Last Updated on March 1, 2021 by Rob Arthur

https://youtu.be/gfijUBNa_aQ

It’s all too easy to become married to ideas and stories when it comes to how we eat and train. I’m as guilty of this as any of us.

In this video I share a bit about how rigidity and dogma was ruining my health, and one question I ask myself to make sure I’m on the right path.

Transcription:

What up?

So last week I shared a little bit about how to identify, how to go seek out and find a potential training plan or way of eating that might help move you closer towards your goals when it comes to health and fitness.

Then a little bit later on my personal Facebook page, I shared a video, kinda briefly discussing a few points of my past and some of my experiences with training and nutrition and touched a bit on some of the mistakes I’ve made.

So today I’m gonna follow up with both of those videos and share a little bit more about my experiences, as well as a question that I use continuously to make sure that I am on the right path in terms of moving towards my goals.

So, when you identify the outcomes that you’re looking for, when you go through a goal-setting exercise and you determine exactly what you’re looking for from your movement practice and your lifestyle practice, and you have a picture in your head of what health looks like to you, and then you’ve gone out and you’ve found a way of movement and a way of eating that you think might work.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is to stay, keep your goal in mind and keep the outcome that you’re looking for in mind, but be flexible in terms of the approach.

And I’ll elaborate on that a bit. It’s easy for us to get married to an idea of what we need to do in order to be healthy or look the way that we want to or feel the way that we want to or that we think we want to, especially when it comes to diet.

There is so much dogma out there and tribalism and communities built around food that often we stop actually asking ourselves this really important question: how’s that working for ya?

I am as guilty of this as any.

Many of my friends know that I’ve been pretty extreme when it comes to food.

Truthfully, I mean, I would say I probably would be considered that now.

Not necessarily extreme, but just now I know what I wanna eat and I’m gonna eat it.

But in the past, it was almost as though I felt like, not trapped, but I felt as though food was a part of my identity.

So, I’ll provide some examples.

When I first graduated from college and started working in the real world, trying to be healthy, I got online and I looked up different ways of eating and different diets. I tried being a vegetarian for a bit.

See, right there, I just said being a vegetarian. I ate as a vegetarian would or I ate as a vegan would, but I identified myself as a vegetarian or as a vegan.

I tried raw veganism. I have tried strict paleo. I’ve tried ketogenic dieting.

There are so many ways of eating out there, and they’re all pretty different, but each of them comes along with a sense of identity.

And it’s easy to become married to those ideas and lose sight of the fact that, at least in my case, I remember being, when I was trying raw veganism, there would be regular days when I would just have these crazy cravings and down bags of nuts because my body was missing something and craving something.

Or I remember when I was trying to eat, I think this was back when I was doing super low carb and I was training hard all the time, and I had lost a shitload of weight, not in a good way, and my sleep was going down the toilet.

I mean, I was waking up at like 2:30 or three every day, just completely wired, and then all day long I’d be drained, because I wasn’t asking myself, “Rob, how’s that working for you?”

I had just fallen victim to reading blogs or hearing podcasts or reading in a book that a certain way of eating was the way.

And only once I took a step back and learned to ask myself, “Okay, dude, how’s that working for you?”

Only once I started asking myself that question was I able to see long-term progress in terms of my body and in terms of my health and how I feel, which is really important.

Only once I started asking myself that question was I able to see long-term progress without sacrificing my quality of life, because that’s a part of the question too.

If you see your body changing in ways that you think you like, or if you see yourself starting to achieve a certain look but you find that your life is empty, how’s that working for ya?

Probably not.

So, my challenge to you is to ask yourself, take some time and ask yourself, how is what you’re doing now working for you?

Are you seeing the changes that you wanna see?

Are you moving towards your goals, not only physically, but in terms of what you want from life?

Because if you have the body that you want but you’re not doing with that body the things that bring you joy and fulfillment, what’s the point?

So ask yourself.

Take a step back, audit your efforts, assess, evaluate.

How’s that working for you?

Have an awesome, well, go forth, kick ass, make it an awesome day.

 

Have an awesome day, bye.