Decisions, Decisions

It completely surprises me how many times you have to make a decision about food on a daily basis. When I started to concentrate on my eating habits, it reminded of me of someone who gets a new puppy. You notice more dog food commercials on TV, you finally see the dog food billboards that were always there, and you notice more dogs walking the street.

Now that I am making food the issue, I have taken much more notice to the fact that food is all around me and the influences to eating food are found at every turn. When we think of eating, many of us tend to believe that we only have to make a good choice about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We want to believe that making just a couple of good choices a day is all we need to be successful. Unfortunately, in our society making food choices is not restricted to three times a day. This is because food is always available and there is always an influence working to get us to eat it.

The truth is that we have to make decisions about food all the time. Sure we have to decide what to eat for our meals, and making good choices there carries you a long way towards success, but every time you pass by eligible food to eat you have to make a decision. It is important to realize this because when you do, you find that you are making several more choices about food on a daily basis. Making good choices during these critical times can go a long way to support your healthy eating habits. Making bad choices during these times can jeopardize your long term goals.

Food is everywhere and it is readily available. Food is in your vending machines at work, it's on your co-workers desk, and many times it is in a dish or a drawer at your own desk. When you drive from one place to another, you drive by countless food services. Fast food restaurants, grocery stores, mini-marts where you used to just get gas are all sources of food. Food is in your home, on the counter, in the cupboard, in the fridge, and sometimes just lying around the house waiting to be eaten.

Food comes up in your daily discussions all the time. Conversations range from "what did you eat last night" to "where do you want to to go for lunch." The topics for talking about food are endless.

Our social events are structured around food. Business meetings take place at restaurants, parties and other events are hinged on food, the holidays are all about food. Eating food is so prevalent in our society, that it has several channels on cable television where it has evolved from a matter of sustenance to an art form, a competitive arena, and a cultural phenomenon.

Recognizing that you must make food choices regularly is really important to be successful long term. When we ask our marching band kids to perform their show, we talk to them about how they have to process each part of the program right before they execute it. This involves hundreds of decisions crammed into an eight minute window. When they take the time to properly process each segment as it comes ahead of time, they are prepared and it will translate into a successful performance.

Life Lesson #7: Process what you need to do right before you execute it.

If we process our decision about whether or not we want to eat the food before we eat it, we are likely going to make better choices on what we eat and why we eat it. As an emotional eater, I know that many times I eat without even thinking about it and this usually leads to disaster. A key to Paul McKenna's message about losing weight is about eating consciously. I couldn't agree more. The first step in doing this, however, is realizing how many times these decisions need to be made.

There are lots of decisions we have to make about food every day and the goal here is to make more good decisions than bad. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that they will all be good. That is a record no one can measure up to. Realistically, we have to realize that out of all the decisions we make about food regularly, a few are going to be bad ones. When we make the bad decision, it’s important to forgive yourself and try again.

Major league baseball players make millions of dollars failing three out or four times. We are bound to have some failures too. So we shouldn't panic and think that our plan for eating food is an epic failure after one mistake. It's not a signal that we have to abandon it and try something completely different. It just means that we need to continue to recognize how many times we are making a decision about food and do our best to do the right thing next time. After all, we will have plenty of more chances to make the right decision in the future.