This week I’m excited to have Jen Ede, Editor of TOPS News magazine and fellow TOPS member, as my special guest blogger.
Get Your Inner Six-Year-Old to Eat Broccoli
by Jen Ede
Over the past year, I’ve done my fair share of adulting. For the most part, I eat right, I exercise often and I get enough rest. As a result, I’ve lost weight and have way more energy! But every so often, a little voice pipes up inside my head and tries to talk me out of my healthy rhythm, because, after all, where’s the fun in being responsible? It’s so much better to play all day and eat nothing but sweets. I don’t have any kids, but here are the three R’s that help me parent my inner six-year-old:
First, I redirect. If I’m hit with an intense food craving, I try to delay gratification and make sure to eat something healthy first. Then, I can have a small amount of the thing I really want. Or, sometimes it works to substitute another food with the same texture or overall flavor profile. I’ve had a few nights where I’ve tried to pretend Greek yogurt was ice cream. It was cool and creamy, and a little bit of cinnamon did a world of good. In the end, Greek yogurt was NOT ice cream—we all know that well—but it was close enough to keep me from falling off the wagon and hitting every spoke on the way down. See what works for you.
Similarly, with exercise, sometimes, I’m really not feeling it. (This is usually my inner kid wanting to stay home and binge-watch the Great British Bake Off on Netflix). In these cases, I literally throw myself out the door before there’s even a chance to think of an excuse. I tell myself how good I always feel after a workout and how nice it is to connect with my fellow gym goers. I redirect my attention away from how much I don’t want to go, and by the time I’m there and warming up, I find that I do want to be there after all.
Sometimes, I reward. I’m not at all above occasional bribery. My TOPS friends know how excited I get when I have an evening planned out at a restaurant and a slice of carrot cake worked into my calories for the day. I try to be careful about using food as reward for working out, though, because it’s easy to eat more than the number of calories I just burned.
I have found that buying myself little, nonfood rewards make me just as excited as “cheat days” used to. I don’t need them anymore because I work happy (not “good” or “bad”) foods into my overall diet. Every day. So, for example, to celebrate making it through a particularly difficult month, instead of spending the money on an epic cheat meal, I bought myself some new lemon-drop-yellow trainers. I am now SUPER EXCITED to work out in them—an emotion that translates to feeling excited to go to the gym in general.
But mostly, I re-evaluate. A lot of my weight-loss journey has been about self-work. What is it, exactly, that is triggering my inner six-year-old? Am I tired? Hungry? Frustrated? Lonely? Sometimes, if we take the time to pause and address our more basic needs, the little voice can be soothed by self-care. And sometimes, I really do need to eat ice cream and take a rest. I have learned to listen to myself and distinguish between what the inner kid is whining about and what the adult me really needs to feel my best.
But maybe the greater issue is that my diet or exercise plan isn’t working for me. Maybe I’m eating too many of the foods I don’t like (because they’re “healthy”) or doing too much cardio because that’s “the only way” to lose weight.
In the end, weight loss is a marathon and not a sprint, so when it comes to the foods I choose to eat and the exercise I’m going to do, it makes sense to go with the flow of my life rather than against it—and to eat and do as many things that make me happy as possible. And that, my inner six-year-old and I can agree upon.
