Changing more than one habit sets you up for failure!
We all know the feeling of New Year coming around. A new beginning. A new way of getting it
Are you ready to finally succeed?
done. This time I will go to the gym, eat healthy, cut out soda, eat veggies, stop eating fried food….The list is almost endless. This is also the list that you made just for fitness. You might have committed in a written form, or just committed to it verbally. In addition you are working on your relationship, your work, and this, and that.
The results come in usually 2-3 months later. We gave up on healthy eating on day 3-10, stopped going to the gym 2 months later, totally frustrated and potentially injured, and our relationship might not be better off because we felt bad for failing our plans.
The good news
You might be astonished that there is such a thing as good news in all of that. Here it is: It is not your fault! You might say what? Who can I blame for it? Can I blame my parents, partner, boss, the devil? Nope. You can blame being human. This is normal for all of us. Some people can handle one or two more things than others but we all have our limits.
The good news is that you can do something to succeed. I want to give you some easy rules that you can follow.
General Rules
- Choose one rule at a time. Your success chance improves exponentially (up to 80%)
- Write down what you are planning to do
- Do this one thing for 2-4 weeks before adding something else to it.
- Choose the easiest habit first. If you have several once, choose the one with the biggest impact.
How you can improve your nutrition by 80-90% easily
I list five habits in the following article that you can start adopting one by one. I know you might think it is easy and you can do two at a time. I do not recommend it. You will get there quickly enough and within no time your nutrition will be great. Follow the rules above and make it happen!
- Slow down your eating and eat until you are 80% full. Most of us inhale our food within minutes. It takes 15-25 min for our stomach to send satiation signals to our brain though. Drinking a bit of water between bites, putting the fork down, etc can really help you slow down. If you have a hard time with this habit: eat and don’t add anything untill about 20-25 min have past. You will be surprised to see how satiated you will be all of a sudden.
- Eat protein dense foods like eggs, greek yogurt, lean red meat, fish, pork, poultry, beans (if you are vegetarian). A good guideline is one palm-sized piece of protein/meal for women and 2 palm sized pieces/meal for men.
- Eat 1 or 2 fist-sized portions of veggies with every meal. It will provide you with plenty of vitamins, minerals and fiber.
- If you are aiming to lose weight make sure to reduce the intake of pasta, rice, potatoes to after workout meals only. If you can, opt for a double portion of veggies, instead.
- Make sure that you get your fats from healthy sources: Examples are avocados, fish, grass-fed meat, poultry. olives, olive oil, walnut oil, grass-fed butter. etc.
If you slowly but surely implement those habits every 2-4 weeks, chances are that you will have lost a lot of weight by the end of introducing habit 5. You will not recognize yourself by the end of the year.
The difference to the all-or-nothing approach? You actually stood a chance and you succeeded.
Have an awesome day,
Michael
References:
Berardi & Andrews (2013). The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition. 2nd Ed.
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