Old Food Thoughts, A Nightmare

Oct 31, 2022Coaching, Motherhood

Old Food Thoughts, A Nightmare!

Are you haunted by old food thoughts and find yourself falling victim to them? Failure isn’t something we like to experience but it’s actually a cornerstone of how we think, react, and make decisions. It also digs deep into our emotional response. While we like to stay in our neutral “happy zone, ” it’s experiencing failure or old habits and processing those old food thoughts that give us the opportunity to grow.

Don’t Be Haunted. Have a Growth Mindset

We might not always connect failure with growth because it’s often a devastating event. While in no way am I saying take failure lightly, take the experience and see where you can apply these lessons later.

The idea of a growth mindset vs. fixed mindset was developed by Carol Dweck who observed student learning processes and tendencies in a school environment. As a past educator, this concept is something I specifically integrated into my teaching style and learning environment. But to lay it out simply a growth mindset is based on the belief that you can build skills through practice and experiences. A fixed mindset is when a person’s beliefs are that their skills and talents are set when they are born. If they are not good at something and fail, they will not succeed. End of story.

So when Halloween candy seems to be beckoning to you from that candy bowl, how can you change your thinking and be successful at serving your body, and your health?

What if you do eat that entire bowl of candy? Well, while you are nursing a stomach ache, what have you learned from this experience? Take this opportunity to discover what you were “feeding”. Emotions, habits, traditions? Don’t let this decision haunt you, instead make peace with it, learn from it, make a better decision next time, and let it go!

Boo! It’s a fixed mindset!

While we don’t want to find that we have a fixed mindset, it is more than likely that you do in some area of your life. How do you feel about making changes about the way you eat? About making a lifestyle change for your health, or to lose weight? Thinking you can’t go through Halloween without a bucket of candy or even saying no thank you, is a fixed mindset. Become aware of your thoughts and start seeing if you can change your thinking.

Child vs. Adults

A lot of times when we parent we are encouraging our kids to always try again. This is to help them practice and grow. While children tend to have an “anything is possible attitude” typically encouraged by you, when it comes to our own failures or shortcomings we stop trying. How many things have you tried for your health? Now I’m not saying it wasn’t valid to quite something that wasn’t working, but were you given a tool and didn’t know how to use it so you just… stopped? We don’t have that parent or mentor always encouraging you to try again. This try-again attitude develops a growth mindset naturally.

As adults, we tend to stop trying again because maybe there are poor experiences in the past that have set our thinking pattern. Digging into why you have the thinking patterns you do is a good exercise to allow yourself to let go of the fixed thinking and start believing in yourself more to develop a growth mindset. Maybe you’ve tried so many other programs in the past with some or little success. It’s discouraging and sure we might have some pretty set in stone beliefs about our ability to succeed, but that’s where we flex our brain muscles and try again… for ourselves, living a healthy long life, for our family and maybe even for those sweet little ones that you get to see dress up for Halloween.

Failure and Growth; Nightmare turned into a Dream

When you come to a place where you decide you need to make a change for your health, you are practicing growth. If you turn to the person next to you right now, you can probably have an in-depth conversation about all the things you each tried for your health that have failed. So let’s look at this process more. Are you failing and never trying again? If your answer is no, you are practicing a part of your growth mindset. You might tell me you are just searching for what works, but your optimism and perseverance are attributes to develop a growth mindset.

Developing a growth mindset is about stages and taking opportunities to become aware of your experiences and thinking and continue practicing this mindset to see yourself grow.

While we talk about water a lot of times lacking healthy nutrients for your body, you must also be aware of some of the harmful things that can be in your water. This is why we have our public water systems and are regulated to be sure it keeps the public safe. If you aren’t on a water system, and drink well water, still be sure to know what is in your water. You can easily test your drinking water and see if there is any reason to bring attention to it. If your water contains something that can potentially be harmful, your body can be in a state of crisis rather than healing.

LIFESTYLE & GROWTH MINDSET COACHING

Within FCM Coaching and the content we provide is one of our 3 pillars of success. Bringing your awareness to your thought patterns and being able to identify if you have a fixed mindset vs a growth mindset about various parts of your life, will help you shift your lifestyle for long-term success. Having a plan and changing your food can be simple if no emotions or thought patterns play into your decision-making. Though we are human and are continuously making choices for ourselves based on experiences, emotions, and thought patterns. Working with your growth mindset vs your fixed mindset is just one aspect of our personal development opportunities found within our coaching.

To continue to develop your awareness and understand the reason behind the choices you make, check out our HALT blog for a simple strategy to apply every day when working on making healthier choices. To learn more about how our coaching and nutrition program work together, jump over to our Coaching page to discover more. To learn more about our coaching and Metabolic Balance® nutrition program, book a FREE Discovery Call for just 30 minutes of your time to see if it is the right fit for you!