Black and White thinking
Do you live your life in Black and white? Is everything a Yes or No?
For most things in life there’s normally a bit more nuance or a sliding scale.
To attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle many people think in a binary way of things being either BAD or GOOD but this can often lead to a spiral of BAD choices after one questionable choice of a food or beverage. So how can we think differently with a view of progressing towards the GOOD end of the spectrum and not being derailed if we make one BAD decision. Maybe rather than things being GOOD or BAD we should think in terms of BETTER or WORSE.
The incredible chocolate Brownies that my son loves from a local shop Baked Brownies probably aren’t the healthiest thing on the planet and technically would slide towards the BAD end of the scale. If he was aiming to drop a dress size for summer or get lean ready for the beach then it’s a type of food that due to the very high sugar and calorie count we would recommend was left out of a person’s diet. He does however have visible abs that I would die for and lives a very active lifestyle so eating one of these gooey treats after school on a Friday is in no way detrimental to his health.
High Intensity Interval Training(H.I.I.T) is highly recommended for virtually all people because of its ability to improve cardiovascular health whilst delivering a shot of endorphins like virtually nothing else on the planet. As such it would definitely sit on the Good end of the exercise spectrum but sometimes too much of a Good thing can be a problem. Some people find the lure of a H.I.I.T class too much and this becomes the only type of exercise that they engage in. Unfortunately this can sometimes mean that this GOOD exercise becomes too stressful and means people can’t always recover from it so they don’t gain the benefits it would otherwise provide.
In the same way as we know that H.I.I.T training is great for improving health and fitness we know that Resistance training is a vital part of the jigsaw puzzle for developing muscle mass, increasing metabolic rate and being stronger so sits at the GOOD end. Over doing the Resistance training or training with poor technique can however sometimes result in problems of joint injuries and muscle tightness which are definitely on the BAD end of the spectrum but that definitely doesn’t mean we should leave resistance work out all together.
Our key aim for developing a healthier lifestyle whether that is being fitter, stronger, losing weight or gaining it is to attempt to move along the continuum of BAD to GOOD and aim for the gradual pursuit of better. In doing this a great method is to look for the easiest small win you can achieve to move along the spectrum and make a new BETTER habit. The book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear is brilliant at discussing this concept and how you can harness the way our brains work when we achieve something no matter how small to push in the BETTER direction.
One of the great ways we can help push towards BETTER is being accountable to someone else alongside ourselves. Either working with a coach or finding someone that you train with can help to drive your behaviours in the right direction.
If you think that you’d like to make some choices about your health and fitness that move you from the BAD end of the spectrum towards GOOD then why not get in touch for a chat.