09 Dec Transformation, part 2: your fuel plan & trusting your body
Do not punish yourself with a miserable diet
Following on from my previous post, Transformation, part 1: why those diets are not sustainable, I want to talk about why you should fuel and trust your body.
When we think of the words “diet” and “weight loss” the third word that usually comes to mind is “misery.” Eating nothing but bloody rabbit food, dry chicken, rice and broccoli, adding a gloopy hardly-edible juice meal all seem to be the essentials for successful weight loss. Because everyone else was suffering to lose weight, you needed to suffer too. Misery loves company. And if it wasn’t miserable, it obviously wouldn’t work. Or so you have been lead to believe.
You must listen to your body
A typical diet adage (which is total bullshit) involves sticking to a set plan, regardless of how you feel through the process. Strict diets rob your body of vital, essential nutrients. These diets, that are all too common, will make you sick and once you feel ill the diet fails and you give up.
You must learn to listen to your body and trust your mind. Now that does not give you the excuse to turn a cheat meal into a cheat day. If your Fuel Plan has all of the necessary nutrients, these cravings should be avoidable. You have been led to believe that you have to eat every two hours even if you are not hungry, or you have to wait until the next planned meal even if you are ravenous. These plans are not sustainable. Your Fuel Plan must strive for longevity and for that to work, they must be sustainable and adaptive.
An essential nutrient deprived diet will make you ill
You will be both physically and mental fatigued and as a result of this your training will suffer and become so shit it would be almost non-existent. Your professional and personal life will also become erratic and subsequently crash. Why would you put yourself in this situation in the first place?
Fuel to perform
Listen to your body, it can be trusted. Do not force yourself to think that you are becoming a carb intolerant, gluten intolerant, adrenally challenged, hormonally unbalanced, toxic lunatic. Stay away from the notion that a magic supplement or extreme diet works. They do not exist. It’s all in your mind. It’s a bloody notion, not a fact. Once again, you must change your mindset.
The idea that you can not be happy unless you were thin or lean will destroy every aspect of your happiness. It’s a fallacy and it is toxic to your life.
Set your goal of “I need to loose weight at any cost” aside
Focus on establishing strong, positive beliefs. Below are a few beliefs that you should chose to adopt and incorporate into your life:
- Be happy in this present moment, regardless of your weight
- Believe in and visualise a healthier, leaner version of yourself
- Healthy eating is about nourishing yourself, fuelling your performance and NOT about punishing yourself
- Your body is a miracle and it can be trusted
Once you adopt these beliefs and begin acting on them, amazing things will happen. A true transformation will occur. Your body will communicate what it actually needs. Once you ask yourself if you are truly hungry and how will this food improve your performance, you will begin to get very clear signals. Not only will you be more in tune with what your body needs to eat, but also with how much rest, relaxation and hydration you need.
You will find yourself making better food decisions. Because you are no longer punishing yourself, and instead focus on nourishing yourself. You will form a desire to eat foods that nourish you, fuel your performance and help you feel great. Most important of all, they will satisfy you because they taste delicious. You will lose weight, and kept it off, effortlessly. That’s longevity. That’s sustainability.
There is no magic pill or magic diet
Remember this. There’s just hard bloody work and an enduring process that turns into a journey and on that journey you discover something far more important than mere aesthetics. You discover your true self, your true worth and that is priceless.