What if there were no more Monday’s?
what if there were no more Mondays?
Healthy.
Stop and think about the word and how it is used, so often it’s as this ubiquitous term. A black and white term.
To be healthy you must do ________________.
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I once posed this question to my followers on Instagram, I had a modest number of people who responded and they said:
Nutrition + exercise.
Moderation.
Eating right and moving my body.
Having energy and mental focus.
A balanced life! Some exercise, some dessert, some busyness, some rest.
Not eating sweets.
Minimally processed food, exercise, fruits and vegetables, water.
Peace and strength in body and mind.
Eating clean, exercising, getting enough sleep.
Food stigmas about good/bad foods.
Eating clean.
Be vegan.
What stuck out to you? Yes some of the answers are similar but some a very different.
Maybe, just maybe, you see what I know, how we define healthy is more grey than black and white?
Maybe, the struggles of how to “be healthy” cause more stress and negatively impact our health than not?
Right, you hear what I’m saying, but how do we do this when we have real health concerns directly impacted by food. We don’t live in a vacuum. We can get ANYTHING at the grocery store, we are adults who get to make a million choices a day and sometimes the mindful choice around food is one more choice we don’t want to have to overthink.
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Back to that healthy definition, I love what one person said—balance.
Let’s push into this.
Balance for you is going to look different for you than it does for me, again with that grey space again.
Finding balance is going to take working to push into the rules we’ve been taught around food and discover what does nourish and support your body more than following rules, and the goals you have for life long health.
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I’m at a ladies night and the conversation turns to this… “Ugh, I stopped mid-week, I’m such a failure. I told my husband I would start over again on Monday.” Friend, they were talking about a healthy diet with rules that they couldn’t sustain but wanted to thus the cycle repeats again and again. I gently asked, “What if there were no more Mondays?”
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So let’s talk food rules, the cheat day, the Monday mindset. I also asked about Food Rules in my Instagram stories and here are the responses I received.
More protein, less carbs, less processed foods.
Carbs are bad.
Minimize gluten/dairy.
Lots of protein, less dessert, drink water.
No sweets or very limited.
Packaged foods and sugar lead to bad health.
Limit sugar, protein with everything, be aware of things that spike blood sugar.
Packaged food is a treat.
No dessert until after a meal is finished.
Sweets = bad, veggies = good
Low carb
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Rules come with the black and white mindset—hard and fast—changes cannot be permitted or it’s failure. “Stick to the plan or else you fail.” I would place a big stake that this mindset of there being hard nutrition rules we all should follow as the reason why so many people struggle with the feelings of failure or find themselves with the still so common “cheat day” just to make it through.
Maybe if the focus was on nourishing your body over depriving it we might eliminate the need for cheat days?
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It is hard to be a dietitian and live in a space where you want to teach people how to be mindful of food and how it impacts their health when everything around us is screaming their black and white rules. The reality is MUCH of nutrition and wellness is very much in that grey space. We personalize nutrition and wellness to fit your life, your unique stress, sleep patterns, nutrient deficiencies, mental health struggles, etc. so it is sustainable.
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Back to my Instagram survey, I went on to ask people to define the terms they used about “clean eating” “good food” and “bad food” and then to finish I asked it talking about this was triggering stress or anxiety in them. Everyone who answered said yes or a little.
Wow.
I want to say I’m surprised but I really wasn’t. In our quest to be healthy or well we have preconceived ideas and rules culture/family has given us (I didn’t even touch on body image!) and it undoubtedly is causing stress and anxiety! More and more research is telling us that stress and anxiety have the biggest negative impact on our health than what we eat, or put on our bodies, or how much we exercise.
I hope you sit with that, and I hope you can ask yourself these questions moving forward.
What food rules am I believing that are causing me stress or anxiety?
Can I see non-nourishment focused patterns in my life around being “healthy” and make a shift away from these?
What brings joy into my life around food, movement, community and how can I build that more into my life?
I hope you comment below with your answers and maybe how this impacts your mindset around eating and where you want to grow.