The all or nothing effect; going hard, going all out, no room for errors, straight determination, and with a hearty side of restraint UNTIL the wheels fall off and everything goes to shit, which quickly leads to all or nothing effects evil twin:
the fuck it effect.
I’ve lived through both of these phenomena many times and being in a gym for 10 years, seen them hundreds. Women,
myself very much included, getting to the gym 5-6 days a week for weeks on end, eating with an incredible amount of self-control and strictness, hitting a wall hard. And that wall is made of processed carbs and way too much time on the couch.
We seem to toggle between these two ways of living. Workouts that are over an hour-long followed by dinners consisting of salads and chicken breast, or snoozing our alarms for weeks on end, making excuses to miss another day, eating like shit, telling yourself that you will start again tomorrow. Knowing damn well you are not, in fact, starting tomorrow.
It sucks to live like that, stuck in the extreme ends of the same vicious cycle.
I won’t say it is easy to get out of the all-or-nothing trap, but it is a piece of cake compared to the hell of staying in it.
Find your baseline.
Find the actual least you need to do that will keep you feeling your best.
Based on this concept, I created a program that drills the most implausibly simple idea:
You know how to feed you, you just are not listening closely enough to your body
YET (magic word), to feel confident doing so. But once you learn how to listen be prepared for a ridiculous amount of magic to follow.
Diet culture did us dirty. It told us no pain, no gain. That eating well meant eating bland, dull, carb-free, sugar-free, joy-free meals.
That was a lie. You can very much get to your goals and not grind through the process. You can literally have your cake and eat it too.
Your baseline doesn’t contain lofty goals in the sense of destinations. These are not things that you do until you get to a goal weight or pant size.
They are behaviors you are committed to doing all the time. Like all the time. Not 70%, not even 95%. These are 99% every day, brush your teeth behaviors. Meaning you miss them one day. It is OK, kinda gross, but OK. If you miss the two days, you are on some real bullshit…
If you have been following me for a while, my suggestion about how you find them will not surprise you. (if you are new, welcome, I say the following sentence all the time). Ask yourself who you want to be. Sit with that question, don’t rush the answer, think about it for a few days. What behaviors do you want to have, AND what actions are realistic for your life right now?
Keeping in mind, these are brush your teeth happen everyday behaviors with one RULE and one exception:
Rule: you only get four. Period. Three works well too. And two is not enough. Five is too many. Three or four things that are it. You build a stool (three legs) or a home (four corners of a foundation).
Exception: ONE, and only one of these things can be a weekly behavior, think exercise. Daily is not an option but 3-5 days a week is. Or time alone! Maybe you can’t take an hour to yourself every day right now, but you can do that a few times a week.
I will tell you mine, but with hesitation.
Because these work for me does not mean they will work for you.
These are MY baseline, not by any means the “correct” baseline.
Every day:
1. Eat veggies with breakfast and lunch.
2. Eat animal protein with all three meals.
3. Sleep 8 hours.
Weekly:
move 5 times a week.
Notice the veggies only says two meals? That is because this is an everyday thing. And I don’t eat veggies with dinner every day… gasp.
Some dinners are pizza. Sometimes it is Pad Thai. And sometimes it is cereal. And guess what… that is OK. It is actually better than OK because I got my veggies in early.
Animal protein at every meal: this is a 95% thing. If I eat 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, that means in one month, I am having 84ish meals a month. Sometimes those meals are cereal or pizza. I am A-OK if 5-10 of those meals do NOT have animal protein. It will even out. (Side note: exactly why cheat meals are so fucking dumb. You are eating 80-90 meals a month. You don’t need to schedule cheating!! If 10 even 20 meals are “treats,” and the rest have veggies, protein, and decent carb, you will be doing JUST FINE!)
Worry about the macro, not the micro!
Sleep; 8 hours. Obviously, sometimes life happens. Kids wake up, or I just watch Ozark too late, but like the animal protein, 99% of my nights, I am getting enough sleep. And movement, I need to shake my bones a few days a week.
You know what else happens?
Pizza weekly, sometimes twice a week. Take out 3 nights a week. Dessert every. damn. day. With no shame… Plantain chips, pretzels, and no more abusive cardio to burn it all out.
Honoring a baseline means letting the rest of your life happen without judgment. The only thing we MAKE happen are those 3-4 things, the rest are either icing on the cake, or literally, we are eating cake. Both are really cool.
If you find yourself trapped in all or nothing or just struggling to feel good, FIND YOUR BASELINE.
Take a few weeks to make sure it happens, which will be work and will take discipline,
but you have dieted through worse,
and this time you will have something amazing on the other side.