My Body Tutor : No More Excuses

I hope your Monday is off to a rocking start!

I don’t write enough inspirations about celebrating small wins. In fact, the only way to create big wins (weight loss, dropping sizes, baggy clothes, etc.,) is by having small wins.

Getting the body you want is about the accrued power of 1000’s of meals and 100’s of workouts. Each one counts just as much as the next one. But like with anything in life – it’s unrealistic to expect rainbows and butterflies all the time.

Dealing with the lows is the hardest part, of course. But even in the worst situations there can be a win!

Let’s say you’re in the middle of a binge (not going to get into how to prevent one now) and you typically eat everything in sight and then some. Or, you typically eat a carton of ice cream. Well, leaving even a few bites – is a win nonetheless. That’s progress!

Let’s say you really don’t want to exercise. So you don’t. Typically, you would then proceed to be inactive all day. But instead, you do 50 jumping jacks before you shower. That’s progress. It’s a win nonetheless!

Let’s say you have a terrible day of eating. You’re disgusted with yourself so you choose not to submit your daily feedback, as you usually do, when you’re unhappy with how you eat. But instead, you submit it and are as open and honest as possible.

I learn the most about myself and you when things are going poorly. Not when things are going great! It’s smooth sailing when it’s going great! The greatest growth happens when the sh*t hits the fan. And it ALWAYS will!

Let’s say you’ve been hating how you’re feeling and looking. So like many in this situation, your bury yourself with food in hopes of changing the way you feel. (Of course, this will only make you feel worse.) Nope. Not you! Not this time. You took action and signed up for MBT. Boom. That’s a win!

While some might see a binge as a negative, these can also be seen as wins. As progress…

Ingrained behaviors and habits aren’t easy to change.

But it’s very possible. It takes a lot of work. It takes effort. Lots of courage. Patience. And mostly, it takes a willingness to change.

And part of that is not only celebrating the good but also how the bad is getting less bad.

Emotional eating is one of the top causes of obesity in the world. Emotional eating is when we eat to change the way we feel. We’re not physically hungry, we’re hungry for something else.

We eat because we’re bored, lonely, miserable, stressed, anxious, uncomfortable, tired, or any one of a number of reasons – none of which has anything to do with real physical hunger.

Remember: Physical hunger comes on gradually. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly.

If you eat based on emotional/habitual/mindless hunger, your body will never feel satisfied by food. This is why emotional eaters never feel full. They never get the signal to stop eating because they weren’t hungry for food in the first place.

Many of us have the dysfunctional habit of eating when we feel upset, lonely, bored or just want to escape reality for a few minutes. This habit stems from a misunderstanding of why we feel what we feel.

Let’s think of an emotion as someone knocking on your door to deliver a message. If the message is urgent the knock is loud. If it’s very urgent it’s very loud. But if it’s very urgent and you don’t answer the door, the knock will get louder and louder until we open the door or the door gets broken down!

Either way, the messenger will keep trying until it delivers the message. Just like our emotions will continue to come up until we finally pay attention to them.

And as soon as we ‘open the door’ by listening to the emotional message and taking action, the emotion will go away. And if it comes back, it won’t be nearly as loud.

You don’t have to be a victim anymore if you’re willing to open the door.

So onto one of the most powerful questions you can ever ask yourself when it comes to food:

Drum roll please!

“Am I hungry, or am I eating to change the way I feel?”

It turns out that 95% of the time when we eat poorly, we’re eating because of the way we feel.

The scary part is that when we actually open the door, and listen to the message, we may not like what we hear. We may get scared, we may want to crawl up into a little ball, and we may want to do a lot of things. That’s okay. At least you faced the monster!

The only way to overcome emotional eating is to engage in some self-discovery. To listen to what you really want (hint: it’s not food). And the more you tell me on your feedback, the sooner we can identify triggers and come up with strategies that work for you.

I’ve helped many people who are lifelong emotional eaters overcome their emotional eating. As rewarding as it is for me, it’s even more rewarding for them. As scary as it might seem, it’s worth ‘opening the door’.

I’m right here for you. In fact, I’ll be right next to you when you open the door.

“Am I hungry, or am I eating to change the way I feel?”

Next week, we’ll talk about 3 questions you can ask yourself once you realize you’re not hungry for food and also why we’re so scared to actually open the door.

Helen, a client from Japan!, has a special request.

She writes to me, “I wonder if you could give some ideas about how to maintain a sense of purpose and discipline without feeling like you are holding your breath all the time. I’ve heard the phrase ‘relaxed mastery’ somewhere and I have it when I teach my students. I think you know what I’m driving at; could you write something on it?”

Let’s take a shot:

I’ve struggled with the question, ‘What’s the purpose of life?’ for a long time. I’ve come to the conclusion that our purpose in life is to be happy, and to help other people be happy.

[Your purpose may be entirely different. That's okay!]

What makes me happy, might not make you happy. We’re all wired differently. The problem with being ‘happy’ though is that it’s elusive. I’d argue that everyone reading this is ‘happy’.

Once our physiological and safety needs are met, we’re fortunate enough to focus on self-actualization. (Read: Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.)

So the question then isn’t how do I become happy, but how do I become happier?

When I was in 7th grade working out in my room at 10:30 at night after doing my home work after basketball practice, I never really knew why I was doing it. I just knew that I had to or else I didn’t feel right – even though my mom and sister thought I was nuts.

I’ve realized that working out made me happier – even in 7th grade. People ask me how I’m so disciplined and for me it’s about happiness. I’ve written and thought a lot about happiness because I believe that’s why we do everything.

[I can understand how people can think all of the happiness talk is silly. But if you ask yourself why you do anything, it always comes back to happiness. I'm very happy. Why not be as happy as I can be?]

We’re slaves to our happiness. However, I think there’s a big difference between pleasure and happiness and many times we become slaves to pleasure. (I’ll explore this later on in the week.)

I think our actions make us happy in the short term and many times our actions will (hopefully) make us happier in the long term. Here’s the challenge we all face: If we’re working to be happier in the long term, what are we now?

Well, that’s the paradox we all face. Happiness doesn’t always bring happiness – at least in the short term.

When I started MBT I did it because I had to. Ultimately, because I knew it would make me happier. But there’s been many days where I’d wonder why in the world I had to do this. Many days that are stressful and frustrating.

It’s like studying to become a doctor. All of my friends in medical school are miserable, right now. Eventually, they’ll (hopefully!) be very happy when they’re actually practicing medicine.

So for me, it has become a journey of figuring out what makes me happier and what makes me unhappy. I’ve even created a daily happiness check list for myself.

Here’s the thing: I’m relentless with myself on things that make me happier. I’ll spend and invest whatever it takes. Time/attention/money/sweat/etc.

Most people view every dollar they spend as an expense. But it’s not an expense because expenses don’t pay dividends. Feeling happier certainly does.

Just because I’ve identified what makes me happier on a daily basis, doesn’t mean I always do it. Knowing is one thing. Application is another.

One of the things I’ve learned with my work through MBT is that us adults are kids – just older in age. We can’t transform into the person we want to become overnight. We can’t sidestep ourselves. We must go through ourselves.

And even if we transform ourselves, it doesn’t mean our past ghosts won’t haunt us. We just become better at managing and dealing with them.

Just because someone quits smoking, doesn’t mean they won’t ever crave a cigarette again.

To me, relaxed mastery means how do I master something so I’m not obsessive about it. Or I’m not constantly killing myself or walking on egg shells so to speak.

The key, I think, is to focus on how you want to feel. Let that guide each choice you make. The problem though is that sometimes we make choices based on short term impulses and pleasure vs. happiness.

I would guess that teaching feels easy because it feels good in the moment. You can connect with your students. The challenge for us is that eating salty, sugary and fatty foods feels good in the moment too. I’ve never denied this.

But eating healthful foods feels even better! That’s the twist we must not forget.

As much fun as eating ice cream and watching The Real Housewives is, deep down I have more fun (and feel happier!) when I’m eating healthfully and moving around.

The battles get easier and easier but they’re still battles. The only way to master anything is decide that you’re going to and fight like hell every single day to make that happen doing whatever it takes, surrounding yourself with whatever it takes, to make it happen.

Choosing that feels happier. Not fighting like hell doesn’t.

I hope this helps. If you have a special request for a topic, feel free to shoot me an email.

Sayonara,

Anyone who’s a fan of basketball knows that tonight, Lebron James, is announcing his decision of where he’s signing.

Either he’s going to stay in Cleveland, or sign with Chicago, Miami, or New York.

Once he makes his decision, it’s final. He can’t change his mind.

However, we make decisions all of the time. In fact, life is a series of choices.

Unfortunately (na, fortunately!), we’re not robots. We’re human beings.

Economists love to refer to us as Econs. They believe that we’re rational beings and that we’ll always choose what’s best for us. Ha!

We’re all predictably irrational.

And thankfully, in our day to day life, especially when it comes to our diet and exercise, we’re not making irreversible choices.

There in lies the problem. Just because you made a decision to lose weight, or eat better, or realize your body’s full potential – doesn’t mean you’re never going to revert back to your old ways from time to time.

That’s silly! What? Just because you decided that you’ll never overeat again, you’re never going to overeat again in your entire life? Or never have too much dessert?

That’s crazy talk.

Behavior change is extremely hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone in this world would be exactly who they want to be.

Instead, we rationalize and justify our choices so we can (comfortably) live with ourselves.

The question, though, is what do you do once you make a bad choice? Do you make another bad choice afterward because it “doesn’t count anymore”?

“Ah, I’ll start tomorrow,” we say to ourselves. Momentum is EXTREMELY powerful. It can be our worst or best friend.

Most people fall off track for days, weeks and even months at a time – all because of one bad choice that set them off.

Instead, let’s embrace the bad choices. Hey, the milk already spilled!

And let’s obsess, that’s right – obsess – over the question, “How quickly can I recover?”

Oh and when Lebron decides he’ll be playing in NY, he won’t have to worry about recovering quickly. Because it’s going to be the start of a dynasty! [I'm sorry my fellow Florida and Illinois clients. No Ohio clients. ]