Shift from Sabotage to Success – How to make Nutrition work for You
The one thing that I say to both myself and people – wherever you are, you need to make the situation work for you. And this is key when it comes to nutrition. Most of us assume we ‘must’ or ‘should’ follow a specific diet, routine, regiment or eating plan because that is what we have seen or been told is the right way. But if it doesn’t work for your lifestyle, it’ll never be the right way and you won’t make it successful.
In this blog post I cover:
What sabotage can look like
How you may be succumbing to sabotage
How to make the shift to successfully mastering your nutrition so that it works for you.
Sabotage definition: “to deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct (something)”
When I ask if you if you have ever sabotaged your healthy eating habits, I’d expect most of you to say yes. It would be abnormal or untrue if you haven’t and this is part of being human.
But what if your sabotaging efforts happen more regularly than you would like, or if it starting to now impact your health, physique and/or fitness goal? When this starts to occur, it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities, triggers and your environment.
Regardless of why you sabotage, what is common is that sabotage often stems from los self-esteem, negative self-talk and mindset blocks about feeling valued or worthy. What also happens here is that people attribute their sabotaging behaviour towards food/diet because they believe their environment has ‘happened to them’ and they have little or no control over the situation. In some cases, those who sabotage do so because they feel back in control after ‘fixing’ a sabotaging diet behaviour. I call this yo-yo dieting.
What Can a Health Sabotage Look Like?
Binge-eating at night
Setting rigid rules around what you can and can’t eat only to break these rules later in the day.
Setting an alarm to train early and then pressing snooze or off (more than a few times a week).
Over-eating after a training session (because you say you have ‘earned it’), or undereating because you haven’t exercised (didn’t ‘earn it’), only to overeat again the next day.
Binge-eating on the weekend because you’ve eaten ‘clean’ all week.
There are more examples, however these are the ones I see often in my work with clients.
Most of these instances occur because of a few key beliefs about how you feel about yourself, letting negative thoughts overtake the positive thoughts, feelings of depression or low mood, and self-belief about whether you can actually achieve that goal.
How To Better Manage Self-Sabotage
One of the better ways to manage self-sabotage firstly involves challenging your thoughts and beliefs about yourself and your goals. By this, I’m referring to you identifying the thought or belief, writing it down, letting it sit with you for a minute, and then reframing it.
Then we look at your environment and what is realistically in your control and if your health goals are achievable. For example, if you know you need to stop binge eating at night, it will help to eat a little more throughout your day. If you know you’ll hit snooze and won’t make a training session, then decide if your goal of making 5 training sessions that week is too high, and instead start with two training sessions in that week. If your goal is to eat healthier in the week, then allow yourself a couple of meals where you ‘treat yourself’ and you won’t feel restricted by your diet and resort to binging on the weekend. If you have a body composition goal to lose 5% body fat in two weeks, then re-evaluate this based on your lifestyle and make it realistic so that you can measure your progress, and actually feel good about your results each week.
If self-sabotage with your health is an area where you feeling out of control, want to find clarity, is stopping you from reaching your fitness and body composition goals
You may need support from an experienced coach. Book in an initial consultation with me, and let’s see if this is somewhere I can support you.
I support you people to resolve self-limiting behaviour and beliefs about their health and fitness goals, and instead make them happen so that you can focus on achieving your life goals. My clients are high-achievers and busy professionals with limited time, but unlimited potential. If you know this is you, let’s chat. I offer consultations as single-sessions or VIP 5-session Nutrition Consultation Packages. Start here.
