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Intentional Calibration
Are You Ready?
As you work your way through the healing process, there might be some specific goals you’d like to pursue. Even though you might’ve achieved some improved fitness, health, and weight loss by overcoming your struggles, you might want even more of these things, or even something else. This is where intentional calibration comes into play.
During the healing process up until this point you were still calibrating – it just wasn’t intentional. The changes that happened to your body, health, etc, were just natural side effects of you healing your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind.
Intentional calibration comes AFTER you’ve achieved a version of your Ideal Body. Let’s call this your Ideal Body version 1.0. It is the body you have once you’ve healed your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind.
Notice how intentional calibration is the last chapter of this book. That’s because it should come last – after you heal. Diet Culture does this backwards. It starts with an extreme form of calibration and doesn’t even get to the healing part.
It’s important not to start intentional calibration until after you’ve healed, for a couple of different reasons. First, healing is what will drive the majority of your progress. Too many people are eager to get through the healing so they can start calibrating. But healing will net you 80% of your results. If you’re still struggling with things like emotional eating or motivation with exercise, then healing and overcoming these struggles will have a much bigger impact on your health, body, and life experience. So don’t try to skip to the end. Stay focused on what matters most.
And the second reason to wait to implement intentional calibration is because during this process you’re going to have to be self-aware enough to recognize when adjustments you’re making are taking you out of alignment with the Ideal Body Formula. If you haven’t healed yet, then you won’t know what a healthy relationship with food, body, etc feels like. So it’ll be hard to know when you’ve taken things too far and things are getting dysfunctional again. If you’re not there yet, that’s OK – healing is still calibration, and will still result in fitness, health, and body changes.
At version 1.0 of your Ideal Body, these relationships might not be perfect, but you’ve improved them enough to understand them, and you’re well on your way to being happy, confident, and living a fuller life experience. So feel free to experiment with intentional calibration at this point.
Notice how I’ve been talking about version 1.0 of your Ideal Body. This is because your Ideal Body isn’t static. It will continue to change and evolve as you do. Remember, your Ideal Body is a side effect. That means any changes to your behaviors or mindset have the potential to create changes to your body.
If you suddenly find a love for running and start training for a marathon, you’re very likely to burn more calories, and that is going to influence your energy balance and your body. This new change in behavior might take you from Ideal Body Version 1.0 to Version 2.0.
Or maybe you discover a new fondness for smoothies or salads, and this ends up displacing some other more calorically dense foods in your diet. You weren’t necessarily trying to eat fewer calories. However, that was the result of you trying new foods and wanting to continue eating them. This then influences your energy balance and potentially changes your body. Now we’re on to Ideal Body Version 3.0.
Over your lifetime you are going to potentially have hundreds or even thousands of versions of your Ideal Body – each one simply being the side effect of new thoughts and behaviors that remain in alignment with the Ideal Body Formula.
Understanding how this process naturally works, we can use it to pursue our individual goals in a healthy and productive way. This is what we call Intentional Calibration.
While weight loss could potentially be a goal for you, it is far from the only goal you might have. I’ve worked with clients who wanted to use calibration to improve their health, to build muscle, to work on specific exercise goals, or to even gain weight. The point is that there are any number of goals you might want to pursue, and calibration is the process you’ll use to ensure you’re approaching them and progressing in a way that always keeps you at your Ideal Body.
So if you want to lose weight because your joints are hurting or because it’ll make you a faster runner, you can. If you want to build some muscle because it makes you feel empowered, you can. If you want to improve your health because you want to live a long life, you can. Or if you just want to have a certain look, you can. You have the autonomy to direct your life without feeling guilted or shamed for having these goals.
But what you need to understand is that there are limits to how far you can take these goals before you take yourself out of alignment with the Ideal Body Formula. And once that happens, your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind start to become dysfunctional again, and your life experience begins to suffer again as a result.
So it’s going to be essential that you know when to push and when to pull back, how to go about making the changes to your behaviors, and when it’s time to accept that you’ve done all that you can reasonably do.
Making Adjustments
Your goal in the calibration process is to make small changes to your eating, exercise, and mindset – all while staying in alignment with the Ideal Body Formula. That means you make a small adjustment to your eating, gather feedback, and assess whether your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind remain in a healthy place.
This is in contrast to Diet Culture’s process that focuses on the outcome and tries to white knuckle changes to your diet and exercise. Its process starts with the question of something like “how much weight do you want to lose… 1 pound or 2 pounds per week?” If it’s the former then you cut 500 calories from your diet, set a calorie budget, and you hold the line. If it’s the latter, you cut 1000 calories and double down on willpower in order to maintain that arbitrary calorie intake.
With the Ideal Body Formula, if you want to make an adjustment to your eating, you look for places that it makes sense. For example, maybe you want to lose weight, which would require you to eat less than you are now – all else being equal.
Your number one priority isn’t to eat less. It’s to stay in alignment with the Formula. That means first and foremost, any changes you make need to ensure that your diet remains satiating, satisfying, and nourishing, and that you don’t feel restricted or deprived, and your eating doesn’t become a means to an end – that it makes you feel your best, and you don’t start obsessing over calories or your eating as a whole.
Yes, you might need to eat less, but eating less doesn’t have to mean restriction. Restriction is a feeling – a mindset, not an action.
You can eat less without feeling restricted. In fact, you can eat less and feel even more satiation, satisfaction, and abundance surrounding your food. That’s the goal. In fact, that’s the only way you’re going to succeed with body transformation goals for the long term.
When I was looking to lose some weight, I first assessed my diet as a whole. Were there any places I felt like I was maybe a little too overfull? Was there any meal that would be easier to adjust than others?
In my case, I was feeling a little too full at night, yet I really enjoyed having a little something that was satisfying while I watched TV. Normally I was having some greek yogurt with granola and frozen blueberries. But while I loved the meal, I was still kind of full from dinner a couple hours before.
I also had another problem – I really liked my nighttime meal and didn’t want to give it up. So I looked at my other meals and asked myself if any of them could be swapped for the greek yogurt. My afternoon meal of chicken, beans, corn, rice, and cheese was probably my least favorite meal. When my goal is to eat less, I start cutting out foods that I DON’T enjoy as much. That seems like such an obvious thing to do, yet most people do the opposite – assuming that if they like a particular food a lot that it must not be good for losing weight. But it’s so much easier to let go of the foods you don’t enjoy than it is to sacrifice all the ones you do. So I swapped that meal out for my greek yogurt meal, and at night I decided to have a cookies and cream frozen greek yogurt bar instead.
This had a very interesting effect. My afternoon chicken meal had been around 500 calories, but it wasn’t very satiating. I was always really hungry when it came dinner time. Ironically, when I swapped it out for my 300 calorie greek yogurt/granola/blueberry meal, I ended up more satiated and more satisfied on fewer calories. And when nighttime came, I felt a perfect level of hunger to have my cookies and cream greek yogurt bar, which btw, was 200 calories less than the meal I used to have.
So what happened here? By prioritizing my body’s needs I was able to eat 400 calories less each day while also improving my satiation and satisfaction. Not only did this fulfill my goal of losing weight, but it improved my consistency and it was easier to adhere to.
This is why it’s so important to not prioritize calories and eating less at the expense of your body’s needs. When that happens you end up honoring your weight loss over your needs, and consistency and adherence will always suffer in the end.
Now, had I made that adjustment and my satiation, satisfaction, or nourishment had decreased to levels that lead to feelings of restriction, deprivation, or more inconsistent eating, then I would have simply gone back to how I was eating before. You assess the data, ask yourself if you’re in alignment, and then determine whether to continue with the new plan or go back to the old and try something else.
Never do you veer from the Formula, which means never are you not at a version of your Ideal Body. Your Ideal Body joins you every step of the way through the calibration process. In contrast, Diet Culture has you making arbitrary, outside-in slashes to your calorie intake to try and take you from a body you’re ashamed of, to a body that conforms to societal norms. But in the end, you just end up ashamed, undervalued, inconsistent, and a continued victim of Diet Culture.
100 Calories = 10 Pounds
Diet Culture teaches us to cut 500-1000 calories from your diet, depending on whether you want to lose 1 or 2 pounds per week (who ever chooses just 1 pound btw?), engage in some kind of workout that melts the fat off your body, implement a no excuses mentality by doubling down on willpower and discipline, and all your struggles from the past 20 years will be wiped out in a few months. Right?
Wrong. Look… I’d love if that were the case. And sometimes the math seems to justify that thinking on paper (2 pounds per week times 10 weeks equals 20 pounds, or 2 pounds a week for a year is over 100 pounds). But rarely does that ever play out in the real world while also maintaining those results for the rest of your life. Yes, there will always be an example of someone doing it, but remember to not confuse the possible with the probable.
Remember, weight loss isn’t the same as transformation. Transformation is about change of identity. That is permanent. The pursuit of weight loss directly via the arbitrary restriction of calories is not transformation – it’s body change. Many people will say they don’t care and that they’d be happy with just the body change, but body change is fleeting when it isn’t the byproduct of transformation.
Your goal during the calibration process, whether your desire is to lose weight, gain weight, build muscle, get stronger, get healthier, build endurance, or any other goal, is to approach it with the understanding that small changes done consistently over long periods of time are what lead to the outcomes you want.
Most of the negative consequences we’ve experienced with our health have been the byproduct of years of accumulated thoughts and behaviors. Most adults have gained weight gradually over the years. It only takes a 100 calorie daily surplus to gain 10 pounds in a year. Over 5 years that’s 50 pounds. In reality, a 30lb weight gain over 30 years is the result of just a 10 calorie surplus per day. That’s it.
Of course, you probably didn’t experience weight gain so linearly. Most likely there were periods of ups and downs that coincided with the diet cycle you’ve been stuck in for a lifetime. Lose 10 lbs over a couple of months. Gain 12 back over the following one. Rinse and repeat for 30 years. Or experience a sudden gain of weight over a few months to a year due to a life situation, and then never really recover from it.
The point is this – if you want to reverse this process, you have to start thinking differently. You have to get away from Diet Culture’s idea of express delivery of outcomes and instead look at goal seeking as a long-term calibration process built upon an underlying foundational principle of consistency.
It doesn’t take huge changes to reverse the trend of weight gain. It doesn’t take huge changes to reverse the trend of suboptimal health. It just takes small changes done consistently from this point going forward – forever.
Just a 100 calorie daily deficit accumulated over a year is the equivalent of 10 pounds. Change a few small things to your eating and movement and you have the potential to lose a lot of weight without feeling like you’re dieting.
Fix the 1400 extra calories you eat every weekend because you feel restricted, deprived, or the need to cope with your emotions using food. There’s 20 pounds right there.
Burn an extra 200 calories a day because you start doing exercise you enjoy and get consistent with it. There’s another 20 pounds.
This is what healing your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind accomplishes. Its goal is to get you consistently making the best choices for yourself again. In doing so, small changes to energy balance, movement, food choices, emotional coping strategies, body image, etc, incrementally add up over time and change you.
So understand that a daily smoothie for the next 20 years will have more of an impact on your health than a perfect 2lb/week weight loss diet done for 3 months followed by 6 months of “regular” eating. Understand that a 100 calorie deficit created naturally because you’ve neutralized your emotional eating by directly addressing your needs will have more of an impact on your weight than a 10 week fat loss diet blitz cleanse no excuse challenge.
Get consistent by healing your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind, and then remain consistent while you calibrate and make small but sustainable changes. Then set it and forget it. Changes are happening in the background while you live your life.
Utilizing Tools
You started off your Ideal Body journey by ditching the scale and giving up calorie counting. This was necessary in order for you to heal your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind.
When you’re first starting on this new journey you are very susceptible to a past of Diet Culture thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. These tools keep you anchored to that past life and prevent you from turning inwards and getting in touch with your body.
But as I talked about in their respective chapters, the scale and calorie counting are just tools. They are neither good nor bad. Using them successfully is completely dependent on the person using them, their state of mind, and where they are in their journey.
Since we are now in the calibration chapter, that means you’ve already ditched these tools, healed your relationships, and are at a version of your Ideal Body. That means this is the time to consider reintroducing these tools.
However, based on the experiences of the countless people who have been through our program, once you’ve learned to live and thrive without them, it’s possible you aren’t going to want to use them again. You start the program having a hard time letting them go, and finish the program not wanting to have anything to do with them.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. There is a certain subset of individuals who use the scale and calorie counting to some degree and will thrive using them. I am an example of one of those people. Deanna, on the other hand, cannot use them without them pulling her back into food and body obsession.
When it comes to our clients, I’ve found that about half of them end up using at least one of those tools. But more times than not, it is not a daily use kind of thing, but a targeted tool when the situation calls for it.
Consider calorie counting, for example. There are different levels of counting, from calorie awareness, to quantifying, to targeting – all the way to calorie budgeting. And I’ll break these down in the next section.
You might decide to experiment with calorie counting in some way at some point. When used right, this process will be less about suppressing how much you eat and more about understanding your food better. Maybe you just want to understand how much you’re eating relative to your hunger signals. Or maybe you need a little more information about your food so that you can make a more educated adjustment.
Whichever level you use, you don’t have to take any of them to the extreme. In other words, there’s a difference between adding up the calories to a single meal because you’re curious, versus tracking every last morsel of food that goes into your mouth, every day for the rest of your life.
My preferred personal use of calorie counting is using it when I want to change up my core meals. If I know my current core meal at lunch is 500 calories (because I quantified it), then I can create and try out a new meal based on that nutrition level. If weight loss is a goal I can try to find a 400 calorie meal. If weight and muscle gain is a goal, I can try to find a 600-700 calorie meal. Whatever the case, the meal must at least equal, but preferably improve my levels of satiation, satisfaction, and nourishment. And rule number one is if any use of calorie counting pulls me back into Diet Culture and food and body obsession, I kick it to the curb – immediately.
What about the scale? How can that be used in a way that keeps you in alignment with the Ideal Body Formula? Similar to calorie counting, it can be used at different frequencies (daily, twice a week, once per week, etc), or at different times in your life (that random week in the summer vs the 2 weeks during the holidays) to help you understand yourself and your behaviors better.
Weighing yourself shouldn’t result in an emotional drive to change your behaviors. That’s what used to happen to you before you healed. A number on the scale would trigger you to compensate by changing your eating. You’d end up using outcome based behaviors in an attempt to control the scale, instead of addressing the dysfunctional relationships you had with food, body, exercise, and mind, that were creating your struggle.
Instead, the scale should be a neutral data point – a tool that gives you an additional layer of information to help you achieve your specific goals. Remember, this might be weight loss, but it could also be weight maintenance or weight gain, depending on your health, performance, or even physique goals. The key is knowing when the tool goes from being an asset to a liability, and being able to be honest with yourself so that you can give it up when it causes problems.
About half my clients will use the scale at some point over the period that we work together. And only about 20% will use it daily for that whole time. So as you can see, the scale isn’t an all-or-nothing tool. It has a purpose depending on your goals at that time and where you are in your healing journey.
There are dozens of use cases for these two tools, all of which can be used successfully so long as you are already healed and at a version of your Ideal Body, and you’re able to stay in alignment with those healed relationships during the calibration process. If you can’t, then these tools should not be used. There are plenty of people who can use these tools in a healthy way and have them benefit their life. Similar to how tracking steps, sets, reps, and other aspects of your workouts can help you make informed decisions on your goals, calorie counting and the scale can do the same when layered upon healthy relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind.
The Calorie Counting Hierarchy
Just because you haven’t been counting calories up to this point, it doesn’t mean you’ve been lacking awareness of your food. There’s a huge space between being oblivious to what you’re eating, and thinking you need an honorary PhD in nutrition in order to eat well.
I like to think of calorie counting as a hierarchy. There are 4 different levels – each level building on the one below it. So let’s take a look at all 4 levels, and the ones you need to be focusing on.
The first level is called Calorie Awareness. During the healing process this is where you spend all of your time. For many people, they will never go beyond this level. This is not a bad thing. The levels above this one aren’t better in any way. In fact, for many people the higher levels are worse – triggering them and dragging them back into Diet Culture.
In level 1 you are simply aware of the energy density (calories) and the general nutritional makeup of your food. It requires a basic understanding of eating and a very basic education around food. This is all you will need to succeed with your eating. You don’t need to spend hours or years studying nutrition to reach your goals. And for many people, they already have the education they need, as they’ve spent a lifetime educating themselves on nutrition and biology thinking that was what was necessary to lose weight.
Level 1 means you know what kinds of foods are higher in calories and which foods tend to be lower. You know which foods tend to be higher in nutrients, and which foods tend to be lower. With this very basic knowledge you can make the best choices for fulfilling the 3 variables of Intentional Eating – satiate, satisfy, and nourish.
This level means you know that peanut butter tends to be more calorically dense than an apple. It means you know broccoli is more nutritionally dense than rice. It means you know a chicken breast has more protein than oatmeal. And it means you know that cheese or nuts tend to be higher in fat than beans, or that pasta tends to have more carbs than cauliflower. None of these foods are better or worse for you. They all serve a purpose that can meet your individual needs. You will use this level 1 awareness to take you all the way through the healing process and achieve version 1 of your Ideal Body.
The second level of the hierarchy is called Calorie Quantifying, and it is where you’ll start if you choose to utilize calorie counting as a tool during the intentional calibration process. This is the process of quantifying how much you’re eating once you’ve already healed your relationship with food. You are essentially putting a calorie number onto how much you already eat naturally. Quantifying shouldn’t influence your eating in any way. It is a completely independent process from your eating. Pretend like you’re just eating naturally in a way that makes you feel your best and someone, without your knowledge, was watching you eat and adding up how many calories you’re eating. This is quantifying. It’s an extra layer of information for your eating and can be used to understand your food a little better and to help you make more educated calibration decisions once you’ve healed.
The third level is called Calorie Targeting. Again, this is exclusively used for calibration after you’ve healed your relationship with food. And it’s only used if you want to use it or if you’re able to without it pulling you back into old Diet Culture thinking and behaviors.
Calorie Targeting is layered upon the previous two levels of Awareness and Quantifying to help you direct your eating to whatever goal you have. If quantifying your food intake showed you that you were eating 2000 calories, and you have a goal to gain weight, you can set a calorie target of 2300 calories as a way to create some directed intention behind your eating.
Calorie Targeting means that the target you set for yourself is a guideline or suggestion. It is not a line in the sand. If you set a goal to eat 1500 calories and nighttime comes and you are hungry – you eat. You always honor your body’s needs without exception. If you go over your target, then you should feel neutral about it. If you feel guilty or feel the need to compensate, then you are not ready to use calorie targeting.
But again, you will ever only need the first level – calorie awareness, to succeed at achieving your Ideal Body. The other levels are reserved for calibration AFTER you’ve already healed. And used only if you can utilize them without falling back into Diet Culture. This is when specific goals come into play that could benefit from additional awareness tools. But they are never required.
The final level of the hierarchy is Calorie Budgeting. Interestingly enough, this is where 99% of dieters start, and it’s the reason why they keep failing. You will likely never use this level – even after you’ve healed your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind, and have achieved your Ideal Body.
This level is reserved for the .01% of the population. That’s 1 in 10,000 people. These people tend to be fitness competitors or need their body to be in a specific condition by a specific date. This might mean an actor getting ready to play a role in a movie, a bodybuilder who is competing in 122 days, or a few select other situations.
Calorie Budgeting is not a permanent solution. It completely disassociates you from your body’s needs and aims to force your body into a certain condition. The people I listed above know this and they accept the resulting weight regain that comes as a consequence of calorie budgeting. A fitness competitor puts a lot of weight back on after a competition. An actor doesn’t stay in movie shape permanently. They can’t. Their body doesn’t let them.
This level is reserved for a select few, yet nearly all dieters start there. They set a calorie budget of 1200 calories and try to hold that line at all costs. Hungry? Ignore or suppress it. Full? Eat anyways because you haven’t hit your budget yet.
This process takes them further and further out of touch with their body’s cues. And after a lifetime of doing this, they have no idea what hunger actually feels like or how they should be eating to meet their needs.
So remember… of the 4 levels of the calorie counting hierarchy, you will likely only ever utilize the first 3 levels. And of those 3 levels, you will only need the first level to succeed in healing your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind, and achieve your Ideal Body. Levels 2 and 3 are there as tools for calibration if or when you want to use them, or are able to without slipping back into Diet Culture.
Letting Go Of What You Can’t Control
Too many of us worry about the things that are completely out of our control. When I was in my early twenties I started losing some of my hair along the temples. When I first realized this it was all I could think about.
I buried my face into the computer screen and researched all I could about hair loss and how to prevent it, or even better, regrow it. I spent money I didn’t have and time that could have been used doing more productive things instead of trying to solve a problem that was mostly out of my control.
I tied my identity to my hairline and I was miserable as a result. My self-worth plummeted, my confidence dried up, and I thought my social life was over.
A good year later, after realizing the products I bought weren’t doing a thing, I decided to give up on them. I stopped treating my hair in the morning and night and in the shower. I stopped checking my hairline for signs of hair regrowth every time I walked by the bathroom mirror.
And once I stopped doing that, I realized that I was the same person whether I had hair or not. That I chose to make myself miserable from that situation.
I eventually adopted the mantra to not worry about the things you can’t control. And this mantra is just as relevant during your Ideal Body journey.
There might come a time on your journey when you’ve done all you can do to intentionally calibrate without falling back into food and body obsession and Diet Culture strategies. If or when that moment comes, you have one thing to work on – acceptance.
We’ve already talked about body acceptance. This is done during the healing process. It’s about working towards accepting your body unconditionally as it is right now so that your behaviors come from a place of self-love and self-care. This makes it easier to eat and move your body in a way that is enjoyable and sustainable. Whereas hating and rejecting your body pushes you into outcome-based, punitive behaviors that are rooted in Diet Culture. These behaviors don’t address your underlying struggles, and instead attempt to just slap a surface level bandaid (dieting, cutting calories, burning calories, willpower, etc) over your problems. Of course as you’ve probably already experienced numerous times, these behaviors don’t last, and they keep you stuck in the diet cycle.
Body acceptance isn’t the type of acceptance I’m talking about here. If you’re at a point that you’re calibrating, you’ve already healed and embraced the body you’re in. You might still have goals to change it, but you’re ok with whatever outcomes happen during this process, as you’re already at a version of your Ideal Body.
The type of acceptance we’re talking about here is situational acceptance. This means being ok and at peace with your life knowing you’ve made your best effort possible given your current unique circumstances.
This is not the same thing as giving up. It’s the opposite, actually. It’s about going all in – on you. You embrace yourself and all that you’ve accomplished. And learn to be OK with the outcome.
That doesn’t mean you don’t stop trying to improve and grow as a person. It just means right now in this moment, given your psychology, personality, circumstances, and genetics, you’ve pushed to the boundaries of what’s reasonably possible for you. You understand that pushing yourself beyond this boundary carries negative consequences.
Because here’s the thing – it’s normal to want to weigh less, look or feel younger, be healthier, have more muscle, or be fitter. But it won’t always be possible to push these goals as far as you desire without negative side effects showing up elsewhere. And you have to be OK with that. You have to be OK knowing that you’ve done your best. And you have to respect yourself enough to know that pushing further creates more problems than it solves.
And that boundary is always changing. Maybe you’re raising 4 small kids right now and you don’t have as much time and energy to devote to your training goals. But in the future when they are grown or out of the house, you might have more time and energy to devote to yourself. If you stay in alignment with the Ideal Body Formula, you will be able to take advantage of changes in your life circumstances. But only if you honor what is best for you in any given moment of your life.
Nothing is permanent, but the now doesn’t change. So you have to learn to accept and embrace your situation of the now so that you’re always living your best life possible for YOU – in any given moment.
Mental Diet
Curate Your Environment
One of the first things I do when I’m trying to implement a new habit or hobby is I start to surround myself with the people, information, images, books, videos, and communities that contain the identity of who I want to become.
This is called immersion, and it’s one of the most powerful tools on your Ideal Body journey. However, when used incorrectly, it will be one of the most detrimental influencers to achieving your goals.
So many of us are focused on our physical diet. We spend countless time and emotional energy to curate what we put into our mouths. We’re constantly trying to bring in more whole foods and cut out the foods that don’t make us feel our best. But then when it comes to our mental diet, we don’t give it much thought. Instead, the information we allow into our minds creates unnecessary resistance to the things we’re trying to accomplish.
We touched on this in the Identity Change chapter. If you remember, our behaviors and outcomes are direct beneficiaries of our beliefs and identity. But what you might not realize, is just how much our beliefs are formed from the information we consume, aka our mental diet.
Your mental diet consists of all the auditory and visual information you consume both consciously and subconsciously. This includes, but is not limited to, social media, magazines, product marketing, TV, articles, and even the words of people – strangers and close relationships alike. Images and words you absorb have the power to either take you to your goals, or prevent you from reaching them altogether.
When you have a good mental diet and intentionally feed your mind information that aligns with your desired identity, it provides a sort of lubrication for your behaviors. But when the information you consume is not in alignment with who you want to become, you create unnecessary resistance to new behaviors and habits. Everything feels hard. It feels as if you’re dragging yourself across sandpaper. You face a strong headwind – requiring you to rely more on finite willpower to get you through your days.
The quality of your mental diet directly influences the quality of your behaviors and the quality of your life experience. I would even go so far as to say that your mental diet is more important than your physical diet, if only because your physical diet tends to be a side effect of the former.
Your mental diet affects whether you feel good or bad about your body. It can make you restrict calories or ignore your body’s hunger cues when you shouldn’t. It can make you live in fear of judgement. And it can even create states of anxiety that put pressures on you to cope using food.
Someone else’s before and after weight loss photo celebrating a smaller body can trigger you to feel less-than. It can reinforce that your worth is in your body. And it can lead to you going on yet another diet that doesn’t work.
Reading about eating 1200 calories per day or cutting out carbs in order to lose weight from some credible person with a series of letters after their name can make you restrict food and calories when you shouldn’t. It can lead to you ignoring your body’s needs in favor of adhering to an arbitrary calorie budget, which just leads to inconsistency and disappointment in the end.
Hearing one of your friends talk about the diet she’s on and how much weight she’s lost, or listening to a friend talk about how much they hate their body, can influence the way you view your own. This can keep you from healing your relationship with your body and keep you stuck with a negative body image.
So when you’re ready to be someone different, aka transform yourself, you need to make sure your mind is immersed in the right environment. Trying to heal your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind while you follow accounts on social media that are constantly showing before and after progress photos is not going to help you break your disempowering belief that your body is your worth. Constantly talking to your friends about diets and calories and how much you all hate your bodies isn’t going to help you eat and see your body from a place of self-respect, self-care, and self-love.
Start feeding your mind with the same intention that you feed your body. Immerse yourself with people and information that align with who you want to be. Curate your environment in a way that pushes you to success. And cut out anything you’re immersing yourself in that creates resistance to your goals.
Set Boundaries
One of the biggest contributors to your mental diet are the words and behaviors of the people closest to you. Our family, peers, friends, and co-workers all have their own belief systems that are constantly being projected outwards in many ways. And if you aren’t careful, their thoughts can pollute your mental diet and throw you off track.
Very rarely do others do this on purpose. Most of the time the people closest to you just want to share their own life and thoughts. Other times they say things out of so-called concern for your well-being. But there are times when they will say things with the intent to hurt too. Whatever the case, it’s going to be necessary for you to set boundaries so that you don’t internalize information that goes counter to your goals.
I’ve experienced situations that needed boundaries many times. And so have all of my clients. From the clients whose spouses are always policing their food choices, to the critical parents who are always commenting on your body – there is no shortage of toxic information you’re going to have to contend with.
You might have a friend who is constantly talking about her diet and weight. You might have a friend group that is always criticizing their bodies. You might have co-workers or family members who think it’s best to always be questioning your goals under the guise of “trying to understand”.
It doesn’t matter what it is or the intentions behind it, anything in your environment that degrades your mental diet is going to add unnecessary resistance to your Ideal Body journey. And if you aren’t careful, it can tempt you to the point that you go back to your past Diet Culture ways.
So what do you do? You set boundaries. And believe me, I know this isn’t easy for most people. People don’t like conflict. They struggle to stand up for themselves and say what they need. They don’t want to rock the boat or create an uncomfortable situation.
But do you know what else isn’t easy? Having your parents comment on your body every time you see them. Listening to your friend talk about how great her new diet is and how much weight she’s lost, while you are trying to work through your emotional eating struggle. Having an arrogant or even abusive spouse shame or laugh at you because you ate a candy bar while you’re working on healing your relationship with food. At least when you set a boundary the discomfort has a future payoff.
You’re going to have to ask yourself what the better approach is – setting a boundary, or working on not internalizing other people’s beliefs and opinions. The latter is necessary regardless, but a boundary doesn’t always need to be set.
If a situation happens infrequently, say you see a sibling during the holidays once a year and they’re always talking about dieting, then it might not be worth the investment to establish a boundary. On the other hand, if someone is part of your day to day life, the emotional investment in a boundary is going to be worth the payoff.
Setting a boundary is simple. You respectfully say what you need and why you need it. And then you release yourself from any reactions.
Deanna once set a boundary with me. We were sitting down in our media room getting ready to watch some TV. She came in with some snack food. I made a comment teasing her about it, something like – “ohhh… look at what you have.” To me it was innocent. I had no ill intention with what I said. But for Deanna it made her feel guilt and shame around food. It made her feel like her eating choices were being watched.
So what did she do? She simply said – “can you not comment on the food I eat?” And while I’m sure I got defensive, I honored the boundary she set. And the neat thing was that I could also count on her to not comment on the food I was eating. Like most boundaries, it is a win/win scenario even if it’s hard for the person receiving the boundary to see past the initial defensiveness.
Stand up for yourself. Say what it is you need. Don’t assume people know. And don’t assume people will even understand once you explain why. They don’t need to understand. They only need to honor what you’re asking for in order to thrive as a person. If that person loves and respects you, then it shouldn’t be an issue.
The Food and Body Police
As you work towards achieving your Ideal Body you’re going to come up against a few different kinds of food and body protagonists. These people can apply resistance or force to your thoughts and behaviors – neither of which are in your best interest.
Take the food police as an example. They are there to get you to stop eating the way you’ve decided, and they make you second guess the food choices that are best for you. On the flip side you have food pushers. The food pushers try to get you to eat when you don’t want to, and they too get you to make food choices that don’t have your best interests at heart.
Food police and food pushers don’t have to be separate people either. They can both be part of the same person, like one of your parents, or a friend that always has an opinion on how you should be eating. And here’s the kicker – they can be someone else, or they can come from within your own head. That’s right – you can be, and often are, both of these people.
Once you realize this you’re going to see food policing and pushing everywhere. You’re going to notice the voice in your head telling you not to eat something because you won’t be able to lose weight. You’re going to hear it say just get the salad when you’re eating with your friend because you don’t want to look like a pig eating what you really want. It’s going to tell you to eat your Mom’s lasagna even though you aren’t hungry so that you won’t hurt her feelings.
And then you’re also going to hear the comments from friends and family. They’ll tell you to live a little when you really just don’t want to have donuts for breakfast. Or someone will be more blunt and shame you for ordering dessert to make sure you know that’s a no-no if you’re trying to lose weight.
And then you’re going to have to deal with the body gatekeepers. These people will always be telling you that you should have a different body than the one you currently have.
Sometimes they’ll say you need to lose weight. At times it’ll be criticism. Other times it’ll be out of concern for your health. Other people will tell you to stop losing weight. That you’re getting too skinny. That you’d look better weighing a little more. And just like with the food police, the body gatekeeper could be you. You could always be telling yourself that you should look different. In the end, these people are simply projecting their own insecurities, beliefs, and desires onto you. Or if these people are you, you are just speaking your limiting beliefs into existence.
All of these things apply pressure to your ability to make choices that are best for you. Instead, you start making choices to appease other people. And you start creating feelings of guilt and shame which inevitably lead to inconsistency, frustration, and feeling stuck.
First things first – recognize and be aware of when it’s happening, and whether it’s originating externally from other people or internally from yourself. If it’s coming from other people then don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and defend your boundaries.
If you’re not hungry then say you aren’t hungry. If someone is constantly commenting on what you eat and it’s bothering you, then politely tell them you’d rather not talk about your eating choices. If the comments are about your body, then say you’d appreciate if they didn’t comment on your body. You don’t have to explain why, but you can if you think it’ll help.
If the policing and pushing pressures are being applied from within your own head, then you need to recognize it, challenge the limiting belief, and then remind yourself to always make the choice that will meet your needs of the now, as that’s what will make you feel your best in the long run.
Part of achieving your Ideal Body requires you to set boundaries in your life. It’s a way of showing respect to yourself. It’s not always an easy thing to do or talk about to people, but neither is living in a way that you don’t feel your best.
Developing Your Mind
Your mental diet isn’t just about curating your environment in a way that removes resistance to personal growth. It’s also about consuming material that directly contributes to your personal development.
We want our identity to continually be evolving and transforming itself for the better. And the only way to do that is to feed your mind with information that allows for that growth.
Something I do is I commit to an hour each and every day to consuming some form of personal development content. Most days it’s more than that, but at the very least, I listen to either a personal development podcast or audiobook on my daily morning walk. By the time 8am rolls around I’ve already gotten in an hour of movement and an hour of healthy brain food, and this calibrates my mind and body for a productive day. Each day I grow and develop my identity just a little more, and then this new and improved identity interacts with my environment for the day.
10 years from now I would be perfectly happy if my body didn’t change. In fact, I’d be thrilled if I maintained my Ideal Body for the next decade and it was as healthy as ever. However, if in 10 years I’m still the same person and haven’t grown, then something went wrong. The goal is to continually be understanding yourself and life better and to be able to live your life to the fullest of experiences. And you can’t do that if you aren’t developing your mind along with your physical body.
Reading, watching, and listening to content, or even putting yourself into positions to have new experiences all feed your mind with new input that drive your growth. This growth changes your identity, which influences your behaviors, which affects your outcomes in life.
And here’s the really neat thing – all personal growth has carryover to other parts of your life. Improving your health and fitness transfers over to your relationships and other aspects of your life. Developing your spirituality impacts your health and fitness. Learning about personal finance can change the lens in which you view the rest of your world.
In fact, most of the breakthroughs I have with health and fitness nowadays come from the things I learn from other passions, such as business, finance, or even my hobbies. Because when you consume this content from the point of view of a particular identity, you filter the information through that identity. And that helps you to fill in the holes and make connections that enable you to have breakthroughs.
When you develop your mind along with your body you create a synergy and an upward spiral – allowing one to feed on the other. Your diet and movement create a physically healthy brain structure that is able to assimilate information that helps you grow. And then this information influences your diet and movement behaviors for the better.
This is the reason why keeping your mind stuck in Diet Culture is inhibiting your growth and preventing you from experiencing transformation. It takes more than eating chicken breast and fruit to transform yourself. Losing weight doesn’t change who you are either. You have to change your identity. And to do that you have to intentionally and consistently feed your mind information that allows you to grow.
Transformation Mindset
Struggles & Breakthroughs
A member of our Built Daily community submitted a great question for our weekly live coaching call. She had been triggered by her body and was listening to our Fitness & Sushi podcast. On the episode, Deanna and I were sharing our own personal struggles.
When this member heard us talking about our struggles, she thought “if these professionals in charge of teaching me how to feel better about myself can’t feel ok about themselves, then why am I bothering?!?”
To be perfectly honest, when I first read it I felt a bit of shame. She’s right… who am I to teach people how to get over their food and body struggles when I struggle myself? I spent the day thinking about this question and reminded myself of one very important fact – to struggle is to be human.
As a society we have this utopian view that we aren’t supposed to struggle. We see happy people, confident people, people who seem to have their shit together, and assume they don’t struggle. They do.
Not a single person will honestly tell you they don’t struggle. In fact, it’s the struggle that leads to the breakthrough of a better life. The discomfort of the struggle is the currency of transformation.
It’s not about never struggling. It’s about learning to navigate the struggles more effectively and growing. It’s about normalizing them so you stop trying to avoid them, and instead embrace them as opportunities for personal growth.
Nobody wants to struggle. It’s uncomfortable. I like my comfort zone as much as the next person. It feels good. But here’s the thing – change doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. And let’s be real, it can be very uncomfortable in your comfort zone anyways. There’s discomfort in hiding from your struggles and spending a lifetime dieting and hating your body. And there’s discomfort in facing your struggles and growing. But only one of those discomforts is going to result in an improved life experience. So if I’m going to choose to be uncomfortable, I’m at least going to expect a positive outcome to come along with it.
Struggles lead to breakthroughs. Your breakthroughs are born from your struggles. They are opposite sides of the same coin. For every struggle you overcome you experience a breakthrough that will change your life. The bigger the struggle, the bigger the breakthrough.
That is what transformation looks like. It isn’t pretty. It doesn’t look like what you see in transformation photos. It’s not an external phenomena – it’s an internal remodeling of your mind, of which your physical body becomes a side effect.
Transformation isn’t some distant outcome of the future – it’s an ongoing process that happens in the now. It’s that moment that you don’t give up. Each and every time you struggle and break through you experience transformation. You transform yourself over and over again – for a lifetime. Each breakthrough changes you on a deeper level. You think differently. You see yourself differently. You act differently. And that’s when new outcomes are created.
The before & after photos you see aren’t transformation – that’s just body change. There are plenty of people who experience transformation without any change in external appearance. That’s because transformation is a change of identity. You change who you are. You take on your struggles and become a different person. And as a result, your life experience changes and improves.
The more you can understand this the more you can stop running away from the discomfort of struggle. Because avoiding it isn’t going to fix anything. It will only push the same struggle into the future to be dealt with at that time. Struggles never disappear unless they are directly addressed.
You’ve been so close to changing your life so many times already. You’ve taken dozens of different approaches, and they’ve all lead you to that inflection point. This convergence to a single moment happens for a reason – it’s a test to see if you’re ready for the other half of your journey.
Future you, the one who lives a life feeling free around their food and body, is looking back at you just waiting to meet you on the other side of that inflection point. It reminds me of a metaphor of a dog wearing a shock collar for an invisible fence. They stay within their comfort zone because the boundary of it is painful. But there is no physical barrier holding you or them back. There will be pain to overcome if you want to break free, but your freedom is on the other side. It’s time for you to break through that invisible fence and live the life you’ve always wanted.
This pain and discomfort are assets in disguise. They are guideposts letting you know you’re on the right track. They show you exactly what’s standing between you and transformation. The wall of struggle is there to show you where you need to go – not where you need to stop. In time you will even welcome them – seeking them out because you know a breakthrough is on the other side.
Everyone who has ever achieved something great in their life has experienced struggle. And the greater the achievement, the greater the struggles. The most successful people have struggled and failed the most. They just know how to use struggle as a means to empowerment, instead of letting struggles keep them stuck.
Deep down we know this is true. Yet we still try to take the easy route. We take pills. We follow cookie-cutter meal plans. We think we’re going to discover some kind of shortcut. We think we’re going to change without experiencing transformation. But when you avoid the struggle you’re avoiding transformation. The only way to get to the outcome you want is to go straight through it all. No detours. No shortcuts.
If you can change your mindset and start seeing struggle as a good thing, in time you will start to trust the process. You will experience the cause and effect of seeking out and persisting through the struggles. You will experience the breakthroughs and change. Each time this happens you will grow more confident in your ability to overcome obstacles, and more excited about the personal growth that’s imminent.
Setting Intentions
Every Monday in our Elite community we set our intentions for the week. Everyone takes a few minutes to write down and share what they plan to focus on.
Intentions are very similar to goals, but there is a slight nuance to them. For starters, goals have a certain meaning attached to them that make them pass / fail. We are even taught that SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound) is the best way to approach your desired future.
I disagree, and in practice we’ve found that these goals fail at attainment just as much as diets do. Why? Because they are outcome focused and very black and white in nature. You either achieve them or you don’t. You either succeed or fail.
That reinforces the idea that transformation is some specific event in the future, as opposed to an ongoing process of struggles and breakthroughs. A SMART goal is something like, I’m going to lose 10 pounds in the next month. Yes, it’s specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. It checks off all the boxes. Yet I’m sure your experience has shown you that this goal usually doesn’t get achieved.
Intentions are different. Intentions are like putting on a new pair of glasses and seeing your world through a new lens. If your intention is to work on your emotional eating struggle, then you end up navigating your environment differently. You see food differently. You notice different emotions. You become more aware of your unmet needs. And you don’t beat yourself up when you don’t fix a lifetime struggle in one week.
Your intentions are like goals, but they don’t have to be fulfilled and crossed off your list for them to be effective. Intentions allow you see your world differently and gather information and data that you wouldn’t otherwise see. As you internalize this input, it changes you on the identity level, and you tend to gravitate towards your desired experience over time.
Goals aren’t bad. They are nice to have as a sort of north star. They allow you to have a general idea of the direction you’re going. But beyond that, most people don’t achieve the goals they set for themselves and maintain what they achieved. SMART goals plus willpower can get you results, it’s called dieting. You can lose 2lbs this week or 10 pounds this month, but if you’re just focused on the outcome at all costs, results will be temporary.
Intentions are process focused. They help you tune into what you want to work on. They redirect your attention to what matters and allow you to filter out all the environmental inputs that don’t.
Will you “achieve” your intention the week you set it? Maybe, but maybe not. Either way it is not a failure, because intentions aren’t pass / fail. Most of the time you will set an intention and then will continue to set that same intention week after week. Each week you continue making progress. You address your struggles and have small breakthroughs. You’re never starting over.
There are times when I’ll work on trying to improve my weekend eating for an entire month. Each time I “wave” through the weekend I gather more information. My intentions allow me to see my weekends differently. I’m more self-aware when they come, and the intention lenses I’m wearing allow me to see the inner workings of my relationship with food better.
I make it through the weekend and I assess and think “I wasn’t really needing that particular food. I already felt satisfied. Next week, if it feels right, I will try eating this other thing instead.” Then when the weekend comes and the action fits – I plug it in. I might go through this process for weeks or even months.
But that’s the difference between intentions and goals. Intentions allow you to actually heal and improve your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind. Struggles finally get overcome. So results are then permanent. Goals just attempt to get you to skip to the end outcome by a circled date on the calendar. The struggles just get bandaged over. Everything you do becomes a means to an end. And the results, if they even happen, rarely last.
Process vs Outcome
Diet Culture has a tendency to make us too outcome focused. Everything we do then becomes a means to an end. We try to strong-arm our calorie intake. We try to force the number on the scale to go down. And that usually ends with you feeling frustrated, or worse, wanting to give up.
The frustrations you feel on your Ideal Body journey tend to be a sign that you’re being too outcome focused. Anyone who has ever asked -“what’s the point?” when the scale isn’t moving the way they want it to has experienced this frustration.
Picture a spectrum. On the left you have the Process. And on the right you have the Outcome. When things get unbalanced and you start getting too far to the outcome side of the spectrum, you’re going to be frustrated, and your motivation is going to be at risk.
The reason is simple – outcomes aren’t in your direct control. And any time you try to control something that isn’t in your control, frustrations will start to mount.
Outcomes can be influenced, but only when you are directly engaged with the process of the now. Outcomes are things that happen. They are side effects. They aren’t things you do, so you have to stop treating them as behaviors.
Losing weight is not a behavior. Eating xxxx amount of calories isn’t a behavior.
These are both outcomes. They aren’t things you do – they are things that happen. They happen when you stay engaged with the process of healing your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind.
The process is the journey. It is the now. And it is the only thing in your direct control. It’s also the thing that makes up 100% of your life.
The outcome is in the future. But the future only exists in your mind. So sacrificing your now for a future that isn’t real or guaranteed is a great way to feel miserable every step of the way of your Ideal Body journey.
The path to your desired destination is through your journey. Your journey is life. It is all you have. It is the process. And it is in your direct control.
When you become too outcome focused, all you see is where you aren’t. Time slows down and your journey feels like a daily grind. You get caught up in sacrificing your days for a lower number on the scale in the morning. And when the number isn’t what you hoped for, yesterday was a loss. You lose time. You lose life. You feel frustrated. And you want to throw in the towel even though you know your behaviors are good for you.
Being too outcome focused means you’re focused too much on the destination. You eat for weight loss in the future instead of eating to feel your best right now. You exercise to burn calories in order to move the scale down in the future instead of moving your body because you enjoy it and it feels good right now. You become extra focused on what your body looks like, how much fat is on it, and all its imperfections, instead of acknowledging all that it is capable of right now.
But it’s not about being all outcome or all process focused. Remember, it’s a process vs outcome spectrum, which means there’s a middle ground that balances your needs of the moment with your desires of the future.
Your goal is to ensure you recognize when you’ve drifted too far to the outcome side, and then make the adjustments to bring yourself back more towards the middle. Because that’s where sustainable motivation lies. That’s where you’ll find purpose, peace in your body, freedom in your eating, and joy in your movement. It’s where you’ll find improved consistency and adherence, and more effortless action. It’s also where time becomes more of a friend than an enemy. Because the fastest way to experience your outcome, both in perception and in reality, is to be more present. And presence is found in the process.
So if you want to stay motivated, you need to find the intrinsic value in the now, also known as the journey. Eat because it makes you feel good – now. Move your body because it’s enjoyable – now. Look in the mirror and appreciate what your body can do for you – now. That’s how you stay consistent long enough for your desired outcomes to manifest.
Dealing With Mess-Ups
You are going to mess up eventually. You’re going to eat something you didn’t mean to. You’re going to miss a workout too. These mess-ups are to be expected. It’s what you do after they occur that matters most.
The key is for you to get right back on track with your next healthy behavior. That might mean getting back to productive thoughts, or it might mean getting back to productive actions. You’re never off plan if you expect mess-ups to happen and get right back to the behaviors you want in your life. It’s part of the process. And if it’s part of the process, you’re right on track.
This might seem obvious, but getting right back to the thoughts and actions you want in your life is not what most people do. Instead, they overcompensate for their mess-up. And that’s the real problem.
Habits are formed through repetition. Without repetition they never get a chance to seep their way down into your subconscious so they can happen on autopilot.
So when you accidentally overeat, what do you do? Most people think in averages. They assume that if they overate by 500 calories that all they have to do is undereat by 500 calories the next day and no harm no foul.
Technically this is correct. But weight loss isn’t a technical struggle – it’s a behavioral one. What you do and think long-term will have a bigger impact on your results than average calories. Besides… averaging two unwanted behaviors does not turn them into a good one.
Remember how I said habits are formed through repetition? Well what do you think is going to happen when you get a whole bunch of overeating repetitions in followed by compensatory undereating behaviors? That’s right – you’re going to become a very good over and undereater. You’re also going to habitualize all the destructive thoughts that come with those behaviors, like guilt, frustration, and fear of weight gain.
If your goal is to achieve your Ideal Body then you need a good relationship with food, body, exercise, and mind. You get there by getting in reps with the thoughts and behaviors that will lead to those improved relationships.
So when you mess up and overeat, you don’t overcompensate – you get right back to the behaviors you want in your life. You build the habits you want instead of unknowingly making destructive behaviors part of your normal life.
Your success towards any goal, whether that be health, weight loss, strength, or endurance, is more correlated to consistency than it is to the number of calories you eat, the types of food you eat, or how much exercise you do. Living your life on a rollercoaster trying to average everything is not practicing consistency, and it’s not going to change you. It’ll keep you right where you are and will make you more of what already isn’t working.
Think of a horizontal healthy habit line. This is where all your wanted thoughts and actions reside. Your job is to spend as much time at this line as you possibly can. If you veer from this line and overeat you should immediately return right back to this line. This is where you feel your best, and the longer you can spend feeling your best, the better your life will be.
If like most people you overcompensate, you shoot right through the line and end up way under it. You spend no time at it and get no repetitions in at your healthy habit line when you do that.
So if you mess-up, right back to the line. This won’t be your natural inclination though. That’s normal. It’s the old you trying to control an outcome. But the new you’s job is to stay engaged with the process. So you’ll have to retrain your thinking patterns to do that. If you mess-up, right back to the line.
Lift the Deadlines
Weight loss deadlines force you to work against the clock instead of with your body. Yet we’ve all looked at a future date, whether it be summer, a vacation, or a wedding, and have attempted to calculate how many pounds you’d have to lose each week in order to be at your goal in time.
In the short term this can work. Physique competitors do it all the time. And you might have even experienced a period of consistent weight loss in your past. But in each of those scenarios the progress was unlikely to last beyond that deadline, if you even made it that far.
Why? Because your weight loss pace is not determined by how big of a deficit you’re in. This is an overly simplistic way of looking at things. This is paper weight loss and only stands up in a technical world. In the real world your pace is determined by the number of struggles you have and the degree to which you need to overcome them. The bigger the struggle the more time it will take to overcome it, and the longer it will take for weight loss, if it’s going to happen, to be reflected.
Sure, you can play the 500 calorie deficit math game and aim for losing 1lb/week. But the only way you’re going to maintain that progress for life is if the underlying pressures on your eating are addressed.
This is why I don’t like placing deadlines on transformation. When you’re up against the clock you don’t act in your body’s best interest. You end up sacrificing your body’s needs for your ego’s wants.
Deadlines force you to place arbitrary ceilings on your calorie intake in an effort to maintain a particular weight loss pace – a pace that’s usually much faster than what can be handled. So hunger gets ignored. Cravings are dismissed. Energy plummets. Attitudes worsen. Performance decreases.
And if it seems like you’re falling behind your self-imposed deadline, you double down on your efforts and dig yourself into an even deeper hole. You restrict calories more. You ramp up your physical activity. And you start feeling worse about your body and the possibility you won’t reach your goal in time.
While you might begin to lose weight, your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind actually get worse. And it’s only a matter of time before these negative side effects are expressed on your physical body and you end up back to square one.
Instead, why not focus your attention on identifying and overcoming your struggles and let your Ideal Body take shape naturally at its own pace? Working through emotional eating issues, the binge/restrict cycle, rebuilding trust with food, body image struggles, limiting beliefs, and motivation problems are going to be much more productive uses of your time and energy.
This is the inside-out approach to achieving your Ideal Body. Transformation is the result. The outside-in approach, in contrast, ignores these struggles and focuses on calories in / calories out, eat less / move more, and the scale instead. Short term weight loss followed quickly by regain is the result. Remember, things like eating less and moving more and energy balance are of course important, but they are side effects of your relationships with food, body, exercise, and mind. Trying to manipulate them directly doesn’t fix what’s causing the problem in the first place.
Focusing on calories and weight loss doesn’t make your real struggles go away. It just pushes them down the line for you to deal with at a later time. And by then they’ve become more ingrained into your identity and are harder to overcome.
So let go of the future deadlines and focus on the struggles right in front of you. Masking those struggles with a deficit will never get you to your Ideal Body. The only way out is through.