Are you all or nothing?

Hi ,

When you decide that you’re going to get your diet in order, or start a new exercise routine, do you start immediately?

Or do you think to yourself, “I’ll start on Monday” or “I’ll start after the holidays”?

I see this in my practice all the time. Clients are excited to change their health, and we have a great conversation about the various things they could start doing, and just as we’re about to end the call, they’ll put some condition on when they’re going to start.

This is a clear sign that they’re experiencing an all-or-nothing mindset around their health, and it’s a mindset that I want to help all my clients move away from.

The reason this is such a big priority for me is that ‘all-or-nothing’ is not sustainable.

Yo-yoing back and forth between abstinence and bingeing is much worse for you than experimenting your way in the right direction.

The cortisol, shame, and frustration — that last so long and compound over time — are far worse than just choosing to eat, say, a donut, choosing to be guilt-free about it, and moving on with your life.

Apart from the stalled progress in your health and the cost to your mental wellbeing, Dr. Kristin Neff also describes how this all-or-nothing way of thinking is also highly linked with low self-esteem (you can listen to her podcast with Dr. Peter Attia here).

I see this frequently as a correlation in my patients who are struggling with this mindset. Food is meant to be a pleasure, something that increases our quality of life — not something that makes us suffer.

Fortunately for most of us, realizing that we’re in an all-or-nothing cycle is most of the battle won.

So, here are the big indicators that you might be suffering from this extreme mindset towards your health:

You think of foods as good or bad. ‘Healthy’ foods are good, ‘unhealthy’ foods are bad.
Any time you eat a ‘bad’ food you feel like a failure and beat yourself up, even if you’ve been eating mostly ‘good’ food recently
You think you have no self-control if you’re not totally restricting ‘bad’ foods
You want to wait until the right moment or until all the conditions are perfect to start making changes to your health

If this is you, then consider this your permission slip — in writing from your doctor — to stop worrying about getting everything perfect.

Food is just food. It’s not good or bad, there’s no moral ingredient hidden anywhere. Some foods will make you feel good or bad, and the process of figuring that out is a lifelong practice of experimentation and observation.

And it’s no good waiting for perfect conditions to start. There will always be something else around the corner that will put you off: a party, a vacation, a project.

It will be uncomfortable sometimes, and sometimes you won’t get it right for what you personally need.

But if you can allow yourself to start experimenting with balance, your health will become more intuitive in a way that is sustainable and enjoyable over the long term.

My definition of health is the ability to be flexible. This is balance — being able to take a moment to check in with yourself and make an active decision about what’s in front of you. This is also the foundation of self-control, which is also a practice, and gives you the power to decide when something is worth it or not.

Getting away from the all-or-nothing mindset starts with one simple question:

Is this worth eating right now?

Just taking one moment to think consciously about it makes all the difference: you will start to sense how that food might make you feel before you eat it. Sometimes the answer to that question will be hell yes, get in my belly, other times the answer will be eughhh nope.

Experimenting with how particular foods make you feel will speed up this process a lot: if you discover that a certain food has some significant consequences for two or three days after eating it, it’s a lot easier to decide that you’re not going to eat it. On the other hand, if you know that a certain food doesn’t really affect you in the short or long term, you can feel more confident about eating it without any cause for concern.

Regardless of the answer, actively making the decision will help you feel more in control. You’ve made a specific choice, rather than just acting on an impulse that overtook you.

So I’d like to leave you today with a challenge:

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment, or you’ve been trying to restrict yourself down to the last calorie, take action on something today that will help move you closer to sustainable, flexible, enjoyable balance.

It could be as simple as committing to drinking enough water each day or adding one additional serving of vegetables to one of your meals. Make one small choice that you can begin to act on immediately and that you will be able to stick to even when the conditions are imperfect.

Often these small changes create a cascade, where everything else starts to fall into place, because you’ve made some progress and you’ve learned to trust yourself. Just make a start, and see what happens.