What’s really governing your food choices?

It is the New Year, which means resolutions abound and motivation is at an all-time high. You may have had high hopes that this year would be different than the last. You’d eat cleaner. Cut down on sugar. Track your macros. But with January coming to a close, willpower tends to wane and you are left thinking “Well there it goes, another year of not meeting my goals.”

You’re not alone. The struggle to hold on to motivation and fading resolutions is all too common. But it’s easier to blame willpower than to investigate what is going on behind the scenes that’s prohibiting us from reaching our health and weight-loss goals.

Below are three main factors to help you explore the areas that impact your ability to stay on track and meet your health goals in 2017:

1. Balance your body with nutrition and lifestyle adjustments. It is far too common to think we need to eat less, be more restrictive and develop some pretty black and white food rules. We haven’t reached our goal or have rebounded, so what other way is there other than to be restrictive? But in doing so, we subconsciously set ourselves up for failure. When you don’t eat enough of the right macronutrients and micronutrients, your body starts sending you signals to say “Hey, I need more of this over here!” Signals like increased cravings and mood disturbances. When you add that on top of poor sleep quality, high stress levels and poor digestive health, you can start to see how you are brewing the perfect storm for the deathblow to your willpower. And then you feel like a failure…yet again. Bottom line: listen to what your body needs, give it what it wants (all those good nutrients!) and you’ll stay on track no problem.

2. Your subconscious beliefs govern your behaviour. Food addictions create a chemical response in your body. If sugar is an addiction for you, your body will tell you that you NEED it and then you NEED more and more to feed the body and ultimately ease the mind. Your habits of course play a factor in your ability to reach your goals. Your body searches for connections in your brain to make it easier to repeat habits again and again. It is really hard to make new connections all the time. The brain starts to create patterns. Like when you get home and you have the urgency to pee or when you sit down to binge on Netflix you have the urge to eat popcorn. These patterns in our daily lives can get in the way of meeting health and weight-loss goals. The key is recognizing the pattern and interrupting it by creating a new pattern. Journaling and meditation helps with this, but we also need to explore other imbalances in our life such as finances, relationships, work, sex and family. Sometimes the reason why we have certain habits and behaviours is because of something totally unrelated; yet it occupies mental space. Rather than dealing with it, you eat. Our underlying commitments and beliefs govern our lives. When you binge, you make emotional connections to that food that temporarily numb feelings and thoughts. Break the cycle by creating new, healthy patterns. Override the connection and kick those habits to the curb!

3. Your current approach doesn’t work long-term. How has that restrictive diet been working for you over the years? Tallying points, tiny meals, shakes? What most people don’t understand is that most fad diets involve cutting calories, which in turn drastically slows down your metabolism. It changes chemicals in your brain too. Your body goes into survival mode, since it thinks you’re starving it. Your brain sends your body messages to say “Please eat. I need to survive.” It slows down leptin levels, the hormone that allows you to feel satisfied after you eat, causing you to eat more. This is why the dieting model perpetuates failure. Things work in the short-term, but how can you possibly sustain a lifestyle when you’re always starving? Then you start believing that YOU are the failure when it comes to meeting your health and weight loss goals. The failure isn’t you. It’s your diet.

Isn’t willpower another way of saying ‘committed’? If you are committed to making this year the year of optimal health and confidence, then what is the disconnect between your commitment level and your behaviour? Exploring the three issues outlined above might just give you the answers you need to really OWN the year ahead.

Rather than choosing to accept you just don’t have the willpower it takes to meet your goals, try this instead: believe in your core that you are your best self. Create a strong belief in change and most importantly, invest time into your self instead of on quick fixes. See value in yourself and your journey. After all, there are still 11 months to go!

Coach, Cindy