Glenbrooke News

Got a minute? That’s long enough to change your thinking.

The Wt. Loss Minute By Linda Spangle, RN, MA
Author: 100 Days of Weight Loss
www.WeightLossJoy.com

Great idea: Do it right or do it anyway!

Shelly had another bad week. She’s been telling me how much
she really wants to stick with her diet program. But day after
day, something seems to go wrong and she falls off her plan.

Today she said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m
either totally perfect with my diet, or I’m in the kitchen
eating everything in sight. I can’t seem to find anything
between these two extremes!’

‘What do you think is getting in your way?’ I asked. Shelly
responded quickly. ‘I’m pretty much an ALL OR NOTHING type
person. In fact, I seem to be a perfectionist about lots of
things in life. And with my diet and exercise program, I keep
waiting for a time when I can lay it all out and do it the RIGHT way.’

A lot of dieters struggle with ‘all or nothing thinking.’
Even if you don’t think it’s affecting you, this type of
perfectionism can routinely block you from reaching your goals.
Most perfectionists tend to follow the same theme—DO IT RIGHT
OR DON’T DO IT AT ALL. But since they never reach the point
where they can do it ‘right,’ perfectionists never start.

When you get hung up on the ‘right’ way to do something, you
lose sight of all the other possibilities. So, in spite of your
good intentions, you keep repeating your same negative patterns.

As a perfectionist, you not only apply this yourself, you also
tend to have tight rules about other people’s behaviors. And
eventually, these rigid expectations about life can make you miserable.

Typical expectations

For almost everything in life, you form a picture of how you
expect things ‘should’ be. Think of this picture as a square,
sort of a mental snapshot of what you expect. There’s nothing
wrong with this; it’s simply the way you view things in life.

For example, if you go into a bank, you expect the money to be
stored in the vault, not carelessly thrown around on the
counters. At a nice restaurant, you anticipate there will be
clean tables, attentive wait staff, and decent food.

But sometimes perfectionism causes people to have tight,
inflexible rules about things. In this case, your mental squares
become very small, causing you to apply rigid expectations to
people or things around you. Unfortunately, when you hold a tight picture frame around a situation or a behavior, you risk being disappointed or upset because real life won’t match your expectations.

Rigid expectations

Think about times you’ve been disappointed with something
you’d hoped for. You anticipate your children will be excited
when they open their holiday gifts, but instead they act hurt
because they didn’t get what they wanted. After you give up an
entire Saturday to run errands for your grandmother, you expect
her to appreciate your efforts. Instead, she complains that you
should have been there last week.

You also might be using a tight expectation square around your
own behavior. Rather than set up a realistic eating plan, you
design one that’s rigid and overly strict. Then, if you eat a
cookie that wasn’t on your plan, you feel so disgusted that you
give up and eat more.

Widen the square

If you consistently find that life doesn’t match your
expectations, you need to widen your square and change the
picture of what you consider acceptable. Apply this to your own
behavior as well as to what you expect from others. Fill in the
square with the new picture, and then ask yourself:

Could it be like THIS (different from my picture) and still be okay?

Imagine all the areas where you could apply this concept.
Suppose your child brings home a disappointing report card. What
if the person in front of you at the grocery express checkout
lane has eleven items instead of ten? How about when you’re
overworked boss snaps at you? Instead of following your rigid
rules about how people ‘should’ behave, could you widen your
square to view these situations differently?

Take a close look at the expectations you’ve set for yourself.
Suppose you make one tiny slip on your diet. Does that really
mean you have to go off your plan the rest of the day? Rather
than giving up because of ‘all or nothing,’ widen your
expectations to allow for more options.

Work out an eating plan that allows flexibility while still
following your guidelines. Take the same approach with your
exercise program or your efforts to avoid munching in response to stress. By making your pictures more flexible, you’ll have a
better chance of life matching them.

Know others who’ve got a minute? Forward this ezine and brighten their day.

This ezine is currently focusing on the challenges of emotional
eating and other psychological issues. The content is based on
excerpts from my book ‘Life is Hard, Food is Easy: The 5-Step
Plan to Overcome Emotional Eating.’

To read previous issues:
http://shakerjardiet.com/index.php?page_id=317

Reprinted with persmission

© Linda Spangle, 2009. #0928, Weight Loss for Life, Inc.
5023 W. 120th Ave. #183, Broomfield, CO 80020
Contact: Linda@WeightLossJoy.com
www.weightlossjoy.com
303-452-1545 or 1-800-298-3020