More thoughts on moderation
I was just reading an article from Woman’s Day by Michelle May, MD about eating and exercising ideas that are popular but don’t necessarily work. Here were the two points I felt aligned best with my own ideas:
“Myth #4: Exercise More When You Cheat
I hate this one because it has caused millions of people to equate physical activity with punishment for eating. As a result, many people either hate to exercise or use exercise to earn the right to eat.
While it’s true that your weight is determined by your overall calories in versus your calories out, exercise is only part of the equation and it has so many other important benefits. Instead of using exercise to pay penance, focus on how great you feel, how much more energy you have, how much better you sleep and how much healthier you are becoming. In the long run, you are more likely to do something because it feels good than because you are forced to.
Myth #5: Follow Your Diet Six Days a Week, Then You Can Have a Cheat Day
This is absurd! What if you were a harsh, overly strict parent six days a week, then completely ignored your kids every Saturday? How would this approach work for your marriage or managing your employees?
It just doesn’t make sense to try to be perfect (whatever that is) Sunday through Friday while obsessing about everything you’re going to eat on your day off. Then on Saturday you overeat just because you’re allowed to, so you end up feeling miserable all day. Huh? Personally, I would rather enjoy eating the foods I love every day mindfully and in moderation. I call this being “in charge” instead of going back and forth between being in control and out of control.”
Going back to Thursday’s thoughts about “good” and “bad” labels for food, I also believe that exercise should be about a more holistic goal than simply losing weight, maintaining weight, or achieving a certain look. Enjoyment should be part of the equation. Strength and health should be part of the equation. The concepts of “earning food,” making up for food with exercise, or “cheating” strike me as tapping into the “good/bad” or judgmental and–as May said–punitive part of ourselves.
As a recovering perfectionist, I work every day on this goal, which is harder than it sounds to achieve:
In all of your actions, be self-loving and kind.
I call it the reflexive golden rule.
That doesn’t mean being overly permissive, either. As May implies, we have to be good parents to ourselves–and that means setting limits. Dragging my sleepy self to the gym at 6AM is self-loving, just like taking particularly disgusting medicine is self-loving. Overeating is not self-loving; even if I think I want to eat a pint of ice cream, I wouldn’t let my (hypothetical) child do it and so I shouldn’t allow myself. The same goes for overspending.
I still have a long road ahead of me, but I am happy to be on the road rather than standing resolutely with my back to it.
I’d love to hear reader’s thoughts on this expanded topic: Why is it often so hard to be nice to ourselves, forgive ourselves, and/or go easy on ourselves? Why is there sometimes a double standard for the way we treat others and the way we treat ourselves?
Mimi
November 20th, 2009 at 6:53 am #
I realized that “Collards and Sense” reminds me of “Kibbles and Bits.” Remember those commercials that were on our taped episodes of Winnie the Poo?
admin
November 20th, 2009 at 9:32 am #
I don’t remember those. It’s supposed to be a pun on dollars and cents…