Value and Priorities with Nutrition

In last week’s nutrition post coach Megs pointed out that all of these crazy diets that come to market seemingly every day may actually be keeping us from getting to our goals. If you missed it, I highly recommend going back and reading it. But, one of the points she made was:

“A simple way for food to add value to your life is to think about your values and priorities. Once you get those figured out, what action could you make a habit that will benefit your values and priorities? After all, it’s just food. Food doesn’t have a moral compass, it just exists. Food has a sole purpose of fueling our lives, and could easily make it better (or worse).”

In today’s post she jumps into the topic of values and priorities on a deeper level. Enjoy!

— Chris

Our values and priorities shape our daily lives even if we do not realize it.

Your values could simply be described as what is important in your life, while priorities are what we put first in our lives. Some common values are financial security, family, and friends. We could live out these values through prioritizing actions like going to work, providing for our family, and attending social events with friends.

Sometime, like when we try to start a diet while also prioritizing social food and drink settings, our values and priorities can become a serious conflict.

We often see this struggle in our clients that are good providers for their family; they often value their job as it keeps their family financially secure. This leads to conflicts with their nutritional choices because they work long hours and have a lot of stress to deal with at their job. Our clients then become extremely frustrated when they cannot stick to a diet that adds something else to do to their day like meal prepping five portions of 3 ounces of plain tilapia with two cups of mushed steamed spinach sprinkled with magical unicorn dust. This sounds incredibly stressful! No wonder so many of us fail! We try too hard to be perfect!

What if we could think of our nutritional choices of a spectrum instead of “good” and “bad”?

In any situation, we can ask ourselves: “what’s the best thing I could choose right now, given the current circumstances?” Your nutritional choices do not have to be perfect. In fact, “perfect” sets us up to fail. Life isn’t perfect, there is always going to be a conflict. Therefore, when life isn’t perfect, it gives us an excuse to throw up our hands and give up.

It is how we respond and adapt to those conflicts that determine success. How can we make our choices good enough?

For example, you have a work dinner to go to, and since we prioritize our job because it provides for our family you are going to eat, drink and make merriment! These dinners often involve a restaurant with rich meals and copious amounts of alcohol.

How can we navigate this situation a little bit better?

Look at the menu beforehand and make a plan as to what could be a better choice.
1. Grilled sirloin with the seasonal veggies and a baked potato
2. Grilled Salmon with asparagus
3. If that Angus burger is calling your name, can we skip the fries and get a side salad instead?
If you’re going to drink alcohol, ENJOY IT! Order something nice. Drink it slow. Notice its complexity.
Ask your company if the bread basket can stay in the kitchen. More often than not most people will appreciate you taking the initiative to keep that sucker away from the table.
Eat slowly. When a quarter of your plate of food is finished, take a two-minute break and enjoy the people around you. Stop when you’re satisfied.

Another example is that pesky lunchtime hour. We find ourselves stressed, frustrated and needing to get out of the office! In a whirlwind, we run to our favorite fast food because it decreases our stress levels and makes us feel good. But soon after that, we are ready for a nap and starting to regret that orange chicken and white rice as we are dozing off. Looks like we need to head to that vending machine for a caffeine or sugar pick-me-up.

How could we make this better?

Automate our food choices either by getting a meal delivery service (like Territory Meals)or a weekly meal prep.
Look at the places you routinely visit—how could you make those choices a little bit better?
1. Can you add veggies somewhere?
2. Can you get a protein that’s not breaded?
3. Can you go to a local grocery store and visit the hot foods bar to load up on lean proteins and veggies? Say you want that mac and cheese… Instead of filling the whole plate, can you fill only a quarter of the plate, and fill the rest with lean protein and veggies?
If you need to get out of the office, can you find a nice place outside to eat and have a little picnic of nuts, veggies, fruits and pulled rotisserie chicken?

Nutrition does not need to be complicated.

We often think about what we “should” be doing. We then riddle ourselves with guilt from not doing what we think we “should” be doing. Let go of the “should,” it isn’t helping your mindset. From here on out let us only deal with WHAT IS. What is, right now, here in front of you. Let’s get reality on our side. It may be that your reality is your job right now, because you value providing financial security for your family. But, what WILL you do to move along to the better end of the spectrum that still fits your current circumstance?