How To Balance Your Diet

Last week I promised I would expand on this:

“How do I figure out the best diet which I can stick to, and which optimizes my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being?”

This will be ‘part one’ of a series.

Food is one part of life.

This email has 5 parts:

1. The Big Picture 🖼️

2. Explain It To Me Like I’m 5 👦

3. Measure Your True Health 📏

4. Action Steps 🪜

5. Parting Zen 🧘‍♂️

Let’s begin.

The Big Picture 🖼️

‘Food is one part of life’ means ‘don’t take your food too seriously’.

The ‘too’ is highly subjective.

About 90% of the people I know think that I take my food too seriously.

But it’s not too serious for me.

I am aware of, and enjoy, the trade-offs I make.

I’ve coached hundreds of people, and almost none of them want or need to take their diet as seriously as I do.

(Some know it, but some don’t.)

It totally depends on your goals, abilities, and other factors.

Explain It To Me Like I’m 5 👦

Today’s topic, as simply as possible:

“If your diet doesn’t make you happy, it’s not healthy.”

Measure Your True Health 📏

The scale is not the only measure of health.

Full disclosure: I get on my scale every day. And of course there are other measures of health, such as bloodwork & physical ability.

However, if your diet is draining you mentally, adding significant amounts of stress, or restricting you from healthy social connections, then you may not be measuring all of the important things.

Possible Action Steps 🪜

Here are three options to explore this further:

How many diets have you tried?

If the answer to this is more than 2 or 3 and you’re still searching, then something isn’t working, most likely: consistency.

It may not be you. If a diet is too hard, then it should be made easier.

(You can email me if you want to talk more about this.)

Where are you on a scale from 1 to 10?

You might want to ask yourself a few simple questions, or rank a few key areas of your life from 1-10. Ideally this would be done before starting a new diet, and then periodically as you move forward.

For example, right now, how stressed are you?

How’s your social life?

What is your energy level?

Can you ask someone else?

If you’re not the best at honest self-assessment (or even if you are), it’s never a bad idea to get feedback.

This could be from a spouse but the most important thing is that it’s from someone who won’t hold back the truth.

For example, “Hey Dan. Be honest. Have I been more irritable at work since I started this diet last month?”

Parting Zen 🧘‍♂️

A simple word, phrase, or thought to take with you:

Thanks for reading!

Now that we’ve established food (and achieving a weight goal) is not the only thing that matters in life, in Part 2 of the ‘How To Balance Your Diet’ series I will expand on what matters most with food.

Coach Matt

P.S. New reward available if you refer this newsletter: