Sometimes we despair. We doubt our ability to make the changes we know we must make. We feel like we are fighting against ourselves, our natural desires, our very DNA.
I think that one of the problems is that we want to be perfect all at once. We want to wake up on Monday morning and find that it’s all easy. Our food cravings will simply disappear. We’ll naturally make better food decisions and the naughty foods will magically stop calling our name.
My solution to this impossible dream is very simple: I accept where I am today. And I add at least one nutritionally rich food to everything I eat. Want chocolate? Have a kiwifruit as well. Toasted cheese sandwich? Eat it with a side salad sprinkled with chia seeds and sunflowers. In this way, I can make big improvements to my diet while not creating a situation where I am constantly feeling conflicted about food.
Someone looking at the huge strides I’ve made might still see many, many areas where I could improve. So what? If I’m on the right track and I’m always improving my diet, I’ll get to a stage that perfectly satisfies me, and it will be worlds away from where I started. This way, I can enjoy the journey. Enjoy being better, making improved choices, learning new ways with food, the next small improvement. Revel in taking back the power. Me having power over the food I eat instead of the other way around.
Big bold strokes work for some folks. Sometimes they work if you’ve had an epiphany or a fright about your health or that of someone you love. But mostly we succeed fastest when we do things more slowly. It seems paradoxical, but think for a moment of someone who wants to get up an hour earlier in the morning. If they do it one minute at a time, one day at a time, it takes 60 days and they have painlessly succeeded. if they do it all at once and fail a few times, they may lose hope and never try again – or even do it sporadically and end up tired all day – how did doing it fast work for them?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in big changes. I believe they can be done as a leap of faith. But the biggest change you can make is a mental shift. This is the catalyst for action – any action, as long as it’s taking you in the right direction. It doesn’t matter how small you start, as long as you do something. You have to walk before you can run. And if it’s a case of having to crawl before you can walk, that’s okay too.