I've got a story to tell you,, a story about how to cement new changes. It’s a story about how I messed up...but in a very good way <3.
This month in Your Beautiful Life, we’re all doing a Real Life Healthy Eating challenge, and it’s been pretty fun so far.
We’re pushing open our healthy eating boundaries by adding lots and lots of fruits, veggies, and other whole foods. It’s only 2 weeks, but it’s a powerful 2 weeks.
And, it’s been SO good for me!
I’ve been able to kick out some not-so-fabulous habits I got into this summer (more caffeine than my body likes…and less produce) and push my boundaries a bit to open up my diet to something new.
I’ve also taken advantage of the time change to get back into an earlier bedtime. I KNOW I feel best when I’m in the dark by 10pm…but over the summer my bedtime started to push to 10:30 or 11pm, and I hadn’t gotten back to my older wonderful bedtime habit.
Last week went swimmingly. I felt more awake, clear-headed, and energized. I was feeling fantastic…until…
Thursday night got me a bit off track. My partner is a musician and he had a gig and I wanted to go. So I did :). But, his gig wasn’t over until after 10pm, and I didn’t get in bed until after 11pm. Well past my newly-minted 10pm bedtime.
But…
This is real life. My healthy life (and yours) needs to work inside real life. If it doesn’t…well, it’s not going to work in the long term, now is it?
Unsurprisingly, I woke up on Friday morning tired. T.I.R.E.D. And, I had 2 choices –
I could berate myself and feel guilty for “falling off” my new healthy habit.
Or, I could be curious about it.
The thing I hate about dieting is the guilt we’ve been conditioned to feel when we don’t perfectly measure up to our new healthy habits. When we’re swimming in guilt, it’s impossible to learn from these moments.
And, it’s too easy to blame ourselves instead of noticing what really happened – which is real life. Real life always happens. It’s just how it is :).
I chose to embrace real life and so, I was curious about how I felt.
I laid in bed on Friday morning and really felt the difference between how I felt after going to bed at 10pm vs. how it felt to wake up after going to bed just one hour later.
I didn’t like the sleepiness, my brain calling for some caffeine, or the cobwebs I had to knock out of my thinking. And in that moment, I quickly and easily recommitted to my earlier bedtime. I looked forward to going to bed early that night (even though it was Friday :).
I first noticed this many years ago…
I started working with clients about 11 years ago, and I quickly noticed this pattern.
My clients would come to appointment #2 feeling fantastic! They were full of energy, vitality, and were full-on committed to the changes we were making.
But, over and over again, the same thing would happen in appointment #3. In a nutshell, life would happen.
They would come to that appointment dripping in guilt. They would sit down, give me a look that was filled with guilt, and say, “You’re going to be so disappointed in me, I almost canceled this appointment. I was away last weekend and ate a ton of junk food”.
They’d wait for me to add to their guilt, but that’s not how I roll. Instead, I asked, “So, how do you feel?”.
And their answer was usually very similar to mine that sleepy morning, “tired, foggy, miserable”.
So I’d ask “and what are you craving now?”…and their answer would always be the same, “VEGETABLES! I never thought I’d ever crave vegetables, but that’s ALL I WANT!”.
This is the power of Real Life Healthy Eating and the power of staying curious.
With curiosity we can learn so much when real life happens. Which it ALWAYS does.
With Real Life Healthy Eating, you can never “fall off the wagon”, because you were never on a wagon to start with.
Instead, we begin by adding healthy food. Let it squish out some less-than-stellar food…and then be curious about how you feel. And, when real life happens (which it always does)…be curious. How do you feel?
You can join our Real Life Healthy Eating challenge too! Join the wonderful tribe of like-minded peeps in Your Beautiful Life and feel great too!
…and it’s not a hard challenge (I don’t do hard challenges :). Just add more healthy food for a few weeks and see how you feel.
Because easy is powerful. Easy is joyous. And easy is beautiful <3
P.S. if you’re seeing this after Nov 2019…don’t worry, the challenge is still up :)
