Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff – Health and Fitness!

When we embark on our journey to reclaim our health and fitness, we often take on too many changes at once, and when we do that, we reduce our chances of success.

When we’re in this position, we have lots of enthusiasm, but we’re also vulnerable.

If we deem ourselves to have failed during this period, we’re vulnerable to giving in, to saying making a change is too hard, and to reverting back to our old habits.

I know, I’ve done this multiple times over the past couple of decades.

imagine the following scenario, and then see if it sounds similar to something you’ve experienced…

You’ve decided to put your nutrition first, and you’ve just met with your nutrition coach and set up your calories and macronutrients on MyFitnessPal.

A day or two later, you notice you went over your daily allotment by 140 calories and 15 fat grams. Your send your nutrition coach panicked messages asking “What do I do?”

Your nutrition coach tells you not to worry-that going over by a small amount won’t drastically impact your progress. When you meet with them a month in, you start talking about the behaviour changes you have made throughout the month.

During the conversation, you share how you have been late-night binging and not logging the binge.

This scenario is more common than you would expect.

During the day, it is easy to stick to your plan. You eat pre-planned meals, drink water, and log your food.

Then, after an exhausting day of work, putting the kids to bed, and cleaning up, something happens. You have an extra snack or two thinking it will not make a big impact, and you don’t log it.

Then, you do it again.

It is important to avoid getting caught up in the small details of your nutritional intake, especially when you are starting out.

Trying to maintain exact numbers of calories and macronutrients is overwhelming, especially if you have tougher habits to break such as night time eating, eating processed foods, drinking sugary drinks, etc.

Focus on the big picture

Instead of focusing on the small details, focus on the big pictures of changing habits.

You should focus on building a solid foundation of eating quality foods, fueling around your workouts, and properly hydrating, even if you go over your calories.

Track your food, water and sleep while you start building your foundation. (We use a sleep/mood/food tracking formula to highlight our clients’ successes and the areas where a little work will bring a lot of benefit)

Then, once you have a solid long-term foundation with those behaviours, you can dial in the details with the macronutrients.

The goal of a healthy lifestyle is not calorie counting.

The goal is to focus on 1-2 positive behaviour changes at a time.

This will make your new healthy lifestyle infinitely more manageable in the long run.

To find out how we can help you, click here to schedule a Free Intro