“You must learn to manage your expectations, and not let them manage you”
I was recently having a really good conversation with an old friend from high school on the phone. We were laughing about the good ol’ days and the cringy things we’d like to forget.
Until we got onto the topic of food and weight issues, which was something we both struggled with throughout our lives. There was so much pressure to lose weight coming from every direction.
Now that we are both grown, married adults, I would like to think we have matured in this area. But the truth is, issues with food and weight is a lifelong learning process.
You see, I’m a black and white thinker. I am either doing very well on my diet, or I am completely off the band wagon. Maybe you can relate.
For example, I’d wake up, go to the gym, start my morning routine. But then I see the leftover pasta in the fridge. I stare at it, having an internal battle in my head.
It looks so good. Should I eat it? I can always start over tomorrow. So if I eat this now, I might as well eat crap the rest of the day. What else can I have? Maybe I’ll get takeout later and bake some cookies for dessert.
It was a vicious cycle. Where every day, I would give up and eat worse than the day before, binging in front of the tv all day, all because of the one decision to eat something “bad”.
We must learn to live in the grey. Not the black, not the white. We cannot continue to live in extremes if we want to live a healthy lifestyle or ultimately lose weight.
My friend and I sat there discussing this for hours because she and I have had this battle of extremes going on for as long as we can remember.
“If you choose to eat the pasta. Eat the pasta. Enjoy every single bite. But when it’s done, it’s done. You continue on with your day eating healthy. Just because you ate one thing that you think is bad, doesn’t mean you have to ruin all the other progress you made by continuing to eat bad the rest of the day.”
That means we don’t get mad at ourselves after we have a slip up or “cheat meal”. That means we continue to do things that are good for us throughout the day. You don’t allow it to ruin any progress you have already made. You enjoy it and move on.
So this past weekend, I did just that. I had a meal on Saturday that I would have usually deemed bad. It usually would have sent me spiraling and got me off track for days.
But I ended it there. I still went to the gym. I still reached my other goals. But I enjoyed every bite of the food and left it at that.
When I was telling my husband all about my new mindset, he said, “I’ve been telling you the same thing all this time!”
I smiled and replied, “It’s because it came from someone who truly understood how I felt and dealt with this for years. You’ve never struggled with your weight or this black and white mentality.”
Sometimes it just takes someone who has gone through the same things you have to tell you how to adjust and fix it, because they truly understand. If some skinny person who never struggled with their weight is telling you how to lose weight, it just doesn’t have the same effect.
So if you are someone who struggles with weight and food addiction in any form, I am here to tell you I’ve been going through it for 15 years. Start to live in the grey.
If you allow yourself a meal here or there, enjoy it, but don’t get off your plan completely and ruin all the progress you’ve made. You don’t have to overdo it. It’s not worth it.
Because that is what will keep you off track for years to come. When you make a “mistake”, move on and keep working hard. You will see the progress.
I am learning to live in the grey. Because black and white thinking is unsustainable and dangerous. Nobody can be perfect all the time.
We must learn to manage our expectations, not let them manage us. We must be realistic with the expectations we put on ourselves.
Newsflash! You will never be perfect. You’ll never be perfect at dieting, weightlifting, exercising, eating healthy, or losing weight. We will never be 100% committed 100% of the time.
As you know, I have 100 goals I’m trying to reach in these 100 days, but I know that I will not achieve them all. I am managing my expectations in a healthy way and recognizing that they are all not going to be reached. But it is helping me to create new habits and a new lifestyle. It is helping me to learn to live in the grey, not in this world of unrealistic perfection.
And that is when I exceed my personal expectations, when I manage them with a healthy mindset. I cannot allow my expectations to manage me and cause me to go further down the rabbit hole of unhealthy mindsets.
We can learn to love ourselves in the in-between. In the grey.
