Have you ever wondered, “What is the secret to lasting healthy eating and weight loss?”
Uhhh, does a zebra have stripes??!
I know, it’s the quintessential question that plagues those of us who struggle with these things.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret here…and I can tell you in advance and you’re not going to believe me.
The secret to these two things (and to achieving any goal in life ever) is to feel how you will feel when you’ve accomplished the goal…now.
That’s right, whatever you will be feeling when you get there, that’s what you gotta work to cultivate NOW, ahead of time, before you’ve achieved it.
Now I know what you’re thinking:
- I don’t get it. Why??
- That’s impossible.
I know you’re thinking this because I used to always think this too, when my coach would tell me that.
But isn’t it funny how coaches can see things just a little bit more clearly than you can…and they always seem to be (super annoyingly) at least one giant step ahead of you?
So hear me out and give me the benefit of the doubt on this.
The issue with consistency (let’s say for our purposes in healthy eating or weight-loss) is that we only act temporarily.
When we go to “tighten up” our eating or our bodies, we do so thinking we’re just doing the hard part temporarily.
That at some point, we can just go back to the way it was, because that’s what makes us feel happy or temporarily relieved with the difficulty of what we are trying to take on.
But the true secret is learning to slowly adjust to the idea that in order to accomplish the thing LONG-TERM, we must learn to adapt a long-term mentality to solve the problem.
You don’t run a marathon by completing back-to-back sprints.
You must instead learn to behave and make choices in a way that will keep you on target permanently, without massive wavering, calmly and without drama.
Because that’s just what you do. For life.
That type of activity is what gets us to the marathon finish line after time.
If we are freaking out in the first mile and deciding to quit repeatedly, we’ll never get there.
But instead, if we adopt the mindset that this is a marathon…this is sustained activity that requires a whole different mindset, we can have hope of achieving our goal.
Eating healthfully and maintaining our weight requires this same level of calm, focused energy over time that just keeps adding up to great results…
…without even a thought of stopping.
We just keep going.
After all, if we’re losing weight and eating healthy…why would we stop doing the very things that are getting us there?
