Can you relate to this?
I am out to dinner with friends. We haven’t seen one another in quite some time and want to catch up. The waiter brings the menus. We stop our conversation to peruse them. I am obsessed with what others are ordering. What are you having? What about you? And you? It’s like an inquisition. What my friends are eating is more important to me than what I might want to eat. Why? I don’t want to get it wrong. What if I order something and then I’m disappointed. I even tell the waiter to take my order last. And then I end up ordering what I always order.
Why is it so difficult for us to make up our minds? To decide?
At times in my life, decision making has been excruciating.
Decision-making can be difficult for us because we worry about making the right decision and the consequences if we get it wrong.
What if I make the wrong decision and choose the wrong diet plan?
What if I don’t like my choice and cannot stick with it?
What if I cannot fix it?
What if it doesn’t work?
What if, what if, what if.
When it comes to changing our relationships with food, eating, and our bodies, and ultimately losing weight, making decisions is critical. How well we are able to make decisions and stick with them, and evaluate them honestly, is the difference between making lasting changes, losing weight and giving up and not changing our relationships with food, eating, our bodies, and ourselves.
Indecisiveness robs us of our time, our authority and autonomy, and our peace of mind.
In this week’s blog post, I’m going to cover the following ideas and how they affect us when it comes to our weight loss journeys:
~Basic definitions
~Why Make Decisions?
~Decisions Ahead of Time
~Constraint
Definitions
•Decision-making is the act of deciding, of choosing one of various options.
•Decisions ahead of time is the process of thinking about and planning your future, which allows you to make better decisions. You get to decide what you want to do and create, and take steps toward your desired results.
•Constraint is a limitation or restriction that you place on yourself for your own benefit. It is not punitive.
Why Make Decisions?
When you make decisions, you are choosing to live deliberately. You are engaging the prefrontal cortex, the sophisticated part of the brain that allows you to plan and execute. When you live deliberately, you’re not leaving your life to chance. You decide exactly who you want to be and what you want to do, and then you take action to be and do exactly those things that will get you the results that you want.
When you make decisions, you move forward with energy and purpose.
When you make decisions, you are not at the mercy of your primitive brain whose job is to keep you safe and content, with the least amount of effort necessary. Your primitive brain thinks that anything outside of the norm, the things that you have habitually done for a long time, is a danger to your survival. It’s not true, but your primitive brain thinks you’re going to die if you do anything that you haven’t done before.
Consider this regarding your relationship with food and eating. When you change your eating habits, level up the foods that you eat, and begin to think about yourself in new ways, your primitive brain will rebel. Your primitive brain wants to keep you safe by maintaining the status quo. Its job is not to look into the future and help you make choices now that will serve you later. This is the job of your prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that can make decisions and plan.
When you decide to drink more water, eat only when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied, or cook a meal rather than rely on take-out, your primitive brain will fight. It will resist. And that’s ok. Nothing has gone wrong, it’s just doing its thing. Let it without responding or reacting to it. Just note what is happening.
Then carry on making decisions that serve your best interests and the life you want to create for yourself. It will feel uncomfortable at times. Again, nothing has gone wrong. Discomfort is part of the process of making new decisions for ourselves and evolving into the next versions of ourselves. Over time, the discomfort eases, and choices that were once challenging to us are now routine.
Decisions are neither good nor bad, right or wrong. They’re simply choices you’re making, steps you’re deciding to take for your own benefit. You can always make another decision later. When you catch yourself judging yourself harshly for the decisions you’ve made, pause. Take a moment to remember that you simply made a choice, but now you’re ready to make a different one.
Decisions Ahead of Time
When you make a decision ahead of time, you make a commitment to yourself. When you honor the commitment to yourself, you learn to trust yourself. You are doing what you said you would do. There is so much power in this simple, but not necessarily easy, action.
When you make decisions ahead of time about what you will eat, when and where, and why, you are setting yourself up for success. You take the guess work out of it because you’ve taken control of your own food and eating choices. You won’t have to make in-the-moment decisions, often impulsive ones, about what you’re going to eat.
The more you honor your commitments to yourself, the better you will feel about yourself. Feeling better includes having integrity with yourself, which in turn leads to greater self-esteem. You’ve become that person, the one who has your back.
Don’t overcomplicate this for yourself. This is a time to practice constraint.
Make decisions that serve you.
What can you choose today that will serve you now and in the future?
What can you choose today that is for your best self?
Constraint
When you first hear the word constraint, what comes to mind? Deprivation? Restriction? That’s normal. We think of constraints as limitations that harm us or hold us back. But this is an opportunity to think of constraint as a tool to help you achieve the goals that you want to achieve.
A constraint is a rule that you set up for yourself that helps you make decisions ahead of time.
Example: I won’t eat sugar and flour for the next 90 days.
Your future food decisions and plans won’t include foods that contain sugar and flour. You know ahead of time that your meal planning won’t include bread, cookies, ice cream, and so on. You also know that it will be this for the next three months. Not forever, but for a finite period of time.
You can make a new decision later if this one didn’t work for you. You can decide to change it completely, modify it slightly, or keep it just as it is.
So, why should you constrain?
It helps to minimize the overwhelm that comes from having too much information to process and too many decisions you have to make. Go back to the “no sugar, no flour” for 90 days decision. It’s done. For the next few months, you don’t even have to think about flour and sugar. You’ve already decided the answer to those foods is no.
It helps to minimize the overwhelm of “to do.” You don’t have to plan meals that include these foods. They’re off the table, and you don’t have to think about or do anything about them.
It helps to minimize overwhelming feelings. When we’re in situations of, “Do I eat this, or don’t I,” we are caught up in conflicting desires. “I want that cookie, but I don’t want to feel guilty later.” You’ve already decided that for now, the answer is no. You don’t have to deal with conflicting wants. Later, you can always change your mind and decide to include sugar and flour in your meal planning.
Constraint helps you to develop laser focus on one thing at a time. Focus on one goal, attain it, and then move on to another one.
We think choice is good, so more choices must be better, but having too many options can be paralyzing. Narrow your choices, then select one, and move forward. Again, you can always make a new decision later.
Takeaways
~Make decisions that serve you now and later.
~Start small by constraining. Maybe you want to limit your alcohol to two glasses of wine for the week. Maybe you want to make sure you have colorful vegetables at lunch and dinner. Perhaps you’re going to eliminate snacks for two weeks. Perhaps you want to give up dairy for one week.
~Make plans based on that decision. Write down your plan and track it.
~Decisions are not permanent. Stick with your decision, and then assess how it’s going. You can always make a new decision.
The decisions we make from a place of acceptance and self-care will change our lives.