“Damn it! I went off my diet! I’ll start again on “insert a day of the week”. An all too common mindset that people fall into is feeling like sh*t when they go off their diet. They’ll say “fuck it! Might as well keep eating!” or worst think that their inability to stick with a diet somehow correlates with how they feel about themselves. I know this because I’ve been through it. In today’s article, I want to dive into something a little more abstract, but essential went it comes to health- mindset.
Negative Mindset 1: Tying self-worth to body image
In my younger years, I use to over-restrict and over-exercise. I wasn’t happy with how I looked. I was chubby throughout high school, and I thought that by getting “shredded” I’d feel better about myself, and I would “magically” get more confident. I was wrong. I was able to get shredded, but the funny thing was it didn’t give me more confidence. I was the same person at 10% body fat as I was at 20% body fat. Physically I changed, but mentally I was the same. I was eventually able to shift my mindset into how I wanted to be- more confident, did what I want and didn’t care about people’s opinion. Still, it took a lot of work, and my physical appearance didn’t play a role in that.
The moral of that story is that if you guys think that physically changing your body, for the sake of it, is going to allow you to be more confident or improve your feelings about yourself, then you are wrong. If someone is obese and they lose a lot of weight, they will probably get a confidence boost along with their body transformation. The point is more so for people who aren’t obese. For those who have an unhealthy obsession with body image (no matter what your weight and size is) and think if they think looking a certain way, their life will be somewhat better.
Negative Mindset 2: Overly restricting your nutrition
Another mindset fallacy I wanted to address is people having an all-in mentality with their nutrition. Having an all-in mentality is not inherently wrong. All-in mentality only gets bad when people over-restrict their eating to a point where if they have something they shouldn’t, a cake, a piece of chocolate, or whatever else, they will end up binging the whole day or the next few days. Again, I am speaking from experience with this action and mindset.
Before I knew better, young Bryan followed the typical fitness advice- I did a bodybuilding split, I reduced carbs, I implemented a 1-day cheat day during the week (nothing wrong with any of those, FYI). The issue, for me, came in the cheat day. I still remember it. I didn’t work Fridays so that I would do a morning gym session. Afterwards, I’d go to Woolies or Coles and buy Ice cream, pancake, cake and whatever I felt like eating. Then, soon as I get home till I went to bed, I ate everything I bought! As in, finished an entire 1L tub of ice cream in one day! My friends use to know me as the “ice cream” guy because on one trip away I spent $50 on ice cream that day!
My gut would feel like it’s going to explode, and it felt very uncomfortable. The next day I’d be gassy and would stink the place up. Because I listened to mainstream advice, also partly because I was young and I wasn’t self-aware, I had an unhealthy mindset around food. A typical response to being overly restrictive with your eating is when you do fall off the wagon, and you will eventually, you will rebound.
A better way of doing it
Fast forward six years and I am in a better relationship with food. Now, I let myself have a piece of chocolate every day. I eat cake and other high sugar, high-fat food during the week (even when it’s not cheat day). I have alcohol. I eat whatever. The key is moderation and ensuring the food “fits your macros”. I’m not saying all I ate was high fat, high sugar foods. 99% of the foods I ate was still meat, healthy fats, carbs, etc.. It’s just that I have 1 or 2 pieces of “the good stuff” if I wanted to during the week. I didn’t reserve it for the weekend. Doing this allowed me to make better results in a more sustained way.
The scenarios above are my experience with an obsessive mindset and doing things to the extreme. I’m sure some of you might be able to relate. I wanted to create this post to let you guys know that I’ve been through it and I’ve been able to overcome it.
How?
Well, for one, I fixed my mindset up. I was able to feel good about myself and not because of how I looked. Two, I came to the realisation that I won’t overeat when I shouldn’t if I have a piece of chocolate or cake here and there.
Summary
- Do some self-reflection and see if you are person A or person B. Person A was me when I was younger. Strict during the week, but binged on the weekend. Person B is someone satisfied after having one piece of chocolate and does not feel the urge to binge.
- Person A recommendations: For person A, I would look into implementing something similar to what I did, which was to train your body and mind that having one piece of chocolate (or whatever it may be) a day or every couple of days is okay. If it means you are not going to binge over the weekend due to over-restriction, then I highly recommend this strategy.
- Person B recommendations: I may sound bias, but this is the best strategy. Keep doing it!
- At the end of the day, you need to change your mindset. If your self-worth is tied to your body image if you think being overly restrictive is the way to go if you feel you ‘deserve’ binging over the weekend because you were so good during the week. These are negative mindsets that don’t do us any good in the long term. Trust me, from my experience and the hundreds of people I’ve trained over the years.
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