It is common practice to set food and exercise goals and dream about where your body weight might be in six months time. But how often do you assess your progress? I’m not talking about the progress-o-meter that most dieters stand on each morning, stripped bare, fingers crossed, in order to see a number that tells them whether or not they should feel good about themselves on that particular day. I’m talking about progress that really matters such as your eating patterns, your activity level and how you feel about yourself.
If you are wondering why you don’t ever seem to be completely happy with your eating, activity patterns and the number on the scale, hopefully I can shed some light on this. Aiming for perfection day-in and day-out can be exhausting at the best of times.
Chances are that there are parts of your everyday life, such as work projects or paying the bills that require perfection or near perfection. Thankfully, exercise and eating are not one of them. So why are you beating yourself up for less than perfect eating patterns or activity levels?
In fact, being pretty good, most of the time is good enough for health, wellness and even weight loss. Further, taking this approach means that when you do have a ‘bad day’ (emphasis on when), making the day ‘less bad’ is a great accomplishment as well.
This approach allows your good days to get better, and the bad days to occur less often and be less severe when they do occur. Being perfect means never giving into temptation. Do you really think that thin individuals never have cravings for certain foods, never indulge at a meal and never skip their exercise plan?
Perfectionism is a common attribute among struggling ‘dieters’.
Of course, since you’ve been reading my column, you are not longer a dieter but you may still exhibit perfectionist or dieting type behaviors. Knowing that diets don’t work is not the same as eliminating years of emotional diet baggage.
In order to find out if you exhibit dieting perfection, ask yourself the following question: If you miss a workout or eat something unhealthy do you feel like you’ve ‘blown it’?
If so, you are exhibiting a perfectionist attitude towards eating and activity also known as an all or nothing attitude. At the Healthy Weights Clinic we call this ‘what the heck thinking’. For example, “I’ve missed my workout today, so what the heck- I may as well indulge in chips and cookies tonight too”.
The truth is that you shouldn’t expect to be perfect at any time with respect to eating and activity.
Why? Simple, there is no definition for perfect eating and exercise perfection. In other words, you are striving for something that does not exist! No wonder you, and many others are frustrated.
If eating less is better, does that mean that eating nothing is perfection? What is a perfect amount of activity? Is anything less than two hours at the gym not worth it? I would argue that the perfect amount of exercise is any amount that you feel good about.
Certain situations such as weekends and family gathering require you to lower your standards and expectations. For instance, when it comes to weekends, compare your Saturdays to previous Saturdays, not to Mondays.
Cut yourself a break sometimes and be happy with your accomplishments, especially under trying conditions. A pat on the back goes a long way for improving health and weight management and when it comes from within it silences your perfectionist inner critic.
