Tailor Your Motivation, Food Quality Impacts Quantity, Conquer Your Fears
Hi Folks! Connor and Nick here from Healthy Living With Nick and Connor. Thanks again for being on our email list, it means a lot, and we are excited to share our weekly email with you. We hope you enjoy it! Here is what we hope you take away from this one:
1. Motivation is not one size fits all. You need to figure out how to motivate yourself for whatever particular task you’re facing.
2. Choose the right foods to help prevent overeating.
3. Diving into things we are apprehensive about can sometimes do us wonders.
Starter Mindset Tip: Motivation and Its Many Forms
We are probably all well aware that the best motivation is to enjoy doing something for the sake of doing it. It would be great if everything we wanted to do felt that way. The reality is there are many different things we need or want to get done in our lives, all of which we view differently and require different forms of motivation. While the best, longest lasting form is enjoying the activity, be aware that there are many other ways to get motivated. If you are someone who consistently has difficulty getting motivated, it is okay to acknowledge that enjoyment of whatever it is will likely not work. You will have to get strategic. You could try pairing the activity with something you do like, such as running and listening to an audiobook. You could also try rewarding yourself such as doing pushups every morning before rewarding yourself with a mug of coffee. You could try having someone else keep you accountable by sharing your goals with them and having them pester you to do it. The takeaway is that there are many ways to get motivated. With some tasks, until you’ve formed a habit, or until you develop enjoyment of the task itself, you may have to motivate yourself by other means. Get creative.
Health Recipe: Food Quality Influences Quantity
Timing: A few minutes around mealtimes
Level of Difficulty: Easy-medium
Serving Size: Small
Spiciness: Mild
INGREDIENTS
You and your food sources
REASONING AND BENEFITS
There are many factors that influence what and how much we eat. Sleep and stress are two that often get forgotten. But what we eat also influences how hungry we are. This may seem obvious, but it can get forgotten as we find ourselves overeating as a result of low quality foods. Our bodies crave nutrients. High quality foods are nutrient dense. Low quality foods are typically processed and high in refined sugars and unhealthy fats. These do not satiate our bodies well. If we are restricting our intake to mostly low-quality foods there is also the potential of developing minor nutritional deficiencies that can also lead to overeating. One way of reducing our food cravings is to get a diverse range of good quality foods that are freshly harvested. The farther food travels and the more refinement the less energy dense they become. This approach to eating is essentially synonymous with the well-known ‘Mediterranean diet’ which encourages eating local, fresh and diverse food of high quality.
INSTRUCTIONS
Familiarize yourself to some degree with food quality and what the major nutrients are in the foods you eat.
Make a point to prioritize eating a range of high quality foods first before going to those, often delicious, lower quality foods.
Eat as fresh as you can, the most energy dense foods are the ones you pick right from your own yard or get at a local farm.
Ensure you are covering all the major nutrients required by the body as nutritional deficiencies can lead to overeating.
PRO TIP: Slow changes are key to implementing healthy changes in your diet. Move towards a broad range of fresh, nutrient dense alternatives to processed low quality foods one food at a time.
*Just one more reason to start growing your own food or getting to know a local farmer.
** Get in the habit of trying diverse foods by buying new fruits, vegetables, seafood and meat on a regular basis and experimenting with new recipes.
*** Plan your meals in advance and have high quality snack foods ready, that you enjoy, for when you need a snack.
Dessert Quote:
"What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do." – Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
Learn more about conquering fears, and creating a new outlook on life:
Ferris, T. (2007). The 4-hour workweek. Fortune Small Business, 17(4), 84.
