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All or Nothing Mindset Trap
Do you say things like “I’m on track”, “I’m having a good or bad day” and the ultimate “on and off the wagon”?
Absolutist thinking is one of the most common denominators in our Going Beyond The Food community. It’s the source of many emotional eating loops, overeating weekends and restricted food binges.
The truth is the all or nothing mindset is a negative thought process also known as cognitive distortion. Everything- from food to your views of yourself to professional life– is divided into black or white terms. Everything is either success or failure.
The consequences of this way of engaging with food and, quite frankly, life are anxiety, stress, self-doubt, low self-esteem, feeling of failure and shame and long-term distorted relationship to food. Most critical, it affects our ability to have a healthy and balanced life experience.
To add fuel to the fire, the fact is that diets are built around the all or nothing framework. We start the diet, we restrict food and it works until it doesn’t. Then, we try harder and feel that we need to be 100% to get results… we feel deprived… we cave in having “bad food” … as a result, we feel ashamed of ourselves… and it goes on and on.
The Solution to the “All or Nothing Mindset”
The solution is to learn to live in the grey… to separate your self-worth with how you engage with food or your weight. You are so much more than the way you eat or what you weigh.
Step 1
The first step, instead of trying to suppress your hunger and cravings, seek to understand why you desire to eat. Shift the focus from bad and good to compassion and acceptance.
Step 2
The second step is to learn to manage your emotions with something else than food. We teach using your breath (The Crave Cure Formula) to ride the wave of your emotions. Some use tapping… many other solutions… just got to program your subconscious mind to seek something else than food.
Final Step
The last step is to tap into your intuition to know what to know, what to eat instead of diet rules. We call this intuitive eating, your internal nutritionist. Yes, every human was given one at birth!
I used to be the Queen of “All or Nothing”… extreme in everything. At 36 years old, it came to end. My body couldn’t take the stress anymore and shut down. That’s why I’m so passionate about my work and what I teach.
In this episode I discuss
- The truth about the ‘all or nothing’ mindset
- The real consequence of the absolutist thinking to the women of the Beyond the Food community
- The solution to the ‘black or white’ mentality
Last episode, we answered a number of questions about sugar addiction with Bitten Jonsson, RN and ADDIS/SUGAR Certified and a Sugar Addiction Specialist. I also gave her carte blanche to use my own assessment to explain and help you understand addiction.
In this episode, I also shared my personal take on the labeling of ‘addict’ and how I view my addictive behaviors which paved the way for the creation of the Going Beyond The Food Method. The Going Beyond The Food Method was born from me hitting rock bottom and seeing the story repeating itself in my patients. It’s about shining the light on your possibilities by acknowledging and having compassion for your darkness.
The Going Beyond The Food Method is what healed my sugar addiction at 38 years old. But it also what allowed me to stop nicotine too at 36 years old… I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing! You don’t wanna miss this episode. Click here.
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