Goals-Do You Have Any?

WHAT ARE YOUR HEALTH AND NUTRITION GOALS?

Forget for a moment, your mid-life-crisis aspirations to be a marathon runner. Let’s talk about something more personal, what you are eating 3 times a day. Maybe you are eating more like 6-8 times per day. At any rate, you are eating more than you are doing anything else, besides working. So, why aren’t you focusing on your eating habits?

Your goal should be to start eating more real food. Start reading the labels on the food you buy. Eat out less. Drink less alcohol. Cook more. Learn about what you are putting in your body. Be an educated consumer, not an ignorant one. Any of these habits would be a good place to start. Once you start fueling your body with the food it needs, then you can go work on your marathon training.

You can’t out-train a bad diet. But you also can’t out-diet Zero training. We do need both to have optimal health.

WHERE DO YOU START?

Figuring out where to start can be hard. Taking the first step to do so can be even harder. Fighting excuses and putting them off is the more popular thing to do. But here is the thing, you don’t have to go Keto and become an elite athlete to start living a healthier life. In fact, that is the complete opposite thing you should do. What you need is to start making small, sustainable changes that you can keep for the rest of the year and the rest of your life. A good place to start is a daily 12-hour fast. Don’t eat past 8 pm and don’t eat again until 8 am. Your body needs 12 hours to digest your food and most Americans eat for at least 16 hours per day. Your body is not meant for this type of eating schedule.

EXCUSES

My next piece of advice is to write down any excuses you may give yourself or any roadblocks you think might derail your efforts to start new eating habits. Write them down and make copies of them so you can hang them up around your house and work. They will remind you of the sneaky excuses you usually use to get you out of what you’ve committed to doing.

Some common excuses I often hear as a nutrition coach:

1. It’s too expensive

2. I’m too busy

3. I’ve tried other things, and nothing works

4. I don’t have the support of _______

5. I’ll do it in a few weeks, months, years

6. It’s not affecting me right now

7. I don’t have time

If you have used any of these excuses for putting off your goals, then you need to recognize them for what they are. Excuses are excuses and excuses get you nowhere. Excuses get you pillboxes full of prescriptions. They get you medical bills you can’t pay, and hospital visits you weren’t expecting. They get you surgeries you never wanted, and broken hearts that can’t be repaired by family and friends. Excuses get you a casket buried 6 feet underground years before your time was up.