Gentle Nutrition: A Non-Diet Approach to Healthy Eating by Rachael Hartley

Author:Rachael Hartley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victory Belt Publishing
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Power of Small Changes

The world of health and fitness glorifies big changes. Many of the popular health and fitness programs want you to mark the beginning of a “health kick” with a huge, overnight change. They tell you to go big or go home; they tell you that if it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. It’s no wonder many people feel that if the change they are making isn’t big, it’s not going to make a difference.

But big changes are rarely sustainable. Instead of teaching you to adjust to or work around things that happen in real life, like late nights at work, social events, getting sick, or stressful events, these diet and fitness challenges teach you to push through, which can work for only so long.

In psychology, the theory of self-efficacy describes how the belief in your ability to execute a course of action strongly determines your ability to actually carry it out. That’s why it’s so important to set the health goals that you feel confident in achieving in the long term.

In my professional experience, big goals that require overnight changes can be especially paralyzing for those who identify as a perfectionist. An example of this is my client Celia, with whom I worked on treating binge eating disorder. Even though Celia came to realize through our work together that her post-work binge eating was strongly related to not eating enough during the day, she couldn’t seem to get into the habit of bringing adequate meals and snacks to work. Eventually, we discovered that it was perfection paralysis that was keeping her stuck. Instead of telling herself that she just needed to bring adequate amounts of food, Celia told herself that she had to bring the exact right foods and that each meal and snack had to be perfectly balanced. Anything less felt like a failure to her. And it was precisely this fear of failure that had kept her trapped in the same cycle.

So, together we took a step back and set a goal of picking up a few frozen meals and shelf-stable snack foods to keep at work and setting an alarm as a reminder to eat. Then we gradually worked on ways to make it easier for Celia to get adequate food in during the day, such as cooking a little extra food at dinner so she could use the leftovers to throw together easy lunches for work or ordering from the restaurants near her work that she liked. By not letting perfect be the enemy of good, she was able to get into the habit of packing lunch and taking work breaks to eat.

The little things you do make a difference; they can have a huge effect on your physical and mental health. This is true on the negative side as well: little things, like missing or not eating enough at breakfast, getting a bad night of sleep, or skipping your morning walk can affect the rest of your day. You

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