Are You Playing in the All or Nothing Playground?

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This week has seen it’s share of disappointments and successes. Remembering to celebrate the wins helps to reduce the pain of the disappointments.

I had an aha moment the other day.

I already knew this principle, somehow it sunk in a little deeper. Don’t you love it when the principles become more than words on a page, or audible sounds being spoken. When they sink into the core of your being and they become part of you, the more you live them the more embedded they become as part of who you are, and what you do.

I was mulling over my weight loss journey, this week has been an up and down eating week, I’ve been working on seeing what my body can manage in the way of different food groups. Inadvertently I have added more refined sugars, and flours into my eating. This has created it’s own ‘fun’ kick backs in my body. As I was mulling over my up and down journey, how I can feel fabulous in the morning, and by the afternoon be feeling fat and out of shape when nothing else had changed except what I’d eaten for the few meals in between getting dressed and feeling blah.

The aha moment was that I was playing in the all or nothing playground. Black and white thinking. I was either eating well or I wasn’t. You know what happens when you enter the all or nothing playground, for me I eat everything in sight, or I punish myself by not eating anything after having eaten everything in sight.

This is not who I am anymore, I am a woman who eats elegantly and with moderation. AND occasionally I forget this.

Looking back over the weight yoyo game of my life, I was actually pretty good at maintaining a steady weight, I think by the photo log, I was more at my goal than not. What was messed up was the story I was telling myself about being at my goal weight. I was expecting to never have an issue with eating ever again. So unrealistic, I expected to always eat “perfectly” and never be tempted to eat another unhealthy food again.

Mulling over this thinking, I realised, I hadn’t actually shifted that belief. I still had the belief that once I’d sorted out the emotional eating side of things, food would not an issue any longer.

It’s like being addicted to alcohol, the best way to overcome the temptation is to remove it, and to eliminate it from your surroundings.

I will always have emotions, I most likely will always have some form of food trigger by these emotions. Can I live with that in all it’s ugly imperfectionism?

This is the question, Am I willing to let myself feel the food triggers and let them be, without having to do anything about them? Without being upset that they are here, again? Without going into a tail spin and using ugly language against myself?

If I can overcome the need for alcohol to soothe my emotions, I can overcome the need for sugar and flour rich foods to soothe my emotions.

My aha moment was this will always be a part of my life, so I may as well embrace it. I may as well stop ‘trying’ to keep these foods at bay, (which is resistance thinking, and we all know that what you resist, persists.)and make them non-negotiable for my body. I no longer feel like I’m missing out so most of the battle is done already, the last part is to make this who I am.

I am a woman who does not eat sugary/ floury foods, just like I do not drink alcohol drinks. Such a shift in my thinking is dynamic.

I don’t have to be perfect, I just have to be good enough to not participate in these categories of food. When I stopped drinking alcohol, I had the vision of my father with his issues and I was in the process of beginning my family and I didn’t want my children to suffer what I felt I had, so I stopped. My why was big enough to give me incentive.

My why now is I am a woman who respects her body. I am my greatest asset and without good health what do we have? I am worthy of good health. I am worthy of a body that functions well and will be a vessel of good health to carry me into my fabulous old age. (And I don’t even have to be perfect at it either.) Daily choosing better is good enough. These thoughts create the feeling of freedom in my body.

Are you a black and white thinker? Are you all or nothing?

How is that working for you? Do you steam ahead at a hundred miles an hour, and then stop.

Have you tried slowing the train to about 80 miles an hour and keeping ticking over at that pace?

This is like eating the foods you know your body needs for good nutrition most of the time, and not being derailed when you get a little off for your body. You will in the end be eating more healthily than if you followed your ‘plan’ one hundred percent for two weeks and did your ‘own’ thing for two weeks. I can guarantee the self beat ups will be less when you give yourself grace to eat well for eighty percent of the time, consistently.

So, this week I am being true to my authentic self and releasing the resistance I had to not eating sugary and floury foods, which my body doesn’t enjoy at all, and making the choice to eat for my long term health and well-being, realising that I am going to have emotional triggers and urges to eat food that my body doesn’t like and that’s okay.

What black and White thinking activity will you investigate this week, what has you feeling derailed more often than not?

This journey is so enlightening, challenging the normal thoughts that wander into our minds and run the show, has the potential to change everything, from today forward.

xoxox Linda

As a certified Life Coach, I help you to help yourself, so you can create a well lived life your way. 

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