The Psychology of Making Nutritional Changes
Nova Health Club • September 6, 2018
Five Things to Ask Yourself
Making nutrition changes means changing your lifestyle which means changing your behaviors. In order to change your behaviors to get the results you want, you must consider the below five things.
Without seriously thinking about these five points, you may be wasting your time. Why? Because most diets are just a list of instructions of what to eat and what not to eat. They fail to teach you the science and art of how to execute change. Secondly and more importantly, which we will cover in this article, these same diets never address the psychological processes you must go through first.
Before taking on your next nutrition challenge go through these 5 questions and thought processes.
1)Is My Goal Realistic?
This is the easiest question to ask yourself. Simply put, if your goal is not realistic you will fail. You can not take on a goal without the right resources available to support you. Confidence in your abilities is very important resource and will determine whether your goal is realistic or not. Precision Nutrition, one of the leading nutritional coaching companies uses a subjective scale from 1 to 10 prior to implementing a habit. If you are looking to add more protein into your diet for example, ask yourself first; “On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being most confident), how confident am I that I can implement and maintain this new habit?” If you answer anything 8 or above then the habit is more likely to stick. If that is the case go for it! However if you score yourself less than 8 you should consider choosing another behavior change first.
2)How Important is My Goal?
It is very easy to say ‘I am going to do whatever it takes to burn my unwanted body fat’. However consistently implementing those behavior changes is where the challenge lies. The challenge is not so much to do with it being hard work as much as it has to do with understanding your values. Hard work is easy for short term results but for the long term, people struggle to maintain new behaviors. This is because some old behaviors are actually important maybe more important than the results they want. For example, you may say you will not eat a certain food anymore - let’s say pizza - but Friday night pizza night with your family or friends comes along and is more important than the actual goal of losing body fat. Not participating in a valued family event may not be something that you are willing to do. The key is to know the difference between your goals and your values. Ask yourself this: How important is it to reach my goal? And is it more important than the parts of my life that I will have to sacrifice? If you are already in decent physical shape and looking to lean out even further, the sacrifices you will have to make may not be worth the actual results you are going for. Or looking at it from another perspective, if you are significantly overweight, the improved body composition and health you will get from nutritional behavior changes probably is more important than the behaviors you are needing to change.
3)What Obstacles and Solutions Exist?
Without giving this some serious thought you are likely to be ill equipped when you hit a road bump. And there are always road bumps so be prepared! Every goal comes with challenges and having solutions ready for deployment is an essential step before taking action. Every person has different challenges that will arise and potentially cause derailment of a good plan. Myself for example, the major derailment of my nutritional behavior changes comes from not meal prepping on the weekend. My week is very busy and I need to have food ready to go when I am hungry or else I end up making poor food choices or not eating at all. For other people, obstacles can be: business or social meals out or having a too many glasses of wine and appetizers at social events. Knowing that these obstacles will jump out at you ahead of time and planning your solution is a must prior to starting your new nutrition behavioral change.
4)What is My Surrounding Environment?
Your environment and the people you spend most of your time with has a massive influence on your behaviors. It will determine if you can implement and sustain the new changes. Some environments you can change. For example, knowing a staff room at your workplace is often filled with treats is something that you can avoid. Other environments like the people in your life may be harder to change. For example, it is not realistic to avoid the family you live with who enjoys to eat fast food at dinner time. Changing family behaviors will require more work but can be done. We all know that those we spend the most time with are those people we become more like. If we spend time with healthy people we will be healthier. If we spend time with unhealthy people we are more likely to have unhealthy habits that are harder to change.
5)Positive Reinforcements.
Do not hesitate to compliment yourself and others. The more you think about the positive results and engage in positive self talk the better your chances of success. From another perspective, offer compliments to people in your social circles especially if they are on the same journey as you. If you have someone in your life that you know is doing a great job with their behavior changes recognize them for it. No matter how small a compliment is, when people receive positive reinforcements it has a strong effect on their commitment which will help them achieve their goal.
Once you have gone through these thought processes you will be more psychologically prepared to make and sustain those positive lifestyle and behavioral changes. If you work with a coach or trainer, they also should be supporting you through this same process.
Now that you are ‘psyched’ up stay tuned for part 2 of this series where you will learn the art of making nutritional behavior changes. This includes things such as understanding food timing, calories and macronutrients.
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Do Hard Things Now, So Life Becomes Easier Later Modern humans default to the easy way but it's not our fault... Throughout human history, we were wired to survive constant hardship - scarcity of food, threats from predators, harsh environments and manual labor for everything. Our DNA evolved for survival in these conditions, not for modern living. Imagine an early human stumbling across a fruit tree. It made sense to gorge - there was no telling when the next meal would come. The human who gorged had a higher chance of survival than the human who only ate a few pieces of fruit. Practicing self-control in an environment of scarcity would have been a death sentence. Likewise, if given a chance to rest instead of walking miles or hunting, rest was the obvious choice. The problem? Our genes haven’t caught up with modern life. Today, food is everywhere. We don’t have to fight to meet our basic needs. Technology does the heavy lifting, cars replace walking, entertainment is on-demand and calorie-dense foods are always within reach. Left unchecked, our instincts will always lean toward easy options like overeating unhealthy foods (that are so easily accessible) or driving to the store instead of walking. In other words, we’re still hardwired to take the path of least resistance. But here’s the catch: Choosing easy now often means a harder life later and choosing hard now often means an easier life later. Most modern humans are overweight, stressed, tired and dealing with chronic health problems because we’re following outdated survival programming that no longer serves us. It’s time to become aware of these defaults. To override them. To consciously choose the hard thing - because doing hard things is what actually makes life easier in the long run. Hard things like: Going to bed on time instead of watching another episode Preparing a healthy meal instead of grabbing fast food Moving your body instead of sitting all day Walking or biking to the store instead of driving Managing stress with deep breaths and fresh air instead of pouring a drink Looking at your habits instead of masking symptoms with medication It might feel uncomfortable because it goes against everything your biological programming is urging you to do. But that’s exactly why it matters. Don’t think of it as punishment or sacrifice. Think of it as an investment. Every time you take the stairs instead of the elevator, cook instead of order out, or put your phone down to truly rest, you’re building a life that’s easier, richer, and more fulfilling down the road. And remember: Do easy things, and you’ll have a hard life. Do hard things, and you’ll have an easy life. Most of the above information is probably not new to you. That’s because we live in the information age with the internet and now AI - we already know what it is we need to do. The problem however is implementation. This is where having a customized plan and accountability comes in. If you know the hard things you need to do more of but struggle with breaking past your ‘default mode’ then contact us for a complimentary consultation HERE .
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