Changing Your Diet Is as Hard as You Want It to Be

It seems like every day I speak to someone who says that dieting is just too hard. They have tried and tried, but they cannot seem to stick to any diet for more than a couple of days before they loose steam and go back to old habits. Case in point, today I had a nutritional consultation with a current client wanting a plan for success laid out and simplified. No problem. We covered his caloric intake, macro breakdown, fasting protocol, and eating choices. Then, we covered the mentality of change. This is the hard part.

He had issues with sticking to a plan in the past and was dreading starting again. My advice was nothing less than suck it up. Change is hard, but dreading the change makes it exponentially harder. Think about household chores as a kid. You put off doing the dishes until you get yelled at because you really don’t want to do it. You know it will only take ten minutes, but you hate doing the dishes. It doesn’t hurt. It isn’t time consuming. It just isn’t what you want to do, so you bitch and gripe, and moan about it until you’re threatened with an ass whooping. Then you do it and go back to whatever else time-wasting activity you were doing before.

Dieting is the same way. Rip off the band aid and get to work. My exact words to my client was “You’re 43 years old, so it’s safe to say that you have been eating whatever you wanted for the past 30 years. Why not eat like you should for 30 weeks?” 30 weeks of clean eating can change your life. We set up a plan for six weeks and I told him to stay strict for three weeks before having an Earned Meal. Yes, Earned, not cheat. If you want to eat shit, earn it. Three weeks of clean eating and regular exercise, you can have whatever you want for one meal. One meal! Not a cheat day, not a cheat weekend. There is no point in ruining a weeks’ worth of work for a simple mouth pleasure that last about 2 minutes until you take another bite. Your body doesn’t want that crap; your mind does.

Moral of the story: eating healthy is easy; I’ve been doing it for decades. I found a diet that I could sustain long term and I stuck to it. I have earned meals occasionally and I continue to progress despite them. Anything you dread doing will suck, so go into it with enthusiasm for your future self and enjoy the delicious nutrient dense foods along the way. Use spices and herbs for variety and get it done.