2922: Being Fit Without Letting Food and Exercise Control You by Keith Lai with Tiny Buddha

[00:00:00] Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:24] So, press play on Good Sleep tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Health Daily, Being Fit Without Letting Food and Exercise Control You by Keith Lai with TinyBuddha.com And I'm your host and narrator, Dr. Neal. Happy middle of the week Wednesday and welcome back to Optimal Health Daily,

[00:00:52] where I read some of the best health and fitness blogs to you, usually with a little bit of commentary at the end. Ooh, I realize today's Wednesday and I usually give you an inspirational quote, but luckily, the post I'm about to read to you has one embedded in it. So with that, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life. Being Fit Without Letting Food and Exercise Control You by Keith Lai with TinyBuddha.com Quote,

[00:01:22] Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means you've decided to look beyond the imperfections. Unknown. Most people associate fitness with nothing but positive connotations. Exercising is the alleged solution to obesity and stress. Eating fresh, local, healthy foods is the age-old secret to a long and disease-free life. But what most people don't realize is that striving to live a healthy lifestyle can carry some seriously negative consequences

[00:01:51] if you don't approach it wisely. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for eating right and exercising. But the moment your life begins to revolve around your fitness, then you've already lost. Sacrificing Your Life to Be Healthy In my early attempts to build a healthy and fit body that I could be proud of, I ruined my life. My entire life would be structured around my workouts. My meals were planned at exact intervals. And if I missed any of my workouts or if my meals weren't up to my standards,

[00:02:18] I would consider myself a failure and would get incredibly upset. Back then, I took an all-or-nothing approach to health and fitness. If I had one bad day of eating, then the entire week would be considered a waste. It was bad. My perfectionist approach to fitness began drawing attention. I would go to parties and eat nothing but raw veggies and drink water. People would question me, stare at me for why I was being so phobic about food. My own parents started getting frustrated with me because I would only eat certain foods.

[00:02:47] My so-called dedication to fitness turned into an obsession, one that overtook my life. All that exercising and healthy eating was meant to complement my life, not become it. When you take fitness too far. When you weigh yourself every hour. When you compensate the extra food you ate with even more exercising. When you get angry because you missed your workout. When you refuse to have cake at any wedding. Then, you've officially taken health and fitness too far.

[00:03:16] Exercising and healthy eating are simply tools to help you live a happier and more fulfilling life. They are meant to make the things you enjoy doing even more enjoyable. We all want to look good. We all want to be fit and healthy. But at what cost? Finding the middle ground. If you want your life and fitness habits to work in synergy, then you need to find the middle ground. The middle ground is where you can enjoy a piece of birthday cake without worrying about how it will make you look. It's where you can miss a workout and not sweat it.

[00:03:45] It's where you can go a day without weighing yourself. But of course, finding the middle ground is no easy task. Finding the middle ground isn't so much about finding the perfect workout or diet as it is about forging the right mindset. We all make mistakes. We all fail. The most important thing to remember is how you failed. You must learn from your mistakes, as cliche as that sounds. Find out what triggered you to overeat. Was it stress? If so, what's causing that stress and what can you do to fix it?

[00:04:15] Locate the root cause of your slip-ups and do your best to correct them. A life worth living. In this ultimate battle for health, in this pursuit of the perfect body, we sometimes fail to understand the true meaning of life and what's really important. Of course, everyone has different interpretations on the meaning of life, but I think we can all agree on one thing. Life is meant to be enjoyed. Right? If you're not enjoying life, then what's the point of living?

[00:04:41] If all you think about is exercise and food and how certain things will affect your body, then you're never going to truly enjoy the things that make you happy. You're not living your own life, but instead you're living a life controlled by something as menial as eating. And that is not a life worth living. What is a life worth living? A life worth living is one where you can experience new foods without guilt. It's one where you can pick up a fork and put it in your mouth without a care in the world on how it's going to make you look.

[00:05:10] This is a life where you can go through the majority of your day without thinking about what time you're going to the gym or whether you ate enough protein. There's just so much more to life than having impeccable exercise and a nutrition plan. When your life and fitness habits are working together in perfect harmony, you'll find everything you do more enjoyable. Food will taste better. Sleep will become more restful. And most importantly, an enormous load of stress and relief will be lifted off your shoulders.

[00:05:41] You just listened to the post titled, Being Fit Without Letting Food and Exercise Control You by Keith Lai with tinybuddha.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. I know there's that little bit of fear when you've been working so hard, you've been working out and watching what you eat, and you've been so good that you worry that one meal is going to just totally erase all of that. I know that feeling very well.

[00:06:09] But the wonderful thing is the body doesn't work that way. It's all in our heads. When we look at the research, we're actually finding that even a weekend of like binge eating and not working out really won't lead to all that much, if any, fat gain. Because again, the body has been trained so well most of the time that it can compensate for those days when you just let loose and aren't thinking about anything except that cheesecake and laying on the couch binging on Netflix.

[00:06:38] And again, that happens because you've done such a great job of training your body all the other times and for so long that the body goes, hmm, okay, this is happening, but I know how to deal with it. The trick is, is to not let that one weekend, those couple of days turn into more days. So you enjoyed yourself Saturday and Sunday. Come Monday, as long as you're kind of back on track, you're going to be fine.

[00:07:04] You may weigh yourself Monday morning and go, oh my gosh, I'm two or five pounds heavier. Chances are, believe it or not, it's just water weight. And that weight will come off just as fast as it came on. It's likely not true fat weight that you put on. So again, have patience with yourself, let it go, get right back on track, and you're going to be fine. All right, that's enough out of me for today. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

[00:07:30] And I'll see you back here for tomorrow's show where your optimal life awaits.