothing wrong with you" or "it's all in your head," the ineptitude and limitations of their abilities and education isn't your fault -it's theirs. If you feel stupid because you don't know how to properly care for yourself, don't. We live in a carefully crafted culture of fear designed specifically to make you feel incompetent and stupid and perpetually afraid so you"ll buy all the shit they want to sell you -even if it kills you. Fear is what keeps our economy humming. If people stopped being afraid, our economy would collapse.
Step 3: The past has passed. Let it go. Let's just concern ourselves with today. Don't worry about tomorrow, it'll be here soon enough. Stop living with guilt. Stop living with shame. Stop living with fear. They will only prevent you from moving forward. Arming yourself with knowledge will give you the power to commit the most rebellious act of all: breaking free from the system and becoming your own health sovereign. You're not a lab rat. You're a human being. Live like one.
Finally, we're not aiming for perfection. Life is too messy to even bother. We can, however, arm ourselves with enough knowledge that we don't even need to concern ourselves with getting everything 100 percent correct...unless you want to, in which case the knowledge bombs will help with that too. It's important to acknowledge this, because the inevitable slip-ups or moments of "weakness" lead to guilt. Guilt leads to shame, shame leads to judgement, judgement leads to giving up -and now we're back to step one. I like to build in "safety measures" for those moments when life takes a dump on your head. You'll soon learn those.
Step 4: Risk management. You may have heard of an "80/20" rule,
whereby 80 percent of the foods you get to eat are good for you, and as a "reward" you get to treat yourself to 20 percent dogshit. Dogshit isn't a treat. It's dogshit. The food you eat literally becomes your cells, tissues, and organs. You can't build yourself out of dogshit and not expect to feel like dogshit. I have my own version of 80/20, and it can be scaled up or down to suit you. The idea is to make the majority of your ACTIONS (not just what you eat) beneficial to you. The minority is reserved for when life gets messy. But because you've planned for it (via things like smarter grocery shopping) even your moments of weakness won't sabotage all your hard-won gains. Risk management FTW.
That's it for today. Start here...seriously. Don't skip this, no matter how silly or trite you think it is. The difference between successes and failures are the thoughts and stories you tell yourself about yourself.
Let go, and let grow. Shine on, beautiful people.