All or Nothing Nutrition: Ditch It

All or Nothing Nutrition…Generally Leads to Nothing

Avoid fat. Carbs are evil. Only eat meat. No, avoid all meat and meat products. You should be fasting. You should be eating small meals throughout the day.

Cut it out. If any of the aforementioned approaches work for you, that is awesome. For most of us, extremes don’t work (at least not for long).

We’re talking about making sustainable nutrition habits that last for the rest of our life. We’re talking about walking around feeling and looking better, being healthier, and building the virtue that voluntary hardship brings.

Voluntary hardship, though, isn’t about the the extreme white knuckle 3-week diet plan. It’s about taking up the challenges that come with moving toward our goals.

Give the Fundamentals a Chance

Not every diet is right for every person. Like many people program hop from lifting program to lifting program, too many people bounce from all or nothing nutrition approach to extreme diet.

Furthermore, people tend to know what foods are unhealthy and what are healthy. While there’s disagreement, and people avoid certain foods for a variety of reasons, good, sustainable diets will involve building habits that last, move you closer to your goals, and have you burning more calories than you consume.

Identify areas that you can most easily change to create the biggest results. That first means identifying what you’re baseline is.

For Brittany, she realized she was consuming about 800 calories after dinner every night. Her first step was to reduce that to 500.

Your first MED step might be different, but there’s often one behavior or action that is creating the biggest damage.

To move toward your goal, you don’t need to end that damage but rather limit that damage.

All or nothing nutrition generally leads to nothing.

Nutrition Budgets Empower

One approach that works for many because it empowers it giving a nutrition budget.

It might be a certain number of calories for a meal or time period (e.g. after dinner). It could be a caloric limit to alcohol or a limit to the number of drinks per week.

What this does, however, is allow people to maintain their non-negotiables but reduce their damage. For example, you don’t have to give up drinking after dinner, but if you’re drinking 3, 4, or 5 drinks before bed, reducing that to 2 or 3 can make a big difference.

Shove Shame to the Side

Emotionally detaching from her behaviors and looking at them like data has really helped.

Your decisions don’t make you a bad person and if there is room for growth, that is fine. The shame only hurts, and you need to focus on what you can do and when you slip up, return to the sustainable habits. If you’re having trouble sustaining the habits, maybe a different approach would work better.

Ditch all or nothing nutrition. Shove shame to the side. Give the fundamentals a chance. And listen to this very informative, enjoyable, and quotable podcast.