Lets Talk With Laura London – Time to DITCH the ALL or NOTHING Mentality

Is Your All or Nothing Thinking Sabotaging Your Weight Loss?

It’s time to kick to the curb the all or nothing thinking when it comes to health and fitness. Feeling like we have to get something perfect in order to be successful sets us up for failure. When we set impossible standards, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. When the task seems impossible, we will throw up our hands in frustration and quit completely, thinking why bother? Nobody is perfect, myself included. All the “fitness gurus” out there are not perfect either. Then what is their magic secret? Being consistent and persistent.

When you start a new weight loss program do you follow it to the letter for the first few weeks. Go grocery shopping and buy tones of veggies, protein and fruits? Thinking this is it! I finally found the program for me. I am going to follow this plan and be perfect. Thinking if you can just stay on this plan and follow it the pounds are going to melt way and you are going to have the body of your dreams.

Let me ask you a few questions.

If you can answer yes to many of these questions than you have the “all or nothing syndrome.”

1. Do you always start your new program on a Monday?
2. Do you use the words good and bad to describe certain foods and your eating behavior?
3. Do you speed read through the motivational mindset and goal setting information to get to the “what do I need to eat” section?
4. Do you cut calories from your suggested meal plan thinking you will lose weight faster?
5. Do you do extra amounts of cardio for quicker results?
6. Do you completely eliminate your favorite foods or entire food groups?
7. Do you and throw in the towel after making just one unhealthy food choice?
8. Are you convinced that past failed attempts were due to lack of effort and/or staying focused?
9. Do you tell yourself there is no use, you just have no willpower?
10. Do you wonder what is wrong with you and why you just can’t stick to the plan?

Guess what? It’s not your fault, this way of thinking is setting you up for failure right from the start and even if you do have a friend who “stuck” to the plan perfectly and lost weight, how long did it truly last? It’s the people who have kicked perfectionism to the curb and realized that consistency and being persistent is the real key. You can successfully lose weight and keep it off without dieting “perfectly” and trying to follow a plan to the “T”.

Stop Being a Perfectionist When it Comes to Weight Loss

How exactly do you stop being a perfectionist about your health and weight loss goals? Great question, I thought you would never ask!

1. Start right now and don’t wait until Monday. Start to implement healthy eating at your next meal. There is no time like the present. Live your life like there is no Monday.
2. Take the words good and bad out of your weight loss vocabulary. Food is food; it is not good or bad, it is the amount we eat of the foods that affects our waist line.
3. Don’t save your calories. Not eating all day so you can splurge for a night out or a meal or that glass or two of wine is always going to backfire on you. Eat good healthy nutritious meals throughout the day and go have a blast and enjoy that special meal or wine because you are back in action the next day when you wake up. Sounds much better to me than starving yourself for some fun!
4. Deprivation does not work. Depriving yourself of the foods you love and whole food groups (that is just plain freakin’ crazy!) The body is smart and you can only deprive yourself so much before the body overrides what you are doing. We are pleasure seeking creatures. If you are depriving yourself you are putting your body in a low level state of stress. Stress (a.k.a cortisol) is the bodies natural fat storing hormone. So whether we are stressing over our food choices or stressing over credit card debt we are stressing the body out. Stress = Fat storage. Deprivation = fat storage.