When Healthy Food Isn’t an Option

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Related Episodes:

• Losing Weight with a Busy Schedule
• 9 Misconceptions About Healthy Eating Habits
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Full Episode Transcript:

When Healthy Food Isn’t an Option

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. If you’ve been a listener for a little bit or for a long while now, you know that this podcast is all about helping you to break bad eating habits and create healthy eating habits, for the purpose of better long term physical health, and also mental and emotional health.

An important part of helping you to break bad eating habits and create healthy eating habits is talking about when healthy food isn’t an option. Because it isn’t always going to be an option, and that can throw a wrench into things, especially when you feel like you have been trying really hard to “be good.”

There are going to be circumstances where your choices in food are limited and you’re going to feel like you need to eat something, so what do you do? This could either be work situations, family situations, scheduling, being at an event, anything.

In fact, the reason why I thought of doing this topic as an episode, is because on Labor Day, my husband Paul and I, along with lots of our friends, ran in the National Championships 20K road race, which was a pretty big event. There were super elite runners there, such as some Olympians and also the American women’s marathon record holder. So fun.

So, my dad and his wife drove down from New York to watch us race in Connecticut. We packed lunches to eat with them afterward on the town green, healthy snacks, protein powder for after the race, all the things, right?

Well, all the food was in our car that was several blocks down the road in a parking garage, and at the end of the race, there were hot dogs and other less healthy foods.

After every race I run, I feel terrible afterwards, and this race was hot, I had a stomach ache the entire race, and so it wasn’t pleasant at all. Once my stomach settled a little bit and I started realizing how hungry I was, I opted for the hot dog that was right there, and completely forgot about the healthier foods in my car.

I needed calories, I needed some salt, and that was readily available and it would probably not have been a smart idea for me to walk several blocks to get the healthier foods we had packed. So, for the choices that I had available to me, that hot dog seemed like the best decision.

I had a moment where I felt badly about eating the hot dog instead of the healthier foods that we had packed ahead of time.

However, I reminded myself that I did the best I could with packing those healthier foods ahead of time, but in the moment, what was available to me when I needed it, was the hot dog. And the other foods that they had available at the end of the race were not necessarily any healthier.

The important thing at that moment, was calories and salt. Plus, I knew that I could just get the other nutrients I needed later on. Not a big deal.

So, I didn’t let one thing affect my choices for the rest of the day. I didn’t let it continue to make me feel badly either. So basically, I didn’t let that all-or-nothing mentality come into play here.

If you’re not familiar with all-or-nothing mentality or all-or-nothing thinking, it’s just essentially when you think that if you can’t do something 100% successfully, then you’ve failed. Regarding eating habits, it’s kind of like if you “mess up” and then see yourself as a failure, so then completely give up on the healthier choices.

And my point in telling that little story is that there are going to be situations where you can’t control everything regarding food choices available to you, but, you can control as much as you can by trying to prepare ahead of time. You can also control how you think about your food choice afterwards and then move forward from there. I’m going to talk about both of these in this podcast episode.

Alright, so let’s talk about trying to control as much as you can regarding the food choices that you have in certain circumstances. So for us, we packed lots of healthier things ahead of time to bring with us, knowing that we were going to be hungry after the race and wanted to have lunch with my Dad and his wife.

We had no idea what kind of places were around to grab lunch, so we all just figured that we would pack lunches to eat in the park. So that was one way that we were in control of the food situation.

Now, granted like I just mentioned earlier, it didn’t go exactly as planned, but we at least went there prepared. And I still ended up eating some of my healthier lunch after the hot dog, instead of say grabbing another hot dog or something else that I would have rather not eaten.

As a career woman, there are probably going to be work events where the food is supplied for you. One of my clients is in this situation often, and so we figure out what she can control about events like this. So for example, if it’s at a time that it makes sense for her to eat something ahead of time before she goes so that she at least won’t feel overly hungry in case there isn’t healthy options, then that’s what she does.

If it’s an event where she has to bring a dish to share, then she tries to make it a dish that she knows she would eat, that’s healthier. So at first, she needed my help in thinking about these options. Now, she’s already in the habit of thinking of something automatically on her own before these work functions and events. It’s just something she does now and follows through on.

And if there’s something that she wants to eat at the work function, she does, but she never feels like it’s out of her control. She feels happy with her choices afterward and also feels like she gets just as much enjoyment as she did before when she wasn’t mindful about what or how much she was eating.

It may seem like there are things that you really can’t control about food situations, but trust me, there are. As your coach, I can think of different creative options for you for your particular circumstance. And they’re always just options. You get to choose what you want to try and what you don’t want to try.

Scheduling is another thing where career women really feel that they are not in control of and food can be difficult with a tight schedule. But again, this is another thing that we can work through and come up with some creative things to try out and see what works. There is nothing that is unsolvable.

So whether it’s your busy work schedule, rushing your kids around to sports, or a traveling schedule or even just a busy personal schedule as far as things that you would enjoy doing that you fit into your work day as well. No matter what the circumstance is, there are always things that you can control about the circumstance.

For the things you can’t control about the circumstance, you can control your outcome by deciding what you’re going to think.

That’s the other part that I wanted to get into in this episode. What you think about the circumstance will determine how you feel. How you feel will then determine your actions going forward and then of course your outcome or results.

So you can have that all-or-nothing thinking and eat something you feel badly about, then say “screw it” and continue choosing the less healthy things that will make you feel even worse. Because you feel like since you couldn’t be perfect, then you’re a complete failure, and then may as well continue making poor decisions.

This isn’t a productive way of thinking though. It can spiral downhill pretty quickly, and the further you go the harder it can feel to get back up again.

If you describe yourself as falling off the wagon often, this is just that all-or-nothing thinking. That perfectionist way of thinking and it’s very common amongst career women. It’s not helpful though, because progress is not made in this way.

When you’re too focused on perfection and then label yourself as a failure because of  one “mess up,” you’re never really moving forward. You just keep failing yourself by thinking you’re a failure. You just keep holding yourself back. You end up feeling stuck oftentimes.

The alternative is that no matter the circumstance, you decide purposefully what you’re going to think, to keep yourself moving forward. So for me with that hot dog after the race, I could have felt badly and then continued just eating crap for the rest of the day, and then just felt even worse mentally and physically.

Instead though, I decided to remind myself that I made the decision in the moment, and that doesn’t mean I didn’t have the decision with the rest of my food choices that day. Because sometimes when healthy food isn’t an option, you just have to go with what it is. And at that moment, walking all the way back to my car on wobbly legs and feeling faint, was not a great option.

So for you, when you feel like you didn’t make a great choice food-wise, you can decide how you want to feel about that. And how you feel about that is determined by what you think about that. So if you don’t want to feel badly, then don’t think a terrible thought about yourself.

If you want to get right back up again and make a better decision for the next time you eat, then what thought might help you with this?

You could even brainstorm a list of five different thoughts ahead of time that you think would be helpful for you specifically. Read them over a few times to get familiar with them. Then when this does come up in the future, you already have a few ideas of some helpful thoughts that will get you right back up and back on track.

Like anything, you have to do this several times for it to start becoming something that you automatically do.

So what you can do is keep that little list of thoughts you brainstormed in your purse or on your desk, wherever you think would be helpful for you. That way, you’re reminded to go to one of these thoughts. Rather than having a not so good thought that doesn’t make you feel good and then causes you to continue making the less healthy choices, which then you’re just gonna feel worse about.

The more often you do this, the more likely it’ll become a habit to start thinking a better thought.

So in summary, when healthy food isn’t an option, do what you can to try to prepare ahead of time or control what you can. However, if you don’t or can’t, then just know that you can control how you think and feel about whatever it is you ate.

Because really, eating an unhealthy food or eating too much food then you needed one time isn’t a big deal. It’s when that’s repeated multiple times that it we’ll have its negative effects. So in order to help prevent it from being repeated multiple times, you may have to really decide how you want to think and feel about it moving forward, so that you can move forward.

Remember, progress over perfection. If you’re expecting perfection and are down on yourself when you aren’t perfect, you’re not going to make much progress.

Alright, brainstorm that list of a few different thoughts that will help you feel better about any food choices that you weren’t quite happy with. That way you are prepped and ready to go with some thoughts that will help you make progress rather than keeping you stuck.

Thanks so much for listening, take care and I’ll talk with you next week.