Health & Fitness is a Long Game

One problem with diets and diet culture -- you know, besides the parts where they promote weight loss as the only goal, promote only one body type as "ideal," and make people feel bad about themselves for no reason -- is that they push an "all-or-nothing" narrative. 

You're on a diet or you're not.

You were "good" or you were "bad."

You stuck with it or you quit. 

Diets and diet culture paint nutrition as something you only have to "get right" for a certain period of time, usually two weeks or 30 days. 

But if you're lucky, you'll be eating food for the rest of your life. 

Straying from a nutrition plan (even if it was a good plan and most popular diets are not) truly does not matter in the grand scheme of your life. 

What matters is what you do most of the time. 

If you follow me on Instagram, you might know I was out of town last weekend and ended up having sausage dogs for dinner a few nights in a row. Yesterday was Easter, and I definitely had more sweets than I normally would. 

I could've beaten myself up about it. I could've made sure to do extra workouts to atone for the extra calories -- and years ago, I absolutely did those things. 

But now I'm in this health and fitness thing for the long haul, and I know all the nutritious stuff I put in my body far outweighs a sausage dog or a slice of carrot cake. 

Stop thinking of food and nutrition as a "diet," or a regimen that you must stick with for a present amount of time.

It's just food. Some types are better for you than others. That doesn't necessarily mean something is "bad." 

Stop looking at nutrition as a plan you're either "on" or "off."

One Reese's egg will not send you to health jail. One kale salad is not going to give you back healthy points. 

Health and nutrition are not time-limited. They're lifelong journeys.

We all need food to live, so as long as we're alive, we're on the journey. The journey (hopefully) doesn't end in 21 days!

With any luck, the end is a long way off, and there will be plenty of opportunities to create a healthy balance. 

If you start to feel "bad" about something you ate, remember that and...just try to make a different choice the next time. 

When the positive healthful choices outweigh the others overall, you'll be just fine.