Meal planning helps us to start each week on the right track, supporting metabolism

How to create goals that last the test of time. Let’s consider some of the challenges that influence our weight loss goals.

Stress creates a vicious cycle. We set a goal, put it into action, make progress, experience stress, breakaway from our plan, and give up. Then we likely feel guilty and start over.

Aiming for progress, not perfection, supports sustainable actions that lead toward the objective you aim to attain.

We know we will feel guilty before we even eat what’s in front of us. Consider these strategies to crush your cravings.

100% Abstinence Often Backfires

What I’m trying to say is that if you vow to never eat “junk food”, you will likely break into bad habits again.

Let’s take a moment to recognize that one of the reasons that we CrossFit instead of wandering around another gym considering what we should do (or sitting on one of the machines on our cell phone) is because we are with the same people that notice when we don’t show up.

Sure, we can see that alcohol is not good for you and by eliminating it entirely you will lose weight. Is that really what you will do though? Probably not. And even if you did, for a week or two, you would fall hard back into habits instead of influencing a sustainable change.

This is an opportunity to remove the idea of diet as a “pass/fail,” “allowed/forbidden,” or “green light/red light” food and replace that theory with sustainable nutrition.

While many of us are eating on-the-go and fall into convenience eating habits, take a moment to think about sitting down for a meal.

Consider how marketing influences our thoughts about health. If you watch a movie, commercial, TV show, YouTube video, or any other form of media that exists (there are A LOT!), you are bound to see someone with the body that you wish you had.

We often think about each food as “good for you or bad for you.” In some ways this is not a healthy place to park our belief system. When something is good for us, we feel we “have to eat it” even if we don’t like it. If something is “bad for us” we feel guilty when we eat it, and probably eventually breakdown and eat it anyway.