I recently read an article on Sparkpeople.com called Moderation in All Things (By Dean Anderson, Behavioral Psychology Expert). Below is an excerpt from that article that I particularly liked:
To be successful, you don't have to always make perfect decisions and have perfect days where things go exactly as you planned. If you eat more or exercise less than you wanted to one day, you can make up for it over the next several days if you want, or you can just chalk it up to experience and move on. Remind yourself that what happens on any one day is not going to make or break your whole effort. This is not a contest or a race, where every little misstep could mean the difference between winning and losing. It’s your life—and you’ll enjoy it a lot more when you can keep the daily ups and downs of your eating and exercise routine in perspective.
I think all too often we do think we have to be perfect in all we do when, in fact, we really should be striving for progress (aka improvement) not perfection. Just because we're not perfect on any given day doesn't mean we can't make up for it the next day. We are way too hard on ourselves and I think sometimes that does more harm than good. I've written before about being an all or nothing girl and I think it stems from this feeling that I need to be perfect... I remember hearing over the years "if you're going to do it, do it right" - but that doesn't necessarily mean perfect now does it?
My progress as of late has been increasing my walking from just over 5k to just over 7 k (and increasing my time by only about 15 mins!). I am proud of this - if someone told me 6 months ago that I'd be walking 7 k on a regular basis I would have laughed at them! Yet, here I am!
Happy Tuesday everyone! This is my Friday - I'm OFF for the next 6 days - yay! I need to come up with some new blogging topics/ideas...any suggestions? I'll have lots of time to write over the next few days :)
To be successful, you don't have to always make perfect decisions and have perfect days where things go exactly as you planned. If you eat more or exercise less than you wanted to one day, you can make up for it over the next several days if you want, or you can just chalk it up to experience and move on. Remind yourself that what happens on any one day is not going to make or break your whole effort. This is not a contest or a race, where every little misstep could mean the difference between winning and losing. It’s your life—and you’ll enjoy it a lot more when you can keep the daily ups and downs of your eating and exercise routine in perspective.
I think all too often we do think we have to be perfect in all we do when, in fact, we really should be striving for progress (aka improvement) not perfection. Just because we're not perfect on any given day doesn't mean we can't make up for it the next day. We are way too hard on ourselves and I think sometimes that does more harm than good. I've written before about being an all or nothing girl and I think it stems from this feeling that I need to be perfect... I remember hearing over the years "if you're going to do it, do it right" - but that doesn't necessarily mean perfect now does it?
My progress as of late has been increasing my walking from just over 5k to just over 7 k (and increasing my time by only about 15 mins!). I am proud of this - if someone told me 6 months ago that I'd be walking 7 k on a regular basis I would have laughed at them! Yet, here I am!
Happy Tuesday everyone! This is my Friday - I'm OFF for the next 6 days - yay! I need to come up with some new blogging topics/ideas...any suggestions? I'll have lots of time to write over the next few days :)
2 comments:
I love this post. Going to be reading the article next!! Just the little reminder I needed!!
Sparkpeople.com has some great articles and blogs - I love poking around there :)
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