Choose Health: Fail for Success Series, 1
SHADOW BOXING
Fighting Myself for Myself: Failing Within Boundaries
I am in the middle of several back-to-back travel experiences that make it difficult to keep a health routine. And, I am in the busy season in a new job that I am still learning. This is a recipe for failing grandly.
I have a history of failing grandly in times like this. The details were different, but the feeling was the same. To stay successful, I have had to let some things go and keep my eye on the big things for long-term success. And, I have fallen off my usual game – within boundaries of short-term failures that make long-term successes possible.
I Wanted to Change the Trajectory of My Life
Finding My Golden Center
People often ask why I made the decision to lose weight. At the golden center of it was my health and wellness. For years, I knew what I should be doing, but I didn’t know how to do it and sustain it. Because this is such a hard process, people need to find a why, a golden center for making the change.
My golden center comes into focus most profoundly between 10:00 pm and 6:00 am, when I no longer live in fear about what my choices were doing to me, when I feel freedom from a lifelong conflict around food. I knew nutrition and health facts as well as anyone, if not better than most. But, I could not find a way to act on what I knew.
Eat When Hungry: My Journey into Shadows, Episode 2
Mindset is everything and nothing.
Mindset and the mental processes around my personal changes are shadows of my transformation.
Mindset plays a starring role in every change I have made. Yet, mindset alone would never be enough to succeed in losing half my weight.
My Vacation Break-Up with Mangoes and Pecans
Inviting Failure Foods into My Life
As I said in my Facebook and Instagram post, dried mangoes and pecans caused too much drama this week. I need to cut these ties for awhile.
To be fair, this drama is caused by my own design. Of course, I have a success plan. But, an important part of my success plan is that I also have a failure plan.
Part of how I succeed is that I always have failure foods at home. These are my off-ramp foods—foods good enough to go off-track with but mild enough to make getting back on-track possible.
Keeping failure foods on-hand is counter-intuitive and may go against the advice of experts. But, this journey is an individual one, and this is my journey.
I live in a house full of food triggers that I no longer eat. And, if I did eat them, I would have skyrocketing failure — a degree of failure with which I have a lifetime of experiences. This is a way of life I no longer want.
My failure foods have kept me in check so far. Without salt, oil, and sugar in my life, I live an all-or-nothing life.
Failure foods help me avoid the all-or-nothing mindset that comes with this all-or-nothing life. This is important for my success.