All too often, people like to shift between two modes.
They’re either on a diet, or off a diet.
They’re either eating clean, or swallowing everything in sight.
Either on a perfect workout routine, or doing nothing at all.
I’m guilty of that as well, and I attribute it to my impatience and perfectionism.
Very fortunately, thanks to the knowledge-base on the internet, I have gotten some perspective. The recent post on Martin Berkhan’s Leangains gives a great overview of this topic. The following are some of my own
The Truth is never quantifiable
People who tout absolutist approaches often like numbers. On the Atkins diet you are allowed only X number of carbs per day. On the warrior diet you must constraint your eating phase to 4 hours. On the DC program you must rest exactly 30 seconds between rest-pauses.
These are rules, rules that are made up by humans based on some observation. The body, however doesn’t thinks in terms of rules and numbers. It is in constant flux. (link to martin’s post about the fasted state)
On top of that, such rules often represent ends of a spectrum. Why can’t the truth be in the middle?
It’s all about your own happiness
Human emotion isn’t rational. My problem with the Black and White approach to health and fitness is that there will always be fluctuations of both physiological and emotional state. Very often, the result is people forcing themselves to try and stick to whatever rules they were supposed to follow and end up beating themselves up over it. (The dieter may over-consume 10g of carbohydrates on the Atkins diet and therefore feel a sense of failure.)
The problem is that numbers are specific, but our emotions never are. If you live solely by numbers, the rare times which the numbers align are the only times that you will be happy. [1]
Final Words
Some people have the kind of personality traits to thrive with a flexible lifestyle. Others, like myself, like to see things down in paper and execute based on numbers and feedback.
The only piece of advice is to create your own rules, know what you want to achieve, and slowly chip away to achieve that goal.
To give a specific example, I want to ensure that I do not stress over my diet. When I can afford it, I get onto my structured nutrition plan and stick to it. I sometimes purposefully plan to overeat (like on Christmas), and make up for the surplus later with dieting.
However, I set another rule: that I have to schedule time to relax those rules, and try to “eat by feel”. I get familiar with the feeling of that middle ground, to forget about numbers. Over time, the blacks and whites merge into grey.
—
Notes:
[1] A broken clock is still correct twice a day
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