Survival and Creation Mentalities in Nutrition
I remember around last Halloween my 5 year old cousin looked up to me and asked: “How come God didn’t make candy healthy” ? I couldn’t help but crack a smile. This is most certainly one of the great mysteries of life!
Even when life is “normal” (whatever that really means) nutrition can be one of the toughest things to tackle. Most of us know the foods that are better or worse to put in our body. Although once we think we’ve figured it out we hear about the latest diet and give up because of confusion on what food we should really be eating.
As if that wasn’t hard enough, with the stress brought on my work, taking care of family and lack of time it makes it so difficult to make good decisions. It really seems like the foods we shouldn’t be eating are the quickest, most convenient and tastiest options out there.
With all of this on the table you might be asking: How the hell do I navigate this during a global pandemic?
Well my response is let’s talk about mindset. There are two mindsetsI always think about:
Survival vs Creation Mentalities.
The survival mentality is when we focus on what we don’t want to happen (also known as worrying). Saying things like I don’t want to get hurt or I don’t want to be out of shape. While this seems helpful it is kind of like calling your husband or wife from the grocery store and asking them what they want for dinner. Their response: well I don’t want tacos. Does that actually help you figure out what you want for dinner? Nope. (And by the way, who the hell doesn’t want tacos?!)
In opposition we have the creation mentality. This is when we focus on what we want to happen. I want to be healthy or I want to have an elite level of fitness. Once we shift our focus on what we want to happen we can actually move in that direction and take the steps necessary to achieve those goals.
As a society we need to step out of the survival mindset more than ever. And nutrition is the same way. Rather than focusing on what you “can’t” eat, I recommend you add more of the good stuff. Stop telling yourself you can’t have the things you like. Instead make goals to drink more water, eat a vegetable at every meal, eat more whole foods, increase your lean protein intake.
Because the real goal is chasing progress, not perfection. This is more sustainable and when we increase more of the good things we will naturally decrease the less than ideal stuff like candy and highly processed foods.
Make a list of the things you are going to eat more of and stick with it for a week!