There’s that word…”boundaries.” Living limitless sounds ideal, but there are some benefits to having boundaries, especially if you are setting your own boundaries. Some of the benefits that pop into my mind are: providing direction and focus, stability, security, empowerment, and a way to get you from where you are to where you want to be. In order to live limitless, setting boundaries that are able to evolve are important. We need to set boundaries in many areas of our life and with food, it is no different. Often times, when people go on diets (especially weight loss diets), they create very rigid boundaries on food, which start to lead to this unhealthy relationship with food. Food becomes just a number. Food becomes a source of shame.
Your nutrition is the source of energy. It is a source of bonding with friends, family, and strangers. Our nutrition becomes part of our identity and shapes how we view other people, animals, holidays, events, and more. It can be simply said that our nutrition is part of every aspect of our lives so it is important to have a healthy relationship with food. Below, you will find an introduction to setting boundaries with your food. You will discover where you want to be, where you are now, what you can commit to, and the importance of communicating what your boundaries are.
1. Figure out what you want. Dream big.
Make a list of everything you want And I mean everything you want. What does your ideal life look like? Do you want the six pack abs? Do you want a family? What’s your dream job? What hobbies do you want to be able to do? How much sleep do you want every night? What’s your social circle look like? Do you have pets? Where do you live? What type of house do you have? Think of it all. Dream big.
My dream life consists of a home on the beach. It has a nice bedroom with great lighting, a gorgeous deck for grilling and having friends over, and a beautiful kitchen. (I’ve watched too much home remodeling shows…) I got a gorgeous, successful, and compassionate wife who thinks I’m the shit and two kids who are just as awesome as everything else in this dream world. I’m really in shape: muscular and tone. I love my job; I’m an actor who also runs a non-profit coaching business for youth at risk. I rarely feel exhausted or stressed and I sleep a full eight hours every night in a huge California king size bed. And of course, my best friend, Maximus, is always with me…..Okay, enough about me. Let’s get back to you. What’s your ideal look like?
Once you’ve thought of what your ideal looks like, go ahead and start to focus on what your ideal fitness looks like. Think about physical fitness, but also think about your emotional and social fitness. Ideally, how do you want you body to look? Don’t limit yourself right now. Dream big. How does your ideal self feel? And what does your social life look like?
After you have thought about this for a minute, I want you to prioritize everything you thought of by order of importance. What can you live without? What can’t you live without? For many, their physical and social ideals are the areas where they are willing to waiver or compromise on. But they are unwilling to compromise on how their ideal self feels. The happiness, the confidence, the assertiveness, the calmness, the strength or whatever else you imagined yourself feeling. You aren’t willing to sacrifice those areas for physical or social means. You shouldn’t compromise those feelings, but also remember that your ideal self won’t be any of those things without a bit of struggle and discomfort. You won’t always be happy. You won’t always feel strong. You will sometimes be filled with anxiety. Those feelings are part of the journey.
I wanted you to do this because I wanted you to acknowledge that your ideal self and ideal life is just a picture of a moment, not your entire life. It doesn’t capture what it took to get to the moment, what continues to take to maintain that, or how even that “ideal moment” will change once you get there. What you are experiencing in reality is life…something that fluctuates, evolves, and produces. Dreaming big is important. It reveals where you want to be. It gives hope that things will be better than they are currently. And even if it won’t turn out exactly how you imagined it, it provides direction…and hey, it may turn out better than you can imagine. But the biggest thing to remember, especially when creating boundaries, is that you will have to sacrifice some of your ideal and you need to know what you are willing to sacrifice on and what you are unwilling to sacrifice on.
2. Know Where You Are Right Now
To get where you want to be, you have to be honest about where you are. Think about where you are at in different parts of your life. You can think about just your physical fitness, but often our physical fitness is impacted by the other areas of our life. So think about what your work schedule is like; what your social life is like; your current mental and emotional health; how you spend your free time; your family life. And whatever else you can think of. And of course, where are you at in your physical health and fitness?
Now, take the areas that you thought of and note one of the following beside each: “Content with the way it is”, “May want to improve”, and “Definitely want to see improvement.”
Lastly, take the “Definitely want to see improvement” and “May want to improve” areas and prioritize these areas by which you want to focus on first. By improving in one area, you will likely progress or possibly even regress in another area (as mentioned before, the areas of our lives are interconnected). With that being said, it is important to prioritize so that when tough decisions need to be made, you know what you care about most.
My top five priorities in order of most to least important right now are family, Maximus (my dog), my physical fitness, my work, and my mental/emotional fitness. I say those are my priorities because that is how I am currently living my life and making my decisions. Ideally, I’d like to prioritize my mental/emotional fitness before physical fitness and my work; but the reality is that I don’t right now. I prioritize it, but when decisions need to be made and I have to sacrifice between family or mental/emotional fitness, I will typically choose family. So remember to be honest with yourself. It is important to know what you can and can not commit to. It is also important to realize when things are starting to go off track and making time to re-prioritize.
3. Identify what others expect from you and Be able to Communicate your Boundaries.
@aaronphs
Have you already made commitments to others? Are there certain parts of your identity that will be changed by setting boundaries around your food? It is important that you communicate clearly what your boundaries are. If you don’t respect your boundaries, nobody else will either. If you go out to eat with your co-workers everyday for lunch, that may need to change based off your nutrition and fitness goals. But you don’t have to cut off your co-workers. You can communicate your plan and possibly even discuss ways of being social or eating together that falls within your plan. Knowing what others expect from you and being clear on what you expect from them and yourself is important to establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries. Knowing what others expect of you is also knowing about what their boundaries are so that you can respect them just as they do you.
-Samson 6/28/2020
4. Your nutritional boundaries need to fit into your lifestyle and available skills/resources
For a moment, let’s visualize “boundaries” as a fenced in yard. How big is your yard? This yard is one you should be able to enjoy yourself in, but also one that you can maintain. You could have a huge yard with a pool, but if you don’t mow the grass or clean the pool, it’s not going to live up to the standards you want, right? So with that in mind, you need to figure out what skills and resources you have in order to maintain the yard and how much space you need to have to really enjoy yourself. Let’s play with this yard analogy for a moment and discuss four types of people when it comes to their social lifestyle, their skills/resources, and what type of yard that would best be suited for them.
Social yet Don't Want to Think too Much about Maintenance
This person may want a bigger yard so that they can have lots of friends over. But would likely want to hire someone to maintain the yard or would need to become more skilled and passionate about maintaining their yard. They could also to cut back on social events at their place and stick with a smaller yard. They would need to sacrifice money, time, or the social gatherings they desire.
Social and Like Doing the Yard work
This person may also want a bigger yard to have social gatherings. They would need to continue to strengthen their yard work skills and/or may need to hire someone to help. Due to having social events, they may need to plan ahead of events in order to maintain the yard and keep the events from causing any damage. They may need to communicate with their guests more often about what is allowed and not allowed.
Not so social and Don't care to Do Yard work
This person may not need a yard at all. They could enjoy a cement patio, where there is still maintenance to be done, but it is minimal.
No so social but enjoy doing yard work
This person may like a big yard if they like space, but they also may be fine with just a small yard or an in-house garden. They would need to continue to strengthen their skills of yard work and also know how to set boundaries to keep their yard in top condition.
Of course, this is a limited analogy but you get the point. Boundaries are about what you want, but also about what you can handle. Now, let’s relate this back to nutrition. Click the tab(s) that most relate to you.
Social and/or have a busy schedule and do not have the skills and/or the desire to meal plan or prep
You’re going to have to set boundaries that provide you with BALANCE. Maybe, you will need to hire someone to help with your nutrition plan or maybe you will need to cut back on social events to reach your nutritional goals. But it is important to account for your lifestyle.
Stepping back for a minute from your busy and/or social lifestyle is important so that you can take a look at where you can manage your time differently in order to prioritize meal prepping or planning your meals out. If even after stepping back, you realize you don’t have the time or desire, you may look into meal prepping services, hiring a nutrition coach/personal trainer, and/or choosing a nutrition plan that gives you flexibility in eating out. You can read more about nutrition plans in “Creating a Healthy Relationship with Food: Choosing the Right Nutrition Plan.” For those who are trying to lose fat, have a busy and/or social lifestyle, and don’t want to spend a lot of time meal prepping or calorie counting, you may be interested in a nutrition plan that uses intermittent fasting.
Yes you can do both! To eat healthy, you don’t have to cut out everyone in your life or cut out on going out to eat. It often comes down to planning ahead and practice, practice, practice! You will just need to continue to strengthen your knowledge and skills on nutrition.
Social outings tend to be a big temptation for many people when it comes to nutrition, but so can time spent alone. Evaluate if being alone causes you to eat more “for the sake of eating” or even not eat enough because you just forget. A meal prep service may be appropriate if you don’t like cooking or prepping meals. Creating a schedule may help. Doing more activity may help. You could also start by making a small goal to cook 1-2 meals a week.
Enjoy your solitude and increase your knowledge on nutrition and your skills on prepping meals!
5. Put it all together. Commit to it.
Right now, you know what is important to you. You know where you are and where you want to be. And you’ve started to think about what you can commit to in this moment. We can sit and plan out everything right now, but it’s important not to get too stuck in planning out every detail. You’ll never get started if you do. The great thing about boundaries is that they evolve. They aren’t rigid. They are study, yet they are also movable. So take some time, create nutritional boundaries that account for your physical fitness goals, your mental health, and your daily lifestyle. Commit to it. Be consistent with yourself. In a later blog in this series of “Creating a Healthy Relationship with Food”, we will talk about establishing healthy rewards and deterrents. If you find yourself not committing or being consistent with your boundaries, check out that blog.
The hardest part about setting boundaries with food is that the most often trespasser on those boundaries is going to be you. Learn to say “No” to yourself. Learn to be gentle and not shame or disrespect yourself. Value your goals. Trust your strength and abilities. You got this.
