Introduction
Hi, I’m Max, a professional health coach.
Healthy eating is one of the most popular topics of debate in Western culture. What to eat, what not to eat, when to eat, what foods should be paired together, the list goes on. In my experience as a health coach, the simpler one’s approach is, the better. Sixty percent of the human body is made up of water, so the healthiest foods for us to eat are of high water content – vegetables, fruit, and nuts, the stuff we’ve been eating for hundreds of thousands of years, coupled with some high-quality sources of protein such as organic unprocessed meat, regular exercise, and good night’s sleep! Not exactly rocket science…
So, if it’s so simple, why do so many of us find it difficult to stay on track with our health?
One of the cold truths I’ve learned about human beings over the past decade of coaching is that we use food as a way of masquerading as a larger issue in our lives. The stimulation of a cold glass of Coca-Cola or the stimulation of a salty potato chip creates a release of dopamine that temporarily overrides our emotional pain receptors, much, in the same way, a drug does.
To put it another way, the happiest human being on earth wouldn’t feel the need to eat badly, because they are already emotionally complete. So the question becomes, what is it that we are temporarily numbing with unhealthy food?
And while yes, food plans and workout routines are valuable, they are not nearly as valuable as the inner game of eating well. When our inner game is dialed in, the rest is just a matter of time.
Here are three of the most valuable insights I have learned in my time as a health and athletic development coach.
Insight Number One) Negative Motivation Is A Recipe For Failure
If you are reading this post because you are currently unhappy with the way that you look, and you are attempting to “fix” this problem that you have, this first point is very important for you – read this carefully. If the way you look currently gives you distress, and you would like to get your health in order as a means to put that distress to an end, you will fail. Absolutely guarantee it. Being incentivized through pain only provides a temporary dysfunctional kind of motivation that leads to ineffective backlashes – this is where the term “yo-yo dieting” comes from. In any area of life never forget – PUSH never lasts but PULL never fails.
If you want to create significant and lasting change in your health – this is the master key:
Create a positively charged vision for your health that is deeply inspiring.
That’s it. That is the master key.
Human beings do not achieve any lasting greatness through the avoidance of pain, but with enough inspiration, they can achieve almost anything.
Quick Exercise: Begin building an inspiring vision for your health. You will know when you’re doing this as it won’t cause you emotional distress, but it will come from your heart.
Insight Number Two) Identify Trigger Points
Food consumption is a pattern of behaviour. And depending on what we are eating it is either a helpful or unhelpful pattern. To gain sufficient control over our eating, we must develop sufficient awareness of our patterns.
The first step here is to gain clarity – ask yourself, when do you normally eat food that you don’t want to eat? In military terminology, this is called ‘the gathering of strategic intelligence’. If your goal is to defeat an unhelpful pattern of eating, we must first see very clearly what causes this pattern in the first place. In my experience working with clients, common trigger points include stress from work or family, remembering a painful experience from childhood, procrastination through emotional eating, waiting until hunger is so intense that the craving for caloric-dense food overrides the desire for healthy eating and others.
A process I have had my clients go through in the past is to map out their emotional pattern when it comes to making their eating decisions, as though they were observing another human being, and to document the pattern. Observe yourself very closely because chances are this pattern repeats itself, and by gaining intelligence over this pattern, we can begin to change it. Never forget – with awareness comes the opportunity for choice.
Quick Exercise: Remember the last time you ate junk food. Now, remember the hour before you ate junk food, can you recall what happened? What led you to eat junk food?
Insight Number Three) Gradualness Is The Path To Lasting Change
“The biggest journeys begin with a single step” is a very powerful quote. Without the first inglorious step, there can be no glory. This is true in business, athletic development, and especially in health. There are smaller ticket items in life such as a new pair of shoes, or a pillow for your couch, these take a relatively small amount of work to acquire. But to develop world-class health, this is a big ticket item, and it should be treated as such.
To go from eating constant junk food, soft drinks, and smoking to eating raw organic fruits, the highest quality vegetables a daily one-hour meditation practice DOES NOT happen straight away. Anyone who tells you that it does is lying. Because it takes time for neural pathways to develop and older pathways to close over. So, we must focus on making acute, deliberate, acupunctural changes to allow the acclimation of our body and mind to our decisions.
For those seeking faster results, congratulate yourself every step of the way, a quiet but genuine “well done” creates a positive reinforcement loop that allows neural pathways to develop faster.
Quick Exercise: Pour yourself a glass of cold, fresh water, have a drink, and congratulate yourself! Clean drinking water is the healthiest food in the world. This may be your first step right there!
To be in good health is one of the core pillars of a fulfilled life – treat it with the significance that it deserves.
If this resonates with you, reach out to me and we can have a complimentary 30-minute conversation.
Max. Health Coach.
