Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Eating Habits
Question!
How’s Your Thought Life?
How’s your current thoughts about healthy eating and healthy living?
Why should you ask yourself this question?
Your Thoughts Direct Your Behaviors
The current state of your health may be a direct reflection of your thought patterns about yourself and how you view your body, healthy eating and healthy living.
Ask yourself, do you look at your body and speak negative words? Do you cringe at the thought of exercise and healthy eating? Do you tell yourself that you will never reach your fitness and weight loss goals?
If this is you, realize your thoughts can lead you down the road of health success or your thoughts can lead you down the dead end road of being overweight, chronically ill and unhappy with your quality of living.
Which Road Will You Choose?
Once I made the decision to become a professional athlete, I realized how important my thoughts would be to the success of my career. The physical demands of physical training, injuries, the cost of competing, the struggle of being a full-time student and employee could have hindered me from reaching my goals. Therefore I realized early in my fitness career that my level of success heavily depended upon my thoughts. This truth holds the same for you and reaching your health, especially your eating goals.
Maybe you have called yourself negative names or maybe you have told yourself that you will never get the weight off because you have tried everything in the past and it doesn’t work.
Today is a new day for you to change your thoughts and beliefs around how you see healthy eating and healthy living!
Start by using the following 6 tips to shift your mindset and narrative:
Tip # 1: Monitor Your Thoughts
Refuse to accept negative thoughts from yourself or other people. You can’t stop every thought from coming into your mind, but you can block many of them. If you eat something unhealthy, speak kindly to yourself and make a healthier decision the next time you eat. If you find yourself around negative people who discourage you, choose to create new environments that support your needs.
Tip # 2: Get Visual
Write down your nutrition and health goals as well as the steps required to reach them. Having a visual reference can help you get excited about your goals. Create a vision board and place it somewhere visible. Tell yourself, that you will get to desired goals. The words you speak to yourself determine the direction of your actions.
Tip # 3: Choose the Right Environment
Only share your dreams with people who believe in you and want to support you. Having negative people in your life is toxic and unproductive, being in these environments can lead you to adopting negative thinking patterns.
Tip #4: Take One Day at a Time
Take daily steps to reach your destination. Don’t get overwhelmed with the destination, instead focus on the process. By doing this, you will feel less pressure and stress to reach your goals.
Tip #5: Celebrate Yourself
Be proud of the progress you are making, whether big or small. Don’t wait until you reach your goal to celebrate. Every day that you move in a positive direction towards your goal is a day to be celebrated. Find non-food items to celebrate the milestones you deem important.
Tip #6: Be Compassionate with Yourself
Do not beat yourself up for not reaching your goal by the deadline you‘ve set. It’s not failure on our part, you may have just set unrealistic goals within an unrealistic period of time. When this happens, re-evaluate your goals and set more realistic ones in a more reasonable time frame. Be gentle, kind and compassionate with yourself. Beating yourself up won’t yield positive results!
Healthy Living is a Lifelong Process
Learning how to make healthy eating and healthy living a lifestyle is a challenge for many. However, if you start by shifting your mindset and the internal narrative you have created around how you see food, exercise and healthy living, you will notice your behavior patterns change.
Looking to learn how to eat healthier? Purchase one of our nutrition books! Don’t Complicate It-Basic Nutrition and Healthy Eating Made Simple!
Here’s to keeping you well! Need one-on-one health coaching, complete this form today and someone from our team will contact you.
About Author:
Featured on TV stations such as Fox 40, ABC 10, Seattl’s King 5 and NBC News as well as featured in over 30 health and fitness magazines such as Oxygen Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, Strong Fitness and Flex Magazine as a thought leader on population health, women’s health and minority health, Laticia “Action” Jackson is a Fitness Olympian, 13 x Wellness Author, Globally Recognized Health and Fitness Expert and Owner of Well Content 4 U! Her passion is to help prevent chronic illnesses and empower individuals to take control of their health and well-being. take ownership of their health and well-being by providing relevant and evidence-based wellness information delivered through content, wellness workshops and online wellness programs. Learn More about Laticia “Action”Jackson Here!
