Question.
What do you think happens to all the delicious food you bring into your home?
The cookies, the pastries, the chips, the soda, the candy, or whatever your Achilles heel of unhealthy goodness may be.
Do they…
A. Sit idly in your fridge and cupboards while you exercise perfect self-control, eventually to be thrown out once you’ve lost the urge for them.
B. Disappear magically once you’ve had “one little bite.”
C. Eventually get eaten.
Well, we wish the answer were A, because if it were this whole getting in shape thing would be a heck of a lot easier.
It can’t be B because the last time we checked magic wasn’t real…
Which means we only have one option left… C…
Eventually, It All Gets Eaten…
With almost as much certainty as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, whatever unhealthy tasty snack foods you bring into your house are goingto get eating.
It may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow, but at some point you are going to eat them. (It doesn’t help that junky snack foods don’t expire does it…)
And that is what brings us to our main point today.
As we have discussed so many times throughout these newsletters, consistently making healthy food choices is one of the two core tenants of building a lean, strong, healthy body.
Start with your veggies, add some lean meat or fish (if you are not a vegetarian or vegan) and finish things off with some healthy grains.
But the second half of “consistently making healthy food choices” is consistently saying no to the thousands of sugary processed junk food items that are going to be thrown at you over the course of a week.
(You don’t have to be perfect, remember there is no such thing as perfect, but you do have to be good and be good consistently.)
Saying No Ain’t Easy!
Now it’s hard enough to avoid all the sugary cereals, cookies, chips, candy and other assorted crap (pardon our language, but that is exactly what it is) that gets brought into our offices, that gets strategically placed at the checkout aisles in every grocery store and pharmacy, and that gets offered to us at every birthday party or social event.
But if these types of foods make it into your house? Forget it. It’s over.
We don’t care if you’re Jane Fonda or Tom Brady, we’ve got $100 on you caving eventually.
Now this isn’t because you are weak, or a failure, or anything else like that. Not at all.
This is because as a human being your willpower is exhaustible.
Have you ever noticed that the earlier in the day it is the easier it is to resist temptation, but that as the days goes on it gets harder and harder?
This is because as the day wares on you, you have to spend your limited amount of willpower to resist temptation and stay focused.
But just as a car can’t run without gas, you can’t resist temptation without willpower, and by the end of a long day, or even worse a long week, you’re tank is going to be running near empty.
So how does this play out as it regards to food?
Let’s say last Saturday night you went out to dinner with some friends, ordered desert, only took one bite, but didn’t want to waste it so you brought it home.
Let’s say you’ve been fighting that piece of cake all week, but now its Thursday night and you’re exhausted from four 10+ hour days at work, your boss has been hounding you about some project that needs to get done, and now it looks like your in laws are going to be staying with you this coming weekend after all.
Awesome…
Now you’re tired, annoyed, and craving comfort.
So what do you do?
Go for the cake, obviously, and then… devour it.
Dag… that’s over 650 calories and 50 grams of sugar straight into your system.
Here’s the Thing Though…
But you know what’s interesting, if that cake weren’t there, in all likelihood, you would not have left your house to find some.
The vast majority of the time we aren’t willing to invest the time and effort necessary to acquire junk food if it’s not directly accessible to us at the moment we want it.
We think to ourselves, “damn I want some cake right now!” But then we think about getting dressed, going downstairs, walking to the store, dealing with the cold, and dealing with any unforeseen annoyances and the vast majority of the time we just say forget it. (Kind of nice to see laziness working for us for a change.)
Then, usually within about a minute or so the craving passes and there we are, calmer, chiller, and 650 calories lighter.
Keep Unhealthy Foods Out of the House!
All this is a long-winded way of saying that one of the best tactics you can use to help you consistently avoid foods you shouldn’t be eating is to keep them out of your home.
As we said, consistently making healthy food choices and avoiding processed sugary junk foods are two of the biggest keys to building a lean, strong, healthy body. But at some point we all run out of willpower, so make sure when you do there isn’t any junk food there for you to cave to.
Your exercise and dietary coaching team.
Zach Moore Training.
And everyone, if you found today’s article insightful, inspiring or enlightening and you have a friend, family member, colleague or peer who you think would benefit from what we’ve talked about here today, pass on this email please.
One of the best things you can do for those you care about is helping them to build a healthy and great looking body. A body that is strong, capable and moves without pain and a body in which they feel confident and happy.
