The Ultimate Self Sabotage
Thursday, February 21st, 2008Written by: Micheline 
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After training and talking to thousands of people about health and fitness over the years, I have come to find that the largest obstacle for most people is their “all or nothing” attitude. I’m willing to wager that most of you reading this have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. It’s that little voice inside your head that starts up when you’ve “cheated” on your diet; that evil little voice that convinces you that you’ve “blown it” for the day so you may as well eat what ever you want. Gobbling down those 3 cookies have gone and ruined everything for you! Oh well, you’ll start over again tomorrow; because tomorrow will be different; you’ll be “better” right? Sound familiar? It’s likely too familiar for most of us.
When this sort of thing happens to my clients (and it does happen to most of them at some point or another in their quest for optimal health), I try to convince them to use what I call, their “logical brain”. I encourage them to take a step back and think about what has really happened by doing some quick number crunching. For example, if they had 3 chocolate chip cookies at approximately 100 calories each or maybe we should be more realistic and say they had 6 cookies at 100 calories each for a total of 600 calories. Knowing that each pound of body fat requires 3500 excess calories to be stored, 600cals works out to be approx 1/6th of a pound or 2.5 ounces. Now think about it, in the big picture, in your individual plan to achieve optimal fitness, is that 2.5 ounces really that big of a deal? Is it going to determine whether or not you ultimately achieve your goals? I highly doubt it; it’s just a little bump in a constantly changing road.
However, if 6 cookies becomes a box of cookies and a large pizza followed by a pint of ice cream and/or the “better” tomorrow never comes, the numbers start to look a lot different and you will definitely find your goals being sabotaged.
There is no end point when it comes to achieving a healthy lifestyle; it’s a process that requires constant balancing. We are not perfect and thus the “all or nothing” attitude will never get us to where we want to be; forgive yourself for the small stuff and keep moving forward!
