Drop the Weight with EJ: What Happens if Your Lifestyle isn’t Healthy 100% of the Time?

You’ve been working hard to be perfect, as you take action to reach your weight loss goal. Sometimes you’re able to stick to your actions for more than a day, or maybe even a week. But the inevitable happens – you slip up.

And you find yourself doing it over and over and over again till you’re not quite sure if it’s possible for you to last on your weight loss plan for more than a few days.

This is usually where you ask yourself if it’s possible for you to be imperfect and get results. Of course when you look around you, you hear people saying things like “no excuses” or “your lifestyle has to be perfect.”

I don’t buy it, and neither should you.

Here’s why perfection isn’t required.

I can talk about this in such detail because I’ve been where you are, and so have my clients. And I’m here to tell you that the perfection that you’re working hard to attain isn’t necessary to get the results you want.

Would your results be better if you’re perfect? Maybe, but that only works if your life is one-dimensional – If all you care about is losing weight.

But the truth is you want so much more. You have a career to build, a family life to have, and a social life to enjoy. And you really can’t do all that to the fullest if you’re focused on having a perfect healthy lifestyle.

So what do you do instead? Skip being perfect.

And here’s how to skip being perfect.

I’m a fan of starting with the one thing. The one thing that you know you can do to get you closer to your goal. I know this sounds counterintuitive to the idea that you need to do all the things, cut out all the carbs, and do all the exercises.

But starting with the one thing will help you build confidence as you get used to the idea that you can be consistent with your actions. Because when you do one thing, even a small thing well, you’ll show yourself that you can keep your promises to yourself.

That’ll build your confidence and your trust in your ability to dive into the harder things.

With the “one” thing, I always suggest starting with healthy eating. The way I see it, you’re going to eat anyway, so you might as well make it healthy. Surprisingly, healthy eating is a great place to start practicing imperfection. You can start by changing one aspect of how you eat and then ad on as you get consistent and confident in your ability to stick it.

Seriously, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. It works!

I know it sounds far-fetched that being imperfect can get you the weight loss results that you’ve struggled to get so far, but it can because being imperfect shows you where:

• you’re not doing so bad.
• you still have work to do.
• you can stand to learn a bit more or get the support you need to breakthrough.
• Contrary to what you’ve been led to believe, being perfect all the time can actually be unhealthy in some cases because it means that you don’t have balance in your life.

If means that you probably don’t:

• go out to social events except you pack food that fits your definition of perfect
• attend networking events for your career, because most of them manage to pack in a shocking amount of unhealthy fare (as an engineer who’s worked in 9 different cities around the world, I’m in awe of this)
• miss a workout even when you’re sick because you don’t want to skip out on a sweat session

What this means is that you’re always on. All. The. Time. And truth be told, this is unsustainable, so please stop beating yourself up if you haven’t been able to maintain this level of performance.

Let go of the idea that you need to be perfect all the time. Nothing in this life requires perfection and what you eat and how you exercise shouldn’t be any different.

Here’s a free resource to help you get started. If you need some practice with shooting for less than 100%, check out The Healthy Eating Made Easy Cheat Sheet.

It breaks down the four food types to eat to get the weight loss results you crave, but it also starts to show you how to enjoy some of your indulgences as well so that you lose weight while leading a balanced life that you truly enjoy.

And till my next column, keep being the amazing and capable woman that you are!

Photo Credit: © Kazzakova | Dreamstime