Have you ever been on a diet and felt like things were going great – like “I’ll just eat like this forever, and never have anything off and that will solve all my problems!.”
But then, life happens, and you totally fall off. And you feel terrible about yourself because you’ve thrown it all away, ruined your progress, and have to start all over again.
All or nothing, black and white thinking holds us back. It’s a huge obstacle that keeps us from finding true balance and from feeling secure with our healthy eating & lifestyle. It doesn’t feel good to be scared of food. To be afraid of making eye contact with a plate of cookies because you’re barely holding on as it is and don’t want to start your painful diet all over again.
I struggled with this a lot on my own journey, and now as a coach I notice this type of thinking coming up a lot – where everything falls into only two categories in someone’s mind: good or bad, clean or not, perfection or failure.
You’re either all-in on a cleanse or totally off the wagon.
Releasing from this all or nothing thinking – and living more in the gray area – means you’d actually experience MORE freedom and stop beating yourself up so much.
The place where you can eat healthy all day, have a cookie as dessert, and not hate yourself the next day. The place where that one cookie doesn’t turn into 10, or into a whole week of eating fast food and ice cream.
Part of living in the grey area involves loosening the reins you hold around yourself. Giving yourself freedom to experiment, and to put foods and beverages in different categories that feel good for you. We’re not the food police. The Cleanse is super restrictive for a reason – it’s up to you (and we’re here to support you!) to figure out where you fit in between that and “the real world.”
But if you keep yourself in a box ruled by “all or nothing” thinking, you hold yourself back from finding balance.
What we don’t know holds us back. It holds us captive in a place we don’t want to be, like standing in front of an hordeurves table saying “what the hell, if I’m going to have one, I may as well have it all” and then paying for it for days.
Here’s a thought – and you will likely need to tell yourself this many times before you believe it, but… You’ll never actually actually move backwards. I promise.You’ll never un-learn what you’ve learned — even future mistakes will be part of your success, because all of your experiences (even the ones you wished hadn’t happened) give you new information.
Even if things are imperfect, and as long as you’re listening to your body and your intuition, you’re still getting new information. If it feels scary to loosen the reins on your own, one of the best ways to let go of this successfully is to stay engaged with us.
We offer a variety of ways to support you while you’re experimenting with all the shades of grey – whether that’s coming back for a full cleanse, quick check ins (ask how to get a free session!), weigh ins, or more intensive nutritional counseling.
