Motivation, especially for good nutrition, comes in fits and starts for me. I sometimes have a bad day or weekend here and there, where I eat everything I see, especially when there’s birthday cake AND brownies AND sneezed on cake balls AND Mariano’s m&m cookies AND …. so on. The motivation to lose weight after that is in overdrive. 

What does motivation on overdrive look like for me, you ask? It looks like trying to lose all the weight I just gained all at once, like hitting the undo button a bunch of times. It involves multiple workouts, overly restrictive eating that I will NOT be able to sustain, and frustration at a lack of immediate results. Sometimes I even continue to gain weight and then absolutely despair that my suffering (self-inflicted and only going on for one day) is all for nothing. It’s a real pity party.

I’d love to say that this is what I USED TO do, and now I have the secret to never behave this way or treat myself this way again. The truth is, I might do it again, despite my knowledge, despite my normal positivity, despite my good support group. I can thankfully say that it’s been a while because I’ve developed some pretty good habits during quarantine, but I’m not going to say I’m a new person who will never slip into old habits ever again. I REALLY like cake. Plus my old habits have been built over a lifetime, and the new habits started in March and are very closely tied to my current daily schedule.

Those good habits also have to do with routine. I didn’t make drastic changes to what I eat. I know there are really great superfoods out there that can optimize calorie consumption, the most bang for your caloric buck, like kale and quinoa and hemp… I’ll be honest, I don’t really like those foods very much. There are creative ways to bring them into one’s diet, like putting kale in a smoothie and stuff like that. I am still a work in progress, so I can still try to adopt this habit. 

But at the moment, I’m feeling pretty good about the good habits I’ve developed with food I already like. I’ve been able to eat more protein at breakfast to feel full longer, instead of just eating cereal and feeling hungry again an hour later. I’ve been really busy lately, so I’m not bored which means less snacking. Huge win there. I also have weirdly spent most of my life not really eating lunch. I guess I ate lunch in grade school, but in high school, I started eating lunch early because I was too hungry, so then I just got in the habit of eating 3 small meals in the middle of the day. Some people say this is a good idea, that eating 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day is a way to lose weight. Ok, that might work. It does not work for me. I need to feel kind of full or I will keep eating, and small meals never get me to that point. So now I eat lunch! And then I usually have a little snack in the afternoon but don’t eat any sweets until after dinner. 

Probably the biggest habit that I’ve had around for a long time without really tying it to nutrition is meal planning. My husband and I started meal planning before grocery shopping really early on in our relationship because it made grocery shopping easier and cheaper. We plan out what to cook for dinner for the week, have some lunch options, and pick out our snacks for the week. If we ran out of snacks or desserts by Tuesday, then I guess we wouldn’t have snacks or desserts later in the week. Now I can’t really imagine grocery shopping without having meals planned out already. I’m not a particularly adventurous cook. So this habit is deeply ingrained.

This set of habits is probably as good as it’s going to get for me at present because as soon as I start getting overly restrictive, I go too far, and that can’t last. Then I’ll inevitably go the other way and eat alllll of the cake. If there’s no cake, I will make cake and then eat allll of it. 

I feel freedom in the fact that I don’t have to eat like a competing athlete anymore. I could eat better, but this works for me for now. I’m not losing weight, but I’m not gaining weight, and I’m staying healthy and enjoying my workouts. I still feel a sense of loss at not being an athlete though, that my workouts don’t feel like they have much purpose. Yes, I’m back to that. Goal-setting is in my very near future! See you back here soon.