5 Mindset Blocks That Are Keeping You From Reaching Your Health Goals

Today we’re talking about the five most common mindset blocks that can hold us back from reaching our health goals, and how to overcome them!

“Hey guys, Amber here! Today we’re kicking off a new weekly column in conjunction with the Fed & Fit Project all about mindset, nutrition, and fitness!”

Since Fed & Fit is mainly a recipe and nutrition focused blog, people are often surprised to learn that the number one pillar of the Fed & Fit Project isn’t food, but mindset! A healthy, balanced mindset is the most important key to success. It is also one of the hardest components to address. Making a temporary change in your food may be difficult for a time, but the real work comes in finding a sustainable, healthy lifestyle.

While The Project starts with a temporary reset, the ultimate goal is to arrive at your Perfect You Plan. In this stage, you will find what foods do and don’t work best for you (free of dietary dogma!), and shed the guilt around your food choices so you can simply enjoy your life without worrying about the cupcake you ate for your birthday or wondering whether you really should eat dairy.

Here are a few ways that your mindset may be getting in the way of your health goals:

You Feel Like Failure is Inevitable

Perhaps you are embarking on a new diet, fitness plan, or mindset practice and you feel ready to commit to it, and maybe even a little bit excited! However, you might also have that little voice in the back of your head that tells you it isn’t going to work. Maybe you’ve been dieting for as long as you remember and have never found a plan that sticks. Or, perhaps nothing has worked for you so far despite your commitment and compliance to many programs, and you don’t know if anything ever will.

Creating new habits is hard. Making a long-lasting lifestyle shift is even harder. As you continue through a program, this voice will get even louder and derail you. Once you’re derailed, you may beat yourself up for letting this happen again, and feel so defeated that you just walk away.

Here’s the thing, if you go into something thinking you’re going to fail, you almost always will. It is so important to assess this before starting a program. Working on resetting your mindset will take you so far toward actually finding something that does work and does stick!

You Don’t Believe You Have Enough Time

This is a BIG one in our society today, and trust me, I get it! We are busy, trying to juggle working, being a good mom, a good wife, and a good friend all while running a million errands. So finding time to cook, work out and even just drink water seems impossible.

This overwhelm can lead to a negative attitude that stems from a collision of confused priorities and unclear plans. Positive, can-do people tend to have a relatively firm grasp on their priorities and take steps to align their time and actions accordingly. When priorities are unclear and efforts to improve are disorganized, it can be difficult to track progress in a constructive, positive manner.

To clear up the confusion, make a list of all of the activities you do in a week, then rank those activities according to importance. Where does your health and the activities related to it fall on this priority list? See what you can move around to make time for things like cooking and working out. Even if you find the only thing you can logically fit in right now is drinking more water, start there, and add on as you can.

Approaching these changes with a plan, and knowing that you have time to make it happen, will alleviate stress and help keep you from throwing in the towel at the first sign of overwhelm.

You Haven’t Set Meaningful Goals

We almost always embark on fitness and nutrition challenges with a goal in mind. These goals often look like losing weight, resolving joint pain, ending sugar cravings, having more energy, gaining more muscle, etc. etc. However, I encourage you to dig deeper into these goals and find your why.

Do you want to lose weight so you can gain more energy to play with your kids? Do you want to end your sugar cravings so that you can stop feeling controlled by food and free up that mental space for something that you are truly excited about? Do you want to reduce your joint pain because you love hiking and desperately want to be able to incorporate it back into your life?

Finding the deeper goal can help you understand why these changes are worth it in the long run. This way, when you’re in the middle of detoxing from sugar and thinking of giving up, you can recall that meaningful goal and remember why you are doing this.

You’re Afraid of Success

This one digs a little bit deeper, and you may be wondering how it is possible to be afraid of success, but many of us are! Fear of success may be an underlying reason you haven’t found what works for you yet. Here, I’m talking about those questions that haunt many of us: “Am I even worthy? Am I worth the effort, the trials, the errors, the grace, the patience, and the success?” Or, maybe you are afraid to imagine what would happen for you if you were successful, because you are worried about the changes that will occur.

Ask yourself these questions out loud or on paper and give yourself the answer you deserve: yes. Yes, you are worth every single minute and every single effort. You’re worth it all, and you need to remember that. Don’t let a fear of success keep you from living a life you deserve to live. Write it on your bathroom mirror in lipstick, plant handwritten notes in your jacket pockets, and set a “you are so worth it” daily alarm on your phone for when you need reminding.

You Aren’t Fully Committed

Commitment encompasses your determination, plan, follow-through, and consistency. The plan is often crafted for you, but your determination, follow-through, and consistency is up to you! Failed perfection and unmet expectations are commitment’s kryptonite. Therefore, let’s start with manageable expectations and the understanding that we’re working toward progress, not perfection. Consistency is key, and determination is your map. If you go off course, there’s no need to give up, just continue doing your best and keep working at it every day. It will feel like work at first, but just like building muscle or learning a new sport, it gets easier and more intuitive with time. You’ve got this!

Note: For a deeper dive into these topics, you can check out the Fed & Fit Book.