ReStart Your Heart The Wrap Up from Class #14 Well-Lesson

Lunch + Psych Nutrition

Here’s some more of Coach Sarah’s Favorites:

Salad

2 cups lettuce/spinach
4 oz chicken
Chopped bell pepper
Chopped tomatoes
Chopped cucumbers
1 Tbs seeds/nuts
1-2 Tbs dressing of choice

Chicken salad

4 oz chicken
½ cup grapes cut in half
¼ cup chopped celery
2 Tbs olive oil/grape seed oil mayo
Salt and pepper to taste
On bed of spinach

Taco bowl

4 oz ground turkey + taco spice
Chopped peppers
Chopped red onion
Tomatoes
Salsa
Avocado
Cheese (Caution! Not recommended for weight loss or if you “off” when eating it)
On bed of lettuce or ¼ cup brown rice/quinoa

Dinner leftovers!

Psych Nutrition

Have you ever wondered:

Why the scale has the power to impact your mood?
Why you grab a snack every time you walk through the kitchen?
How your stomach and brain tell you you’re full?
How you’ve learned to label foods as “bad” and now feel guilty eating them?

Let’s Learn:

Understand the physical and mental factors driving your food choices in the moment.
ID the root cause of your bad habits
Pinpoint your biggest obstacles for sticking with it.

We find our motivation by really, truly understanding WHY we want to reach our super goals. That deep, meaningful “Ultimate WHY” – that driving force that pushed you to finally take that plunge and what excites and inspires you to work towards your super goals every day.

Like a relentless 5 year old, you need to keep asking yourself “why” until you’ve gotten the truth. It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion, and yes tears might be involved too!

Psych Tricks:

You build a muscle by working it – not once, but over and over again. Expose yourself repeatedly to a difficult situation, it gets easier and easier until it becomes a habit. This is called “exposure”.

But the opposite is also true. Consistently avoid an uncomfortable situation, you’ll build a habit of avoidance. And bad habits like avoidance, can be tough to break.

The reality is, motivation is not constant.

Some mornings you’ll jump out of bed for a morning run. Others you can barely drag yourself out from beneath the covers to make a cup of coffee.

Your best defense against these motivational dips is an SOS plan. Another tool for long-term success.

A motivation SOS plan has 3 parts:

The warning sign
The danger zone.
The reaction.

The Warning Sign:

This describes what you do (or don’t do) when your motivation starts to dwindle. You might:

Stop weighing yourself

Only log your meals occasionally

Not work on your action plan that you set

The Danger Zone:

This ID’s how you know the warning sign is a problem – a red flag (if it wasn’t a problem, it would probably be green). For example, you may forget to set your alarm and get up for one workout, But if you miss 3 in a row, this should be a red flag that there’s something deeper going on.

The Reaction:

This outlines what action you’ll take to prevent your slip from becoming a slide. Either you can initiate that action (if you’re extremely self-aware) or we can help you get the ball rolling (if you need a little extra support and accountability). For example: We might send you a text message or a friend might reach out to your BFF or spouse to help get you back on track.

Now let’s put it all together in an example:

Warning sign: I stop logging my meals.

Danger zone: I only log 1 meal or snack per day.

Reaction: I ask my coach to help me create an action plan to check in at a specific time each day.

It’s easy to get caught up in the “perfectionist” trap. But being so focused on being “perfect” prevents us from taking action or making any progress at all.

So forget perfection – it’s not the pathway to success.

You’re going to blow your calorie budget. You’re going to fall short of your goals. You’re going to gain a pound or two and you’re going to lose it again.

You’re incredible…BUT ALSO HUMAN!

The first step to breaking the behavior chain:

For most of us, when we hear the phrase “bad habit”, we instantly can think of a dozen things we do that we wish we didn’t. You probably noticed, when you repeat the same behavior over and over again, it eventually seems to just “happen” without any conscious thought. But there is a deeper piece to this.

You don’t just “forget” to go to the gym or polish of a bag of chips “without thinking” while watching TV.

There is a (sub)conscious process that controls every action you take.

It’s called the behavior chain. The behavior chain describes the process that produces any type of behavior. Understanding your chain is the first step to breaking a bad habit. All behavior chains have one things in common — they start with a trigger!

Triggers come in many shapes and sizes. They can be environmental, biological, mental, emotional or social.

Imagine you walk into a party. A server tempts you with a plate of hor d’oeuvres. Hello environmental trigger! You look around and all your friends are happily munching away. Greetings social trigger! You’ve had a terrible day and are completely worn out. Nice to see you again, mental and emotional triggers, how’ve you been?

Triggers produce these things in your brain we nerds call “thoughts.” Thoughts can be great, but in the wrong hands, thoughts can be evil and say things like “You’re at a party, have a good time!” or “All your friends are eating, why not you?” or “What a terrible day, you deserve a piece of cheese cake just for standing upright.”

These thoughts lead to actions. Actions like reaching out your hand, snatching up the last friend cheeseball and tossing it into your mouth before your brain has a chance to think.

Not only do action have consequences, but there are 4 distinct types of consequences – physical, physiological, psychological, or emotional. In the cheeseball example:

That was delicious (physiological)

My stomach doesn’t feel so good (physical).

Wondering “why did I do that?” or “what’s wrong with me?” (psychological).

Feeling disappointed or guilty (emotional).

Let’s bring it back full circle:

Trigger – Being tired or low energy.

Thought – “I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.”

Action – Overeating

Awareness is KEY!

The toughest obstacle you’ll face on your health journey will be the battle with your own mind (cue the scary music). “But my mind and I get along so well! She would never hurt me!” True, but your mind also loves Krispy Kreme donuts. Hmmmmmm.

So how do you win against your mind? Simple: by recognizing its tricks, like, THOUGHT DISTORTIONS.

Thought distortions are a fancy way of explaining how our evil minds convince us of things that aren’t really true (like ice cream doesn’t really have any calories if you eat it while standing in front of the freezer).

The best way to combat your thought distortions is to understand their different shapes and sizes:

All or nothing thinking (a.k.a. Black or white): You classify things as falling into only 1 of 2 categories. Ex. “I ate a cookie at lunch. I’ll never be able to improve my eating.”
Mind reading: You predict what others will think. Ex. “People will think I’m strange if I order a salad instead of pasta.”
Unhelpful rules: You adhere to strict rules that mess with your progress. Ex. “I must finish all the food on my plate.”
Justification: You link 2 unrelated ideas to justify a decision. Ex. “I can have a double-decker strawberry mousse because I had salad for dinner.”
Delusional thinking: You convince yourself of something you don’t really believe to justify a decision. Ex. “This small sliver of cake doesn’t count.”
Exaggerated thinking: You make a situation into something bigger than it is. Ex. “I had a donut for breakfast so my day is ruined.”