What’s the secret to weight loss? You have to eat well, workout and stay on track. It’s no secret. We all know what we have to do.
What’s the challenge? It’s hard to stay on track. We lose the gusto. It’s one of those many things we need to juggle in life. There is never one task at a time. It’s a multifaceted juggling act we do every day.
When I was growing up my mom taught us how to eat well. This didn’t mean that we didn’t occasionally have sweets. After dinner, we would have “epes zis”. This was a Yiddish term that translates to “something sweet”. We’d brew up some tea, and have a biscotti or some such thing. This was a lesson in, “everything in moderation”. We needn’t go without. We can enjoy these things, but we need to know how to moderate.
In fact, if you deny yourself then you may doom yourself to fail. Sometimes, you need to put your foot down and say “no”. Sometimes, you need to treat yourself and say “yes”. One thing is for certain. You need to juggle in this life.
There are times when I pull it all back. When I am preparing for competition then I abstain. Sometimes we need to give ourselves that push. Discipline comes from within. Discipline is not when somebody forces you to do something. We have to be our own caretaker. As Jordan Peterson say, “Clean your room”. It all starts with you. You need to be the one who’s driving you toward a better future.
You are the one to thank first when you arrive at the locale of your dreams. Then, you can thank the others who drove shotgun. You don’t benefit from handouts and others doing. You’ll benefit from doing the work. So, clean your room. Eat clean. Be on top of it, but allow yourself that epes zis.
This is one of those things that we all suffer. We all struggle with cleaning our rooms. Who else is gonna clean it though? Sometimes, I use my team as a reason. It’s difficult to think about doing the hard things if it’s just about us. This is kind of a paradox. We need to be selfish in order to be a benefit for the team. So, we need to put ourselves first (thinking of others can help us focus). On airplanes they tell parents to put their oxygen masks on first before helping their children out. We need to do the work necessary for ourselves to be a help to others. It’s like Kano talked about in, “Mind Over Muscle”. We need to take the lessons from discipline over to the world.
One of these aspects of discipline comes from diet. It may be hard to do it for yourself. I empathize with you. Think of your team, community and family. No need to beat yourself up. Just put the breaks on once in a while. Don’t deny yourself all of the time. Eat well, make some tea and once in a while enjoy a little something sweet.