Food, Is It Good or Evil? Are You Focused On Emotions Or Actions?
Trick question, food is amoral, it isn’t good or evil.
Nothing that you consume is good or evil. You will not forfeit your soul if you eat X or if you eat Y (Vegans may disagree). You should not have a “morality” mindset with food or even fat-loss. When you think this way, you are letting your emotions drive you and emotions can be very fickle.
The proper mindset instead focuses on actions, not emotions. Actions are controlled by you, and you can perform actions, regardless of how you feel. Having an action mindset is looking at your food journal (Assumptive, I know, but if you don’t keep a food journal I promise you will be driven by your emotions) and thinking, “Some food got me closer to my goal, some food moved me farther away from my goal.” You won’t due yourself any favors by judging your food or yourself.
At Just You Fitness Winston-Salem, I help people remove the jiggle in their middle and we do that by not judging you based on your food choices and what you write down or log in your food journal.
Be Responsible = Actions, not Emotions.
Being responsible is not reviewing your food journal and judging it (food) as good or bad. Being responsible is not ridiculing and judging yourself for your “poor” choices. Being responsible is looking without emotion at actions that work or don’t work for your goal. It is also worth noting that people who don’t keep food journals, often don’t because they’re afraid of being judged. In fact, I read a study recently that showed when people posted everything they ate on Instagram, they lost weight. Why? For one, extra accountability, two, they documented/logged what they ate.
What Does That Look and Sound Like In Your Head? (Thanks to Josh Hillis)
Being irresponsible looks like this:
- Feeling bad you didn’t eat the right thing (emotion).
- Beating yourself up and judging yourself (emotion).
Being responsible looks like this:
- Going to the store, buying food that supports your goal, taking it home, and cooking it (action).
- Writing down everything you eat, and creating strategies for what you could do differently next week (action).
In short, being responsible is taking the emotion and the guilt out of the equation, and just dealing with actions. Once you do that, once you ditch the idea of food being either good or bad, you will actually find it much easier to write down or log what you ate. Like I have said in numerous posts earlier, those who log their food, lose weight. That one action, leads to fat-loss.
What’s even better, once your food is documented, written or logged, you can then review it (without emotion) and strategically see what is working and helping you toward your goal and what is not. You can then choose to change one thing for the upcoming week (action) and see if it works. So simple, you just need to start, which is the hardest part of developing a new habit.
Now go be awesome!
PS. I am currently booked full for May. However, if you are interested in starting in June and letting me help you remove the jiggle in your middle, let me know.
