Rachel and I just finished a busy week. We had 36 attendees from all over the world in town for our last ever Results Fitness Mentorship. Very cool week and a good group of people for our last event of this kind.
But as I’m sure all of you know, its weeks like this that create havoc on your diet. We’re pretty good but we tend to fall into what we call “lazy cheats“. A lazy cheat is something that you eat that is not consistent with your diet plan, but isn’t quite a “cheat” meal. In other words, it’s not like you had a big piece of chocolate cake at a party, it’s more like missing a meal, and then eating a sandwich because that’s all that was available, as opposed to planning your two meals that were just protein and vegetables.
The key to avoiding this (and let’s face it, we all have crazy, busy times in our lives) is to focus on strategy. Instead of trying to figure out where to eat NOW, figure out in advance what your week or weekend is going to look like and what strategies you can put into place in advance, to help keep your health and fitness a priority.
On a similar note – this is the first ever blog post I wrote, and thought it fit in well with this topic:
We have a saying in our gym as regards dieting that we call “degrees of slippage”.
People tend to move away from their diet plan in small degrees.
They start to slip in little degrees and never notice it.
For example the original lunch calls for salmon and brown rice.
Client thinks turkey and rice is okay (which it is). So this becomes the new norm – the new reference point.
Now if that’s okay – then chicken and a sweet potato is also okay (true, especially when compared to the new reference point).
Then a lean piece of red meat and a small baked potato is okay (still only another small degree of difference right?)
Then lean ground beef, and a couple of small red potatoes or a wholewheat pita would be fine (guess so).
And if a pita is fine, a small roll must be fine, and the ground beef put into a patty will be fine.
So a hamburger is now the diet lunch of choice. And if a hamburger is fine, a Philly cheesesteak on a hoagie roll is fine etc etc.
Now, none of those changes were all that significant, particularly when the change becomes the new “reference point”. But added up we can see that our recommended lunch of salmon and brown rice has become a Philly cheesesteak !! And the client thinks that they are still ON, as none of these changes (at each stage, from each new point of “the diet”) were all that big!
Remember – little degrees of change ended up being complete 90 degree turns (and in this case, that’s a bad thing….). Make sure you aren’t making these mistakes.
–
AC
