Be a scientist, run the experiment
You’re only human. You want to see the numbers on the scales move. You want to drop a clothing size, you want to look good naked. Of course you, there’s no point denying that.
It’s normal to let these desires control our emotions and influence our decision making processes. It’s normal to get carried away with the numbers and let our daily successes and failures on the scales dictate our mood. It’s normal for the need to get off this emotional roller coaster to eventually override our desire for robust health and emotional stability.
It’s also very normal for your weight to go up and down on a daily basis, which is a problem when weight loss is your only measure of success.
The key to getting past this is to learn to emotionally detach from your results. Imagine yourself as a scientist doing an experiment. If a scientist enrolled you in a study to find out what would happen if you ate only potatoes (or other healthy foods) for 30 days, they would not be jumping for joy or punching the wall depending on your weight loss results each day. The scientist would simply put you on the scales, write the number down on their chart and move on with their day. No celebration or commiseration, just gathering a new data point.
The scientist knows that what happens on day 3 (or day 9, or day 23 etc.) is not the point. It’s certainly interesting and worth taking note of but it’s not what we came here to find out, so just add the number to your spread sheet and go about your day. The scientist knows that you cannot judge the success or failure of a 30 day experiment until you finish the 30 days and that if you don’t follow the rules of the experiment, your results are not valid.
So forget about the results for now and just run the experiment.
When you can learn to remove emotion from the situation, then you can make rational, logical decisions that align with your goals and allow you to live life on your terms.
The "eat less, move more" diet industry keeps you hyper-focussed on results, which forces you to do unsustainable things in order to make their product look good and you look broken when you can’t keep it up.
Question: If a scientist saw the scales go up, what would she do?
Answer: The exact same thing she’d do if she saw the scales go down - keep running the experiment.
This is just one of many different ways to think about the emotions that interfere with our eating choices. Removing emotion from the decision making process is undoubtedly the number one problem that I help people solve in my individual coaching and I’d love to help you solve it too. For a limited time (and with limited places) if you join our lifetime membership, you’ll get a free one on one coaching session with me, to help launch your new campaign for emotional stability around food. Click HERE.
Spud up!
Andrew and Mandy