Read this before starting any new health challenge
This article is meant to shift how you think about extreme health challenges. Exposing the things we might know but don’t always want to acknowledge about them.
I’ve personally done the extremes. Juice fasts, keto, working out twice a day, pushing my body to the point of injury. At those times, it felt like dedication. Like I was finally doing what it takes to see change. All the while feel like it was SO hard, feeling depleted and definitely not better. Sure I sometimes would lose some weight, but at a cost.
Not all that many years later, on the other side of the fads, I can tell you now for sure that they don’t even work, not in the long-term at least. Not because it doesn’t produce short term results, sometimes it does, but because it’s far too hard to sustain. You burn out, you stop, and then you’re left thinking the problem is you. So here are my reasons to quit the quick fixes:
Reason 1: mindset
If it’s not sustainable, it has detrimental effects on your mindset.
Yes you will probably struggle to sustain the changes, best case you burn out and worst case you force changes you aren’t ready for and become injured or ill. For your mindset the failure isn’t the worst part, it’s that you start to believe that health is supposed to feel hard, restrictive, and exhausting. That if you can’t keep up with extreme routines, you’re the one failing.
But real health doesn’t look like that. Real health is built slowly, alongside your life. It’s not something you force for a few weeks, it’s something you learn how to live with. And honestly, it’s a lot more simple than you might think.
Simple food swaps to support hunger and hormones, not a total diet revamp.
Simple exercise like walking or body weight strength, it doesn’t have to be all the way to weights at the gym or a daily workout plan.
Simple mindfulness shifts like gratitude while you brush your teeth or driving meditation over always filling silences with incoming stimuli.
It’s also a little more boring, in the best way. There’s less intensity, less urgency, and a 100% focus on consistency. Doing whatever you can to always come back, to redirect, to just be consistent with a step before you progress it and make it harder.
Ultimately, if you start out thinking this is a health change you want to make for a short period of time just to get a result and then stop. You will not sustain the result. Simple as that, you need to go into things prepared to navigate a journey of health for life if you want the real rewards a healthy life has to offer.
Reason 2: physiology
If reason 1 wasn’t enough, biologically you are also setting yourself up to have things to “fix” afterwards. For example, if the diet change is restrictive, hunger hormones, sex hormones, thyroid hormones, digestion, etc. all take a hit. This has a huge and longer lasting impact on your metabolism that you will now need to correct. Making changes harder when you do things sustainably.
Or if you are like me and jump into exercise that is way to intense for where you currently are at on your journey, you risk injury that will put you out form progressing for months or longer.
Don’t let fads or quick fixes impact your success in the future.
If you feel stuck in extremes but know it’s not working, this is your permission to try something different. You don’t need to punish yourself into progress. You don’t need to jump to the hardest version of everything. Starting smaller isn’t a step back. It’s how you actually move forward.
Whats next?
Before you go looking for the next extreme health train to jump on and try, why not choose one sustainable change you can make right now. Take it slow and you WILL see success this time!
If you’re ready to step out of extremes and build something sustainable that actually fits your life, this is exactly the work we focus on inside Mindset Medicine. So if you are feeling ready for the next step, I encourage you to see if Mindset Medicine might be right for you.
Or scroll through my other freebies for your next Mindset Shift 🤍