"I'm an All or Nothing Person"

Are you an all or nothing person?

Do you like to put all of your effort into something?

You like to do it all the way. You jump all in.

You like big changes and find yourself going all into a diet.

And when you face a bump in the road or you’re unable to stick to the plan, you fall all out of it.

You beat yourself up and feel like you might be self-sabotaging your goals.

But here’s the thing, you’re looking at it all wrong. You’re looking at a goal you have (no matter how big) and making big leaps, rather than small steps. I mean to say this in the nicest way possible, you are overestimating your ability to grow and change.

Our brains can trick us into thinking that we need to and can make huge changes quickly. We’re bombarded by the social media world, not to mention advertisements, where we see the highlight reel of other people’s lives - their happiness, their success, them achieving goals - but what we don’t see are the small things that go into getting there. We see all the things they attribute their success to and all the things we can incorporate into our own life, but we don’t see it done slowly. So we take the big leap, we go all in, we do it all, and we inevitably crash and burn.

This is partly a product of feeling like if we don’t follow the plan to the tee, then it can’t be worth it and you won’t get the results you want. And that’s where we go wrong.

We seem to over etimstate what we’re capable of changing in such a short period of time. “I want to lose 10 pounds” getting attached to an unrealistic timeline, and “I want to stop craving carbs” makes us think we can (or should) just go cold turkey and hope it sticks. We’re capable of pushing and changing ourself somewhere in a 4-5% difference or improvement, and yet we often seem to choose an option that means we’ll be making a 20% change. This, if any, is the way we self-sabotage ourselves.

So how do we get rid of this “all or nothing” mindset?

1. Force yourself to start small. Small habit changes make a big difference. Let’s take the “I want to stop craving carbs example.” You might think in order to stop craving them, you know you’ll need to remove them. So one magical Monday, you decide it’s the day and you throw them all out of the house and start on your journey. It works! At least for a little while before you find yourself feeling deprived, restricted, and hungry. You don’t like it and pretty soon you decide one cookie won’t hurt, then two, maybe the next day you figure you had one sweet treat so another won’t hurt and pretty soon you’re snowballing into the “nothing” category.

   Instead, start smaller. It might feel silly, but it is worth it. Building a lasting habit takes time, and if you’ve come to the point where you’re frustrated, you probably want this change to last. With losing your carb craving, start by writing down all the carbs you eat. Then you notice you eat a lot of candy at the office. So maybe you decide to remove that. Do it for a week, maybe even two. Then see how you feel. Then choose something else to remove, or at least reduce.

2. Remember that everything compounds. Small changes when added together lead to big changes. Removing something as simple as candy from your daily diet could lead to less sugar cravings, less needing carbs, feeling more inclined to eat your prepped meal, weight loss, less energy crashes, etc.

   If you ate perfectly for ONE day per week, maybe you would feel like it was a waste of time and energy. But that’s one day better every week that you weren’t before. That’s 52 days per year that you’d be improving, and eventually, just maybe you are doing it 4 days per week and seeing even better improvements. But it all starts with the one day. Getting 1% better is always better.

3. Focus on the process, rather than the result. It’s easy to get bored when you feel you’ve mastered a new habit (going to the gym, eating your veggies, saying no to candy, etc) and throw in the towel to try something else. If you’re thinking about quitting your new habit, has it really become a habit? Many studies show that, on average, it takes 2 months to acquire a new habit. Oftentimes, it can take eight months for just one change, and this is why it’s helpful to look at these changes as a lifestyle change, rather than an all or nothing with a deadline (what we often see as our goal).

This is why you’ll often hear me talk about working with nutrition clients on ONE THING at a time. There’s no meal plan or grocery list. There’s no “good" foods or “bad” foods. It’s built upon each individual’s needs, where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and what small changes can benefit them in big ways. And the most beautiful part is you can do this on your own in so many facets of your life by making one small change, even if it means just starting your day off with a glass of water, or just cooking a meat for meal prepping the week, or just thinking about what tiny changes in your food could have a profound change in your overall health.