Seven Steps to Successful Sustainable Nutrition #382

Niki & Gillian pick up from Episode 381 Knowing & Remembering Your Whys to address the approach to successful sustainable nutrition with practical steps and actions meet your goals. 

Gillian first address her approach to nutrition coaching (and this applies if you're acting as your own coach) with Consequences, Accountability, and Trust (CAT). 

Consequences help dictate your motivation and aggressiveness. High consequences usually are time-bound: preparing for a bodybuilding competition, cutting weight to meet a weight class, losing weight for a military bodyweight screening. We understand that some people do react severely to consuming certain foods, whether it be because of autoimmune diseases or allergies. 

Who is holding you accountable? Building accountability into your plan matters. Having a coach helps, but also being public with your goals, actions, and progress. Share all your steps along the way with your loved ones and social media. You can have a diet bet. 

Lastly, you need to trust in the process, yourself, and your coach. Nutrition progress is not linear, and you'll have to contend with stagnant metrics, setbacks, and a desire to constantly change things up. 

Gillian then discusses her Seven Steps to Successful Sustainable Nutrition

1. Tell the Truth
2. Non-Negotiables
3. Triage
4. Plan Ahead
5. Plan Ahead
6. Measure and Celebrate Your Results
7. Mindset

Tell the truth to yourself, your coach, those around you. Don't lie. If you pour a half of a bottle of wine into a glass, that's not really "one glass of wine with dinner." If you track using a food-tracking app, don't pick something with substantially fewer calories than what the food probably has. Track everything. Don't hide things. You can't properly create and adjust actions, heck you can't even identify problems, if you're not acknowledging and recording your behaviors accurately.

Identify and incorporate your non-negotiables. These change, but they are the things that matter to you, you find value from, and that need to be incorporated into your diet plan. This might be eating out, alcohol, or dessert. This doesn't mean that you get to eat as much of you want, but it means that these need to be included--and you might adjust other behaviors to include them. 

One you understand non-negotiables and someone's behaviors (or your own) and know the person's goals, you can identify the biggest obstacles to progress. What are the changes you can make that will result in the biggest returns on investment with the least time, effort, etc.

Regardless of your plan, planning ahead matters. Bad decisions occur without planning & preparation. It gives you confidence--you know you have something waiting for you at home, so you don't go through the drive through. It helps prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. 

Mastery of the small changes means turning actions into habits through repetition. This means that something that at first was a big change and potentially hard goes on auto-pilot, with minimal effort to sustain. 

Measure your results and celebrate them. This not only includes metrics, but also all the recipes, skills, knowledge, and habits you have accumulated through the process. 

Lastly, master your mindset--make it positive. Trust matters here. Acknowledging that setbacks, stagnation, and challenges will occur. Be able to come back after you stray from the plan--jump back, without guilt and rumination.

Following these actions can help you successfully develop and follow a sustainable approach to nutrition, where you meet your goals and then maintain at a place you are happy with.

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