How Fixing Your Diet Can Impact All Aspects of Your Life..
Its pretty remarkable the ripple effect a few changes in your eating habits can turn into.
Have you ever seen an episode of the television show My 600-lbs Life?
Every single one of the people the show focuses on had suffered some Trauma* in their life that had led them to turn to food to make themselves feel good for the moment.
When you get north of 300 lbs, it becomes significantly evident that fixing your diet and dropping weight can drastically change the quality of life you get to experience.
When you’re only 20-30lbs overweight, how impactful making certain dietary changes can spill over into improving your overall quality of life isn’t so certainly evident.
Spending over a decade coaching individuals in their nutritional habits and overall wellness, it’s exceptionally rewarding when you start to witness your clients reap a higher quality of life from making simple, yet difficult at the time, nutritional changes.
To explain what I mean, I want to share the growth of my client and now friend, M.S.(anonymity used as a curiosity about his private life).
M.S. said to share his story and scream it from the mountaintops if you can, so here we go…
M.S. and I connected in late October/Early November 2023.
He had the goal of losing 30 lbs before a tropical beach vacation in March. We had roughly 5 months to do just that.
Getting to know M.S. more on his Health Strategy Call, many of his downfalls around nutrition revolved around ‘getting out of his way’. He was in shape through his college years but was gaining weight over the last decade of being out of school and on his own.
Reality is 30lbs slowly crept up on him. To no surprise, 30lbs in a decade is 3lbs a year… which can come slapping you in the face if you’re not fully aware of the gain.
We examined the habits that could have led to this weight gain.
We started looking at easy areas to gain control over.
For him, it was his overindulgence of his kid's snacks and collecting on the "Dad Tax" after dinner. You know eating the last few bites off his kids’ plates instead of throwing it away or saving it for leftovers.
On top of that, He'd developed a weekend habit of spending Thursday-Monday Nights watching sports and drinking brews with the boys in the neighborhood. Though everyone’s wives and kids would accompany the guys, He knew he was taking time away from his family by falling into this routine, aware that he needed to change this but unsure how to go about it without losing the sense of community.
We started by addressing why he seemed not to have control over these 'simple' urges. What emotions may have been attached to the overeating and weekend drinking?
When understanding the emotional impact these actions were having on him, we switched directions to start thinking about what emotions he believed his higher self, his best version of himself would experience.
Next, we started to work on what he saw/envisioned his higher (best) self to be, and what values may he be lacking that this better version might be exhibiting to the fullest ability.
Having an understanding is great but How do we get there?
We started to audit his life around his Nutrition and Vices. Seeing where he currently was at with those values he believed the best version of himself would exhibit in these situations. Together, we started prying at what he could take action to become more aligned with.
Thus creating a Value-Based Mindfulness Action Plan…
Once the plan was set we started taking immediate action.
By Month 1, M.S. was able to stop collecting dad tax after dinner. He was completely okay with saving or throwing away his children’s leftovers. He no longer was reaching for the snacks in the pantry right after he and his wife put the kids down for bed.
By Month 2, late-night snacking was a thing of the past. M.S. was exercising a bit more. Seeing the weight starting to come off. M.S. started to feel the momentum he was building creating more and more confidence and trust in himself and how he can execute on challenges he would have been timid to take on before.
By Month 3, he wasn't spending every weekend night getting drunk with the boys while still being able to hang with them and have fun. M.S. started implementing boundaries with his buddies of how long he’d spend hanging with them along with setting boundaries to how much alcohol he would consume, if any.
To me, this was one of his biggest accomplishments, discovering how to communicate clear boundaries with his friends and set a time to get home so he could be there for his family as needed.
Of course, as guys always do, they teased him at first. Trying to get him to drink and hang longer than he wanted to.
M.S. was strong enough in his beliefs and confidence to stick to his boundaries.
By Month 4, his friends were picking up on how much more positive M.S.'s life was becoming and soon they were coming to him for help/accountability to quit their drinking as well. This was right around the beginning of the year. He helped lead a couple of his buddies who were struggling in their own private life through Dry January. Something he never saw himself doing just 120 days prior.
By Month 5, It was time to head on that Vacation. When asked, he already had a plan made up to make it a successful one. He followed through on it 100%.
It was planned to where no alcohol was consumed and the food he would indulge in was consumed responsibly. Keeping the weight off and having a memorable time with the family. He noted how much better vacation felt when he was able to get up early and play with his kids instead of nursing a compounding hangover every day.
By Month 6, we were in maintenance mode with his nutrition and vices. And we started looking at what other areas we could apply the foundation of Value-Based Mindfulness.
After our 6-month coaching commitment, we chatted about some of his biggest lessons learned through it all.
M.S.'s main lesson/biggest accomplishment he took from fixing his nutrition?
The importance of being a PRESENT FATHER AND HUSBAND.
A massive by-product of reaching his initial surface-level goal of “Needing to lose 30 lbs for vacation in 5 months.”
When you start to fix your physical health issues, it’s amazing what else in life can be improved upon as well.
At the end of our time together, I send out a questionnaire to collect client feedback, here’s some excerpts of what M.S. had to share…
Do you find similarities between M.S.’s story and what you are currently experiencing in life?
Reach out and set up a FREE Health Strategy Call. Its time you take control of your life.
This is a great share, a powerful recap of a journey that many have been through or are on. I found myself identifying with your client throughout, thanks for sharing!