Idealize.

Hey Kids. This is gonna be a quickie blog post. I'm sharing a vlog below in the "series" of 'Ditching the Psycho Diet Mentality' that so many of you had asked about.....oh how do I NOT end a sentence with a preposition?? I hate Grammar #FAILS. Sorry! Anyway, as I talk about in this video, one of the things I started to realize this year was how much (unintentionally) I had IDEALIZED certain foods in my mind, simply because they were "Forbidden". So --- when we forbid certain foods, simply because we love them, but they are "BAD", there is a fundamental FAIL about to occur. The key is that when you forbid a food or food group for the wrong reasons, and you are still fantasizing about them in your head while you DIET AWAY....you are bound to keep returning to those same favorite foods again and again, usually in greater quantities and frequencies.....

Raise your hand if you have been there done that? 

Look back on my blog over the past two years and you'd see joking references to my 'forbidden foods' like Krispy Kremes or OREOS or Pizza or Pasta....

Not anymore. Why? As I share in the vlog below, the more I took the limits off this year, and allowed myself to eat what I wanted, to listen to my body....the more I found that when I DID have OREOS or Pop-Tarts or Pizza or ice cream- and when I PAID ATTENTION TO THE TASTE (not just the experience of OMG I'm eating this bad food!! I hope no one is watching!!), I realized that it REALLY DIDN'T TASTE THAT GREAT. In fact, MORE often than not, it tasted kind of MEH and QUITE OFTEN it gave me a stomachache.

Life is too short to walk around clutching your stomach whining about tummy aches. So....every time I ate something formerly idealized in my mind, I began to pay attention and really note "Wow these OREO Cakesters are really NOT all that....", it totally wiped out my desire for that food. Don't get me wrong, there are still a few "Don't Eat This Daily" foods that I will always love, but they are FAR less than the extensive list of "OMG Why Can't I Eat This Every Day???" foods about which I used to fantasize. 

NOW....you decide. Would you rather IDEALIZE FOOD, or VISUALIZE WHAT YOUR OPTIMALLY FIT BODY will look like?? 

Think about that. This is NOW what I do when I have food choices- or perhaps, a party or restaurant to go to and I'm thinking, "Oh Lord, we're going to Olive Garden tonight...I'm gonna want to have breadsticks and Alfredo...." <----NOW what I do is STOP thinking about how good some piece of food will taste (and in the case of the OG, yes it ALWAYS WILL TASTE GOOD!!!!) and instead think of how FREAKING AWESOME IT WILL FEEL when my abs look like this:

and hopefully my legs look a little more like this:

and my delts look more like this:

Yea, I'll take that over a 10 minute moment with some CARB all-year-round. It took me a while to get here, and it was a "journey" (Goooossshh that sounds SO Oprah I know) but I'm glad I got through it because now I feel that I'm in SUCH a better place to work and train HARD and eat to FUEL my training and keep my body running and running WELL. It's no longer about denial and obsessive madness. 

It's about kicking ass, having a blast while I'm doing it, and getting BETTER every single day. 

It's ON. 

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Do you feel like you have a good "relationship" with food now?