A Better or worse approach This principle is perhaps the key element underpinning how to make choosing healthy choices an easy and fun thing do. It drives me crazy when I hear people say ”that XXX is bad” or “XXX is healthy”. Statements such as above are unhelpful and cause more harm than good. Let me illustrate. First ask yourself these questions about how the following activities impact your health and whether they are good or bad:
I am sure you have gathered the answers to these.The truth is you cannot answer these questions with the information you have. Do not get me wrong, you will find a million experts on TV, radio and amongst your friends happy to tell you that the above behavior is good or bad for you. The truth is these behaviors cannot be answered as good or bad. Life is relative – nothing is absolute. The strange thing in life is everyone is desperate to label things. People want to label you as a certain type of person, people want to label things good or bad and people want to label your behaviour. This is beyond logic. The only way to deem something good or bad is to compare it (silently or subconsciously) to something else. Therefore if it is compared to something else you are talking better or worse. Let me explain why this is important using the above statements: Eating cereal for your breakfast – The TV adverts tell you this is the way to go but what if you are intolerant to Milk and / or wheat. Would it be better to have no breakfast rather than cereal if this is the case? Maybe changing the cereal would help. What if I had left over dinner for breakfast? The truth is some people will do awful having breakfast for cereal each day and not achieve their goals. However some people will do well on it. It is neither good nor bad as a general term. Running 10 km – If your muscles are not working efficiently then the joints are not protected and running will cause more harm than good. However there are very few people who cannot correct these imbalances and then use jogging effectively for many of the amazing benefits it has to offer. Whether 10km is ideal depends on how often you run it and what your body is able to handle. Some experts would say this is too much aerobic exercise but compared to doing nothing which is better? You cannot say running is good nor bad. Drinking milk – Promoted as good for your bones is milk good for you? What if you are intolerant to it, would it be better to have none than to continue to have it for the calcium? Maybe it is not a lack of calcium in your body that is stopping you losing weight, maybe it is another mineral, and would drinking milk help that? Deeming milk good or bad does not come close to answering these questions. Eating one piece of chocolate a day – Questions to ask would include how much chocolate are you having, what would happen if you did not eat this chocolate? Would it be better to spend 10 minutes on your mental connection to chocolate than going down the gym today or watching that TV show? Eating chocolate like all other health issues is neither good nor bad. The question is how much can you eat and get the results you want? Being 18 stone (115 Kg, 250 Lbs) – If I was 20 stones last month would being 18 stone this month be considered bad? What if it was the reverse? The above should show you that it is time to drop the good or bad labeling for ever because it is irrelevant and does not help you in any way. View the world as better or worse I must reiterate this as it is one of the most important principles in losing weight and the key to free your mind mentally. Adoption of this one mental strategy is enough to get you to your goals if you truly understand its power and meaning. Tell your friends and experts alike. When your friends, family or celebrity TV experts next say something is bad you should immediately ask………compared to what? When someone tells me something is good or bad I almost immediately switch off as it shows they have no truly thought about what they are saying. Such statements are very counter productive. They undermine your beliefs and the result is you feel trapped. In the end you hear so many people say everything is bad it becomes almost pointless and you think, what am I meant to eat?.....I will just eat anything. I had this exact feeling a few years ago. I went to many lectures on organic food. All I heard was how non organic food was bad for you. These world respected lecturers provided a strong argument about how bad non organic food could be for your health. The result was I didn't’t want to eat non organic vegetables. However this left me in an awkward position when I could not find any organic vegetables. I would therefore not eat as much as I should have and often felt hungry. A hungry person is almost guaranteed to eat refined foods or quick fix options which compared to eating non organic vegetables is not even in the same ball park. At this stage I realized that these experts had it all wrong. Yes, their meaning was correct in lets try to eat organic vegetables. However their message of delivery was poor. However it showed me that everything is along a scale and that I must always ask myself the better or worse questions. For the above I would now ask if it is better to eat these non organic vegetables compared to going hungry and being tempted to eat pastries, breads and other foods that dominate our diet now. For me the answer is a resounding yes for non organic vegetables. Would it be the same for you? View the world as relative, I want you to switch off when you hear someone say that something is bad for you or good for you. Instead ask how it could be better or worse in comparison to other behaviours and how you can improve what you are doing. Take this attitude further for great results. If you want to adopt this attitude and then use metabolic typing, exercise and EFT to achieve your health and fitness goals then consider working with me through personal training here in London or On line. |
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