Today, I am keeping my promise to you and sharing a) the tools and strategies I am implementing during my travels in Europe and b) my unfiltered humanity—the struggles, the insights, the obstacles and the turnarounds, live as I am going through them.
To be honest, I feel over the moon right now.
I had a huge turnaround in my mindset over the last few
days and wow, I am so grateful for the practice and consistency I’ve experienced over the last 4 years with nutrition, introspection and mindfulness. In fact, I’m so passionate about the mindset of healthy living and what it takes to make that mental switch, that I stuck all my best practices into my
10-Week Mindset Makeover e-course, which is open for enrollment today
through Friday only.
But anyway … 6 days ago, homegirl was struggling.
I actually didn’t see it at the time—hence the turnaround—but after a couple days of mental work, I checked myself and feel a thousand times better now as I’m writing this.
Let me tell you what happened.
But first, just some quick backstory. I have been in Europe for 4 weeks now, first in Paris, then the UK and now 6
days in to a 14-day hike of the El Camino de Santiago trail with my in-laws through Portugal and Spain. I’ve met amazing people, I’ve immersed myself in these cultures and um, I’ve drunken I bottle of wine or two.
Up until a week ago, I was going along as usual. Practicing #moderation365 and staying mindful in all things. Paris was fine, lots of walking, barely any official exercise, and the UK was much the same. I had bites of desserts (normal), protein bars on hand for
snacks (normal), a glass or two of wine most nights (normal) and doing my best to stay in touch with my hunger and cravings (normal).
But a week ago, my family and I set out on a 14-day hike, where the plan is to walk—with 25-lb backpacks—anywhere between 9 and 17 miles a day.
Things changed real quick.
Yes, my hunger bumped up a notch and I was mindful of staying fueled for both recovery and the next day’s activity, but
two things started happening with my mindset—things that hadn’t crept up on me in YEARS.
First, I started acting based on a scarcity mindset.
I talk about the “abundance mindset” quite a bit at JillFit; it’s actually part of my MMAD Nutrition Model for #moderation365. I’ve been practicing abundance with my eating for many years, and have become quite infallible at it. So you can imagine how foreign and disorienting it felt
to catch myself making decisions out a feeling of scarcity.
Some examples: feeling nervous about being caught without food on the hike, and packing things at the hotels we stayed at “just in case”—things I wouldn’t normallt ever choose to eat, like cookies and crackers. It was as if I was gearing up for hibernation mode. I was acting out a fear of not having enough food, as if being without food for a couple hours until we got to the next little town would be a case of
life and death.
Another example: eating even though I wasn’t hungry simply because I was nervous that a) I wouldn’t be able to recover fully from the mileage OR b) I wouldn’t have enough energy for the following day.
All fine, except for one huge problem: I stopped listening to my body! I got out of touch with my physical sensations and was eating more and worse stuff out a purely lack mindset … like, if I don’t eat this now then I might
DIE on the trail tomorrow!
Hello. Is this not the 21st century? Can I not figure it out if I were to actually get fatigued? I have an IPhone and 3G data. Could I not access resources if I needed them? Lol. Yes, it’s #firstworldproblems, but they felt fully tangible and urgent in the moment. Which is why I lost sight of listening to my body’s sensations and was simply … eating just to eat.
And BTW—I have not felt at all fatigued even
once, and my body is feeling great.
Anyway, over the last several days, I have stopped stuffing my face anytime there is food around simply out a fear that at some point I’m not going to have any food. I have reconnected with my physical sensations and I am eating accordingly. If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m not—even if “it’s time” to eat—then I skip and figure it out later.
And you know what? IT’S FINE. It all works out. I trust myself and it
works.
Gah, so grateful for this reminder and this experience! It’s been amazing, getting out of my comfort zone and navigating something I had taken for granted.
The second mindset challenge that has come up is … listening to other people over myself.
I talk a lot about this in the
10-Week Mindset Makeover as it applies to things like hiring yet another coach, getting another “meal plan,” seeking out experts and thinking that we can just slot ourselves into someone else’s protocol and voila, results on demand.
That’s not the way it works.
No one knows your body better that you do (if you’d just get practiced at listening). And you know what? No one knows me better than I do, and I forgot that
for a second.
See, I am on THE HIKE with my in-laws, and Keoni and Jillian (my brother-in-law and sister-in-law), as well as Jade, and everyone on this trek has a completely unique metabolism. Of course they do. No two people are the same. I mean, my father-in-law has already lost, like 10 pounds. Jillian’s backpack waist strap is getting looser, and Jade has visibly shed several pounds.
All fine and good except … I’m not
them.
And I forgot that. I caught wrapped up in all the talk of, “We are going to lose so much weight on this hike, just watch. We’re not going to be able to keep weight on us. Oh, you’ll definitely lose 10 pounds. You better eat.”
It’s all probably true. It certainly is for Jade and his dad. But it’s not necessarily for me. I mean, over the last 4 years, there has never been a time when I just ate with abandon—not because I
couldn’t or I was restricting (I did way more restricting when I was competing and modeling) but because I’ve simply become so practiced at moderation that the urge has simply fallen away completely. I have had zero desire or inclination to eat everything to my heart’s desire. The urge simply isn’t there.
So why would I start now??? Just because my routine has changed doesn’t mean I unlearn everything I’ve been doing up until now. No
way.
And yet, I found myself going down the path that I caution my clients against: giving the reigns of your results over to someone else. Thinking that someone else knows better than you, about your own body and your own experience. Nonsense.
So, I caught myself after two days of eating more and worse crap than I normally would because I thought I’d be losing weight left and right, and I had lost my abundance mindset. I assumed, based on the
novelty of the experience that I’d have to eat so much more volume to keep weight on.
Well, that’s not what’s happened to me, and it’s insane to think that I would use these 14 days as an opportunity or excuse to eat everything I ever wanted. The funny thing is, when I slow down and actually THINK—stay mindful—I don’t even want this crap, ha! It makes me feel physically worse and it’s actually not helping my results.
It’s just
plain old mindless. It’s like mental regression.
