Omit Needless Foods

A while ago, I was thinking about how to simplify the Eating Coach message to make it more accessible for students of Mindful Eating to understand what I was asking of them.

Omit Needless Foods was what I came up with.

In that sentence, which part jumps out at you? Where does the emphasis go? If you are like most of my clients, the emphasis goes straight to the "Omit" part. The focus has been "give up the good stuff" -- stop eating.

But what if you put the emphasis on the Needless part? What if you were working through the process of finding what foods are needless in your life?

We aren't talking about broad categories here. Although there are very few redeeming traits found in a Fountain Coke from a nutrition perspective, sometimes a Coke is the perfect thing -- and therefore can't be written off as needless in the grand scheme.

On any given day -- where are the bites that are needless -- the ones that don't take care of your physical hunger AND you don't enjoy them -- the ones that add no value to your life.

Find those. Omit those. If you do that, you will get where you want to be.

Done

“If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.” - Dale Carnegie

Today in ZenHabits, Leo is talking about the power of Done. I am a huge advocate of Done -- push through, create, achieve an end point, Done, Hurray!!! Look what I've done!!!

ZenHabits was my inspiration for culling down the philosophy of Eating Coach to:

Omit needless calories. (Simple concept, don't you think?) Done.

But Done in the realm of weight management is a tricky thing. When can you be Done with Mindful Eating?

Is it when you reach your goal weight?

Is it when you have achieved your goal weight and maintained it for one year, two years, five years?

What about when you are just beginning to learn to eat mindfully -- doesn't Done (when you have just mindlessly finished a whole bag of Frito's) seem like it is very far off?

Let's take the Done of mindful eating down a notch. Mindful Eating (by definition) is a practice -- which means you will always be practicing. The Done comes at the end of a meal when you make a conscious decision to stop (even though the food is super-delicious) before the plate is clean and when you have just noticed the very first sensations of something filling your stomach. That definitely gets a Done.

Done is at the end of the day when you realize you didn't have your 3pm snack because you weren't hungry. Done is when you accept that you are really hungry (even though you don't know why) and you eat to satisfy that physical sensation.

But with this definition of Done, it means you keep picking up the ball and striving for "Mindful Dones" at every opportunity.

It is the completion of lots of little Dones that will get you where you want to go and keep you there.