If there are two words that should help you identify if your approach is going to be a short term or long term solution, it is:
"Diet Plan"
Do not get me wrong, for the first 3-4 days you are on a diet plan, things are rosy, they are wonderful! There is less effort, thought or consideration around food and you see the progress which is highly motivating.
Unfortunately after a week of eating similar foods, in a similar way at a similar time each day, everything else in the world looks far more appetising than the single ingredient foods on your plate!
The next social event, celebration or weekend suddenly represents an opportunity to dive into foods you have been restricting yourself from for a while, a respite from the boredom and a "well deserved break" from the monotony.
No doubt, every celebration, social occasion and weekend is a well deserved break, yet there seems to be a hyper awareness of food all of a sudden and the foods you crave are the ones that you haven't been subjecting yourself to each day.
This is where the "on the wagon/ off the wagon" mindset starts to prevail.
All of nothing, more of nothing than all and suddenly we are 5 years ahead and regression has been far more visible than any sustained progress.
This is why it is important to break the cycle, an African proverb reads:
“If you want to know the end, look at the beginning.”
Where you are today is your current "end" and your 'beginning" may be 5 years ago or beyond when you started the journey towards losing weight and toning up.
At the beginning, yes, you probably weren't eating with a lot of conscious thought and yes you could probably have made some simple lifestyle changes to move towards your goals.
At the beginning, you could have looked at why you were doing what you were doing, rather than trying to pop a band aid on a bullet hole.
You could have started to move towards addressing the why you do what you do through developing self awareness, working on thought patterns and beliefs that led you to feel the need to overeat or eat foods you know aren't benefiting you beyond the 10 seconds it takes to eat them and work on building out personal coping mechanisms for all of this so you can build a long term vision approach to manage your weight, health and mental wellbeing.
The diet plan sounds appealing, it feels like it will be a quick route to success, but the repetitive nature of consistent failures create an even bigger hurdle than you could have anticipated.
If you want to be in control of the end, start at the beginning!
This is why we take our time working with clients, running through a free 2-3 week consultation phase just to get to know each individual before developing a personal strategy. This is why we have a team of experts on board to work with a client, from psychology, injury rehabilitation, nutritionists, online coaches and personal trainers.
You are worth more than a diet plan and the quickest way to transform is from within!
