Your Mindset Matters...What's Your "Why"?
Why do you eat the salad over the hamburger. Why do you wake up at 5 AM to go to the gym every morning. Why do you have one drink instead of two. Knowing the answer to your "why" is what sets apart disordered eating/exercise from healthy. It's something maybe you don't think about too often, but something we should talk about. Because your "why" makes all the difference in your whole body health, and what separates those who continue to fall back to dieting from those who stand firm and just live out a healthy balanced life.
So I actually first started thinking about the importance of "why" when I was reading a book for business "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek. Basically, he discusses the importance of business knowing their "why" in order to better reach people.
But I took it and thought it was such a great phrase to apply to the way we take care of our bodies!
What's Your Why?
You see, you could be the fittest looking person on the outside, be doing everything "right" when it came to how you ate and exercised, and still be so far from healthy. I always like to say, being healthy is so much more than what we put in our bodies. We have to have a healthy mind about food, exercise, and ourselves too.
This is so very real to me. Because I spent years trying to be the healthiest, fittest person that I suffered in my mental health. And though I was eating all nutritious foods and exercising regularly, I always felt like something was missing. Here's a little peak into how my own "why" changed and made a world of difference in my health.
Old Self vs. New Self
Old self:
My "why" was grounded in feeling like I had to be in control. It was based on the need to be accepted and in order to be accepted I had to be disciplined. It was based on lies that healthy is black and white and gave no room for gray middle space. It was something that I only achieved with perfection. "You can't eat that because it'll end your "good streak" this week. It placed morality on food. It took away any ability to listen to my body and instead relied on our diet-culture to dictate every decision I made with food and exercise. My "why" was "because I have to."
New self:
My "why" is now "because I want to". "Because it feels good." And this change in my "why" and my mindset has made all the difference! I choose the salad sometimes because I want to, and all the same I'll choose the hamburger because that's what my body craves. Sometimes I choose cookies over fruit. I choose to wake up at 5 AM to go to they gym most days, but when it doesn't work out it's no sweat. I move my body because that's what gives me life and makes me feel my best. It's all a change in "why".
You may currently think your "why" doesn't matter. But until you change your mindset from "diet-culture" mindset to "intuitive-self" mindset, you're going to stay trapped to food fear, body image dissatisfaction, and an unbalanced and unhealthy relationship with food.
Your "why" matters.
Here's 10 questions to ask yourself to help you find your "why":
Do you choose foods based on taste and preference or because you feel like you should eat them?
Do you choose to eat until you're satisfied and full or only stop because that was the amount of one serving per the nutrition label?
Do you embrace your hunger and eat, no matter what time it is or how soon it was since you last ate, or do you suppress that hunger until it's a certain time you've set as "time to eat"?
Do you give yourself freedom to enjoy food freely around your friends or do you feel like you have to live up to a certain expectation of being healthy that you feel others have of you?
Do you go to the gym because that's what makes you feel alive and energized, or do you go because you're afraid of what will happen to your body if you skip a day working out?
Do you let other people choose a restaurant to eat at, not worrying about what's on the menu, or do you micro-manage the decision to make sure it's somewhere you'll feel comfortable eating at?
Do you eat consistently in a balanced way or do you feel like you're going from dieting to not dieting constantly?
So, did you find yourself answering yes for the first part of these questions more or the second?If you found yourself answering yes for the second part, you may want to rethink your "why" with how you eat and move. A healthy body starts with a healthy mind. And asking yourself why you do what you do is a great way to assess where your mind is. So answer this...
What's your "why"?
Want to learn how to change your mindset with eating and create a more lasting approach to living healthy? Subscribe to get your free copy of "7 Steps to Sustainable Healthy Living"!