All or nothing

satchel2008

Well here I go again got to get my life on track. Starting on Monday I plan on starting to eat healthy exercising regularly and I plan on giving up smoking. I've never wanted to give up smoking until recently I've been having a little trouble breathing and hearing myself wheezing a little bit. Seems like kind of a lot to do all at once but I've kind of always been a all-or-nothing kind of person. I'm hoping to maybe make some friends on here find people that can motivate and hold me accountable and I do the same for them as well if they would like. So here goes everything. Stay happy and healthy y'all. 😉

moonangel12

I totally understand the all or nothing mindset! Good luck on your new adventure! Do you have a game plan for quitting smoking? Both my parents successfully did it - totally different approaches. This was 25+ years ago so a lot has changed, so many more options, but my dad found a list of cigarettes based on nicotine content and worked his way down, eventually weaning himself off. My mom went to hypnosis, cold turkey.

I had the mindset a couple weeks ago to suck it up and just do it. MFP gave me a concrete thing to work towards and I am going strong! We went out one night, I ate crap food and said “Tomorrow, this changes!”

And it did!

Danp

The problem, in my experience, with the 'all or nothing' approach is that 'all' is impossible and 'nothing' is very easy. So in reality it's 'impossible or nothing' which really just means 'nothing'...

Now, I'm no stranger to this way of thinking. In fact I'd say 'all or nothing' is probably one of the biggest reason I remained overweight for the last 25 odd years. I think, subconsciously, I used this approach to give myself as many convenient excuses to fail so go back to doing nothing while still giving the impression that I was trying.

I'd start off with "I'm gonna lift 3 days a week and do cardio on the off days and eat healthy and give up smoking!"

3 days later

"Oh No! I have to work late and can't get to the gym tonight I've blown it" <pulls out 'emergency cigarette' and orders a family size pizza for dinner>
or
"Damn it! They ordered pizzas at work today and I had a slice. Why even bother" <skips the gym and buys smokes and a mountain of snack food on the way home>

I wish you all the best and genuinely hope you're able to take on those three enormous changes all at once. I just hope that when some aspect of 'all' fails you keep going and don't revert back to the 'or nothing'.

G'luck