Nutrition trap even the healthiest people fall into

Published: Tue, 05/02/17

Hi ,

I have some free stuff for you, down below, but first I want to share a quickie nutrition lesson.

One of the most popular columns in fitness magazines is the one where a celebrity or fitness model shares what they ate in a day.

I used to love those. “Oh my, Nicole Wilkins eats oatmeal with peanut butter at 7am! And look at her abs! I guess I’ll start eating oats and PB at 7am too!”

It’s interesting, it gives us examples, it’s fun. And for a long time at JillFit, I’d even send out “day in the life” emails or blogs, listing exactly what I ate in a day and the exact workouts I was doing.

It is, hands down, one of the most curiosity-piquing topics for readers. But after getting back some super specific responses from gals asking how they could start eating like me, or questioning why I was doing certain things because “that would never work for them,” I felt like these posts were doing a disservice. I don’t want you to eat like me, I want you to create the ultimate eating strategy for you.

It’s irresistible to make a direct correlation between how someone else is eating to get the results they’re getting and what you should then be eating to get the exact same ones.

Okay but let’s think about this logically. How can that ever be the case? We all have different metabolic tendencies, lifestyles, priorities, personal food preferences, schedules, psychological differences and more.

Changing our diet based on what someone else is eating—whether it’s a celebrity, fitness model, Instagram celeb with 500k followers, your sister or your neighbor!—never, ever works as a long term eating strategy because it hasn’t been creating by us for us. The only thing it actually does it keep us in a perpetual state of program jumping and changing up our diet every month to see if THIS one will finally be the right diet.

This is a huge trap.

It puts the ownership on someone else to provide the right way of eating for us. And even the best coaches can’t provide that. They can provide macro numbers, or a word of encouragement, but they can never know what’s it like to be us or to experience the biofeedback (hunger, cravings, mood, energy, stress, etc.) that only we can inside our own bodies.

So a quick reminder:

Stop looking at fitness models' or celebrities' diets in magazines and thinking you should just do that. Quit asking a million different people what they eat, or about their process. Stop judging other people who you think "eat too much" or "aren't eating enough."

Someone else's nutrition strategy has nothing to do with yours.

Eating is individual. It needs to be 100% customized to YOU based on your unique metabolism, personal preferences, schedule, psychological sensitivities and more. Allow other people to have their journey while you put your head down and focus on yourself, your own body and ask what you can feasibly do long-term.

Our nature is to want to compare, contrast and program jump. But that's what someone does who's not ready to do the hard work of putting their blinders on and getting back in tune with themselves. It's normal to want to look around, but that's also a guaranteed way to keep struggling.

Many of you have emailed me to share your #moderation365 success, and it's been amazing for me to see. You've shared how you have finally started to trust yourself, but it has taken time. And that’s something I always want to remind you.

You don’t wake up one day and poof, you’re good to go with your eating. You slowly, slowly make small changes, practice mindfulness, trust the process and ultimately trust yourself in all situations. You practice resiliency and choose moderate choices that take the edge off sooner, rather than trying to white-knuckle your way through. You’ve given yourself some leeway, you show yourself kindness, you incorporate some nutritional relief every day and over time—months and years—you learn to eat the same on Saturday that you do on Monday.

And you find that undergoing this process produces the most trust, in yourself. And THAT is the ultimate in control.

Good? Good!

Okay, a few freebies for you:

1) I am hosting a FREE live training with Jen Sinkler and Neghar Fonooni TOMORROW (Wednesday) night called “Lit Up and Leveled Up” and we’ll be discussing mindset, how to take massive action in the direction of your dreams—even in the face of fears, insecurities and other constraints—and taking you behind-the-scenes of Radiance Retreat, how we started it and why, etc. PLUS, we’ll be taking all your questions and basically just shooting the shit. I’d love to have you on—you can register free, HERE. If you can’t make it on live, all registered will receive the recording the next day.

2) Steph Gaudreau, founder of Stupid Easy Paleo has opened her 2^nd annual Women’s Strength Summit, a free online workshop with lots of amazing speakers on the topics of fitness and nutrition. Steph interviewed me last year, and asked me back again this year to talk about some different things (including fitness business!) and we had a great convo—if you’d like to hear our interview, plus all the other insightful talks, you can register free HERE.

3) And finally, a quick heads up. Many of you have been asking, “What happens after #FastPhysique?” No stress, I gotchu. I’m going to be discussing some upcoming fitness thangs over the next couple weeks, giving you a few different options to think about, depending on where you want to take your training next. Stay tuned!

I hope you have a great rest of the week, and Jen, Neghar and I would love to see you on our live call tomorrow!

Let me know if you have any questions and talk soon!

Xo,

Jill

Lit Up and Leveled Up FREE Training