If you’ve ever found yourself ditching your healthy eating or exercise plan when it bumps up against a challenge that prevents you from doing it as intended – you’ve likely fell prey to “all-or-nothing” thinking.
Targeting the ideal means that we aim for a bull’s-eye and don’t consider any alternatives when conflicts arise. Then, when our ideal plan doesn’t work, we top it off with self-blame and even shame. We’ve essentially limited our choices to two: winning or losing, succeeding or failing. This cycle keeps us stuck starting and stopping but never sustaining.
But this thinking seems “right” to you – and if it does – it’s not your fault. We’ve learned to have these types of perfectionistic beliefs about exercise and eating and the ideals they aim to achieve over decades. Even though it’s not really true, and can only work for a few, this has been and continues to be the conventional thinking of our time.
There’s good news though! While most of us can’t succeed at “perfect,” we can succeed at something completely different that I call the Joy Choice. The Joy Choice strategy is designed to strengthen and support our brain’s innate self-management system for better eating and being, and staying, more physically active. Learn how to cut through the mental noise, daily chaos, and make the Joy Choice – the perfect imperfect option—that has the meaning and fortitude to keep us on the path of lasting change.
Learn more at Michelle’s webinar, Disrupting All or Nothing Thinking
Michelle Segar is an award-winning University of Michigan researcher and lifestyle coach. She is member of the IHRSA’s Medical, Science, and Health Advisory Council and was the inaugural Chair of the National Physical Activity Plan’s Communication Committee. She has spent almost 30 years helping individuals and organizations learn how to create sustainable healthy lifestyles. She wrote her new book, The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise, to help individuals and the professionals who work with them create lasting changes through purpose, positivity, and joy.
