For the food religions and religionists, who insist upon referring to decadent desserts as “sinful”, cheeseburgers as “bad,” and organic triple washed kale as the “holy grail”…

…as if food and diet were somehow a moral issue…

…to those caught in food religion, what I’m about to suggest is diabolical.

For the rest of us, it’s helpful.

Extreme Diets Are Unsustainable

Stop trying to eat a perfect diet…or failing to embark because you think you have to 100% overhaul what and how you eat in one fell swoop. 

Away with extremes altogether!

The best goal for most people is to successfully implement one or two teeny tiny, incremental changes, for one or two weeks at a time.

You are not eliminating entire food groups or macronutrients. This is trendy but unsustainable and, honestly, probably not that healthy in the long-term.

Little by little, the goal is to eat fewer highly processed, packaged foods as you experiment with healthier alternatives…

slowly changing your palette and the foods you enjoy…

resulting in a leaner, healthier, happier body that you can sustain with little to no effort…

…because you’re not just changing what you eat.

You’re changing what you crave.

Instead of “quitting sugar,” you can start by swapping some of the processed white sugar in your morning coffee with a healthier alternative. Maybe instead of completely swapping it, which you hate, you could just use a half to three-quarter the amount of white sugar and replace the difference with, say, honey…or a stevia blend…or monk fruit?

You need to be willing to try new things, but it doesn’t have to be an overnight overhaul, and it doesn’t have to ‘suck’. In fact…it shouldn’t.

As you make those little changes, you’ll strengthen the skill. You’ll get quicker at finding healthier alternatives you enjoy and implementing them in a way that works for you.

It’ll be like building muscle. The more you lift, the more you can lift. The more you discover, the more you can discover — both about food and about yourself. Best of all, the more you succeed at making small changes, the easier it’ll be to succeed at new ones.

This is how we learned to crawl, walk, and run…how we learned to speak…first making noises, then distinguishing sounds, syllables, and intonations…eventually learning to use the tongue, the lips, the mouth to form those sounds. Little by little, we became walking, talking little terrors running around gleefully asking everybody 1000 questions and growing extremely adept at telling people what we want.

That is, we learned to crawl, walk, run, talk, form sentences, and make demands…in stages.

There are countless functions we are able to take for granted, today, because of tiny habits we learned, practiced, and mastered over time.

Eating well is the same.

In a perfect world, you would’ve learned those basic healthy habits during your formative years, and have them mastered by the time you were 10 (perhaps so you could then move into more advanced health and fitness goals like sports and athletics). 

You and I have the power today to give that gift to our children and our children’s children.

As for us now, we have some habits to improve…and this we can do…but we’ll have the most success cooperating with the way our minds — and bodies — were designed to develop.

Extreme diets are for short-term goals.

Most of us just need to eat better to live better and look better.

If you’re already super healthy and fit, you’ve mastered eating a healthy, whole-food based diet, and you’re looking to reduce to single-digit body fat and shred…you’ll need a much more aggressive approach.

If you’ve struggled with eating better and need to establish a healthier lifestyle,  you’ll do better by taking your time, paying attention to details, and starting with changes that feel accessible to you now.

I created a graphic that offers a snapshot of what this can look like.

In it, I give you a few examples, such as potato chips and french fries…and show you a couple ways to improve that snack or meal so it’s a little healthier and takes you a little closer to your goal…without making a huge sacrifice.

After you’ve practiced that small improvement for a couple weeks, you can build on it with another one. After a while, you’ll find you’ve made many small improvements that have amounted to real results.

Hopefully, my examples will give you something you’d like to try.

More importantly, let it teach you a strategic way to think about improving your diet.

My goal is not to be your guru but to empower you to be your own!

You know the saying… Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” 

As a Precision Nutrition Certified Nutrition ProCoach, this is how I approach weight loss with most of my clients. To work with me as your personal Nutrition Coach, visit 111HeavenScent.com/esse111fitness.