Is all the conflicting health fad information out there overwhelming? How do you create a healthy, sustainable lifestyle you love when you don’t know what you’re supposed to do? Read on to learn how to cut through the info, challenge your assumptions, and ask the single most important question to discover what you should really be doing.
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Things you think you’re supposed to do:
- Do you need to do monthly detoxes to get healthy and lose weight?
- Should you spend hours in the kitchen meal planning and meal prepping in order to eat healthy?
- Do you have to eat a bland, boring diet of chicken, broccoli and rice for the rest of your life to be healthy?
- Are you supposed to work out for an hour every day until you puke so you can get fit?
I’ve got good news: the answer is a huge, resounding NO! But how do you define what your ideal healthy life looks like with all this conflicting info?
I’m going to show you how to forget what you think you’re supposed to do by challenging your assumptions. Then you’ll ask yourself the single most important question that will allow you to cut through all the conflicting information to discover what you really should be doing.
First, forget everything you think you’re supposed to be doing.
You have to block out all that information overload. Because this is your body, your health, and YOUR life. And you don’t need anyone else telling you what you’re supposed to do. Challenge every assumption you make.
Then ask yourself this one question: How does this make me feel?
Let’s go back to the questions I asked a minute ago. These are assumptions I hear people make every single day, so let’s challenge them and you can ask yourself how they make you feel.
Do you need to do monthly detoxes to get healthy and lose weight?
What is your initial reaction to this question? If you first think “Well, I heard that it worked for so and so,” then this is your first chance to challenge that assumption. Do you WANT to do monthly detoxes? Does the process sound fun? What are the possible benefits and what are the possible risks? Is the effort you need to put in worth the payoff?
It’s up to you to come to your own conclusion on this one – but ultimately keep in mind that there are a million ways to get to the same place so if you aren’t totally excited to do a detox then you don’t have to do it!
Should you spend hours in the kitchen meal planning and meal prepping in order to eat healthy?
This is another question that is really up to you. I LOVE spending time in the kitchen. Looking through recipes and meal planning and cooking are cathartic for me. I gave meal prepping a try and I do my own sort-of meal prepping where I cook large batches of food and store the leftovers so I have lunches for the week.
But the full blown spend an afternoon in the kitchen cooking all your meals for the week style is just not worth the time and effort for me. So I don’t do it. And I don’t feel guilty about it because what I’m doing works for me!
Do you have to eat a bland, boring diet of chicken, broccoli and rice for the rest of your life?
Again, if you’ve got a bland palate and actually enjoy these foods, then eat how you like! But if the thought of eating like that for any length of time makes you want to cry, then challenge that assumption! Who says that’s the only diet that will make you healthy? What does a healthy diet mean for you? Ok, that’s a big question for another time, but hopefully you get my point here that you can challenge that assumption and start asking yourself what YOU really want and need to do here.
For example, there’s a huge push right now to shift to a plant-based, meat-free diet. There’s even a good amount of scientific evidence that supports the benefits of this way of eating. I bought into it for almost 10 years. I loved that it was better for the environment, felt more ethical and I wanted to believe it was healthier.
But the years I was vegan were actually when I hit the lowest point for my health.
Now, I can’t blame all my health problems on being vegan. That would be silly. But I can say when I took a step back from the dogma of eating vegan and started really paying attention to how the food I was eating affected me, I ended up completely changing my diet.
I eat meat now – and I still eat a ton of vegetables and fruits. But I had to cut out beans, soy, and whole grains because they were actually causing a lot of issues for me. Those foods are supposed to be loaded with nutrients and health benefits. And I’m sure they’re super healthy for a lot of people. But for me, they’re not.
I had to challenge my assumptions and ask myself how my diet was making me feel. And even though I thought I was eating what I was supposed to be eating to be healthy, it turned out that my assumptions were wrong. I feel so much better now thanks to that one simple question.
Are you supposed to work out for an hour every day until you puke to get fit?
I think most people would say they don’t actually want to puke. But there are plenty of people out there who seem to love their high intensity workouts. Now, I could talk for hours about the psychology behind this one, but for today let’s focus on what we’re working on: Checking assumptions and asking yourself how it makes you feel.
Check this assumption: Do you HAVE to do crazy intense workouts every day to get fit? The answer is no.
For me, I avoid intense workouts like the plague. Because when I ask myself how do they make me feel the answer is always: absolutely awful! High intensity workouts only exacerbate my stress and flare up my adrenal fatigue. And they come with way too high of a risk for injury for me to ever justify participating in them. And I don’t need to push like that to get the endorphin rush that people are after when doing these workouts.
I get a way bigger rush when I do workouts that involve listening to my body. My favorite workouts leave me feeling energized, physically comfortable, and mentally calm.
That’s just me. It’s up to you to ask yourself how a particular workout makes you feel. Then you can determine how much of what kind of exercise you need to get sustainable health and fitness results for yourself.
Before you go…
Here’s a little caveat to the “How does it make you feel?” question. I’m not talking about that dopamine hit you get after you stay up late playing on your phone or binge watching netflix, or gorging yourself on doritos and donuts. Even going to back to the exercise example. I’m not talking about that endorphin rush a person gets after doing 100 burpees.
I’m talking about AFTER that. When you feel sluggish and exhausted because you didn’t get the rest you needed. Or you feel sick and gross because now you’re struggling to digest that whole bag of doritos and texas-sized apple fritter. No judgement here – I’ve done it too.
Pay attention to how you’re feeling AFTER. Because that’s going to be the true answer to the “How does it make me feel?” question.
If you do that crazy intense workout because you love the endorphin rush in the moment, but then your legs and arms hurt so bad you can’t move and you’re too exhausted mentally and physically to enjoy the evening with your family, then the answer is that it didn’t truly make you feel good.
Forget what you’re supposed to do
There is an endless supply of contradictory information and health, diet and fitness fads out there all telling you what you’re supposed to be doing. But no one but you can tell you what is right for your body.
So when you think about what you are supposed to do to be healthy, stop right there and check those assumptions. How does that assumption make you feel? If you have a knee-jerk reaction that you don’t want to do it then you don’t have to! Or take the time to get more information if you’re curious. Then decide if it’s something you want to test out to see if it is right for you.
Remember this: Just because it was a quick fix for someone else does not mean it will work for you. And more importantly, it doesn’t mean that it’s a healthy, sustainable option for long-term results. And kind of like the vegan diet for me, just because something is healthy and working well for another person, doesn’t mean it’s going to be right for you.
Shashank Mehta
Staying fit and keeping your body in shape always is a bit difficult these days as everyone is busy with their day to day life, we don’t get time to hit the gym and maintain our fitness. Thank you for sharing such a helpful article with us.
Jess
It’s so true! I have an arsenal of at-home workouts that are perfectly effective, yet trying to do them with the kids around, and all the other things we want to do around the house makes it hard. Thank you so much for reading!