Ditch Your Diet – Build These 2 Healthy Habits Instead
Stop trying to find the perfect diet. That’s a temporary solution that works for a while and then fails on you when you make life changes. Start with the life changes first, build habits around that.
Most ideal diets you find nowadays have a couple of things in common. They promise golden results, whoever you are and whatever your situation is. They work with restrictions, mainly focusing on what you can’t eat. They work with generalized ratios and amounts, putting large groups of people in the same box. And there’s a lot more. But the most important is that to follow these diets, you need to change your life around so that your whole life fits into this.
I’ve been there, not so much by following prescribed diets, but by trying things out myself. From cutting out all refined and artificial sugars completely for over a year to low-carb high-protein, high-calorie intake, and a lot more. Lots of fun to experiment with and see what happens over a longer time. But eventually, it all fell flat since my life kept enveloping and moving in different directions than I expected upfront. Asking completely new things from me that I had zero experience with and demanding capabilities to come alive that I didn’t know I had within me. Rather than stubbornly following a perfect diet, I preferred the joy of pursuing a life-enriching journey. And I still do, collecting memories along the way that are worth sharing.
The variable starting points of where people come from before they change their health habits are numerous and incomparable. So are the directions in which they are going. The same counts for you when you look at your life’s journey, where you are now is different than 10 years ago and 10 years from now. Let’s skip that part and tune into the habits themselves, which are universal. These are principles that need to be practical, simple to apply under all circumstances, and sustainable for a lifetime. With all the endless advice online it’s one hell of a challenge to filter out what you need. Life-proof experience does all the filtering for you and skips the whole figuring-out process.
Writing Down Your Eagle-Eye Perspective
What does that look like, relying on experience without figuring out what to do? First, you need to switch to “how it works”, helping you to get into learning and discovering mode. There’s an instant background change, subtle but clear at the same time – the awareness that results become visible over a longer period. Making the journey more important than the outcome, stepping in without expectations, and knowing that mistakes are included in the process. Being kind to yourself helps you to come from a place of trust and confidence, rather than beating yourself up when instant gratification doesn’t pay off.
Over to “how it works”, in this case building healthy habits, based on principles that are practical, simple to apply, and sustainable for a lifetime. For that, you need a ‘trajectory overview’: an eagle-eye perspective on where you are right now, where you come from, and where you’re heading if you continue like this. For example, you’re a freelancing mother of two kids with a demanding job. You come from a background where there was little time to look after yourself, with all the daily tasks asking for your attention. As it looks now, you’re bound to grow into a bigger client base in the same area, with an increasing focus on daily tasks and your kids needing more specific attention as they grow. You’ll have your variables that demand your time, energy, and attention. Write down your version to get started.
Side note: time works cyclical, time in a linear sense is nothing more than a mental construct. Nature works in seasons, day and night, and moon cycles. Kids grow a bit each year throughout their childhood. And to follow the example, if you keep putting effort into your freelance job, every cycle brings you to a new plateau. Easy to follow right? And much more hopeful than keeping ‘death’ in the back of your mind as a finish line at the end of life. About that, since every cell in your body renews itself every 7 years, age in a literal sense isn’t real. See yourself as going through a maturation process. Along the way, you can feel 20 when you’re 50 years old or 80 when you’re in your thirties. You can decide how you feel, how you look, and how healthy & energetic you want to be.
The Two Life Trajectory-Changing Habits You Need
To give a bit more context, the ‘trajectory overview’ you write down for yourself is heavily linked to your identity. A complete picture of how you look, how you act, how you think, how you speak, what you eat, what you like and hate, everything that’s connected to your material life. Keep in mind that this has formed and shaped itself in early childhood before you could shape your thoughts. In other words, you can choose what you wish to keep and what needs to change. Every teeny tiny change you apply also changes your trajectory, starting at what you identify yourself with brings flow to the journey. A part of your ego dies and rebirths into a new and true version of yourself.
Let’s follow through with the example, of the mother with 2 kids and a demanding job. She wants to have more time, energy, and attention for herself and her kids, while also keeping the growth with her freelance business. Meaning that the low-end clients need to go to make space for more high-end clients. This requires work, just not the hard work of running faster and doing more, but rather the work of doing less of the unnecessary. Saying ‘no’ to what she used to do becomes her biggest challenge and working with her subconscious mind is a daily practice. What she identified herself with needs to go, full focus on her new self-image. With that ‘dying’ becomes an active process, as in facing her ego that wants to stick to her current comfort zone. Both the self-awareness of what needs to go as a starting point and the new self-image of where she’s heading become the new trajectory.
Building a support structure is vital to even be able to get started, let alone to keep going. That’s where the practical principles, simple to apply, and sustainable for a lifetime come in. Now you know how to shift your trajectory, see if you can write down your new self-image and what needs to go for that to become a reality.
An easy way you can do this is by taking one piece of paper. On one side you write down your current self-identity (that is what needs to go). On the other side, you write down your new self-image (that is what needs to become reality). Bring both back to the physical, how it feels in both situations. The draining stuff of sticking to the old – and what’s joyful about your new reality. From now on it’s very simple: you can only see one side of the page at the same time, so you decide which one gets all your time, energy, and attention. The old (slowing you down) or the new (the highway)? What to do: 1) apply the joyful stuff through aligned thoughts, words, and actions, and 2) eliminate anything that’s draining you. These are the only 2 habits you need!
The support structure applies to all areas of your life: your living environment, your health, your finances, your profession, your me-time, your spiritual pursuits, and your relationships. To follow the example, the 3 main areas for the woman with 2 kids and a demanding freelance business would be: 1) relationships (family); 2) profession; and 3) health. Improving one of these triggers all the others, improving all 3 of them makes life-changing impacts. To make it very practical, the better she feels herself, the better she’s able to show up for her kids and her business clients. Starting with health improvements will lift her spirit instantly and get her going.
Choose What Makes You Feel Alive
Back to the diets mentioned at the start. These are based on punishment and reward, you need to keep up with the diet to succeed. And if you don’t keep up you fail, resulting in beating yourself up and getting back to square one. Luckily there’s a way better solution, where you can get what you need without restricting yourself. Look at your new trajectory, the joyful side of the page, and you know what you need in terms of time, energy, and attention. Health-wise that gives you a clear picture of what to feed yourself with. Anything increasing the feeling of joy, curiosity, and wonder gets you going. Looking at the draining side of the page, health-wise that gives a clear picture of what you need to nourish and support yourself.
Things like joy, confidence, trust, and peace are already available inside of you. It’s about accessing rather than searching for it. The stuff that drains you covers up these natural traits that you’ve had within you since the day you were born. Working on the 2 most important habits of your life tackles both sides of the page simultaneously. A nice visualization is that draining stuff like worry, confusion, stress, fear, and anxiety all feel heavy. While joy, trust, confidence, and peace all feel light. Translate this to what you put in your mouth and you get an indication of what comes out. Either heaviness throughout the day or loads of energy to pursue what you desire most.
The woman with 2 kids and a demanding business needs to feel better physically and energetically to be present for her family and clients. A very clear message to remember and follow through with. Feeling better physically comes when she eats more foods that bring flow to her organs and digestive system. Fruits and vegetables are light to digest, give energy quickly and for a prolonged time, and she can eat loads of them without gaining weight. Whole grains like oats, quinoa, millet, and buckwheat are also light to digest, very nourishing, and give a satisfying feeling. Beans and legumes contain proteins that form new building blocks of life, giving a sense of strength. Nuts and seeds are full of healthy fats that give instant energy and are important for the heart and brain. That’s a great starting point.
All of these have one important thing in common: they activate the vital life force energy within you. This is the place where new life is born. Known as the womb area for women and the prostate area for men. Creativity is your natural state of being like you see with children, and it comes from the same vital life force. Creative energy is also called sexual energy, the ability to give birth (to children, ideas, art, businesses, communities, gardens, you name it). Your most powerful energy, that gives you the ability to direct all your energy in one direction to bring something to life. A creator of life is what you are, the way you do this is uniquely yours and makes you an authority within your fields of influence.
Accessing Your Subconscious, Where All Change Happens
Look back at the 2 pages where you’ve written down your old identity and your new self-image. Joy, curiosity, creativity, and wonder are the doorway to the new. Tapping into these traits you’ve got within shifts your life’s trajectory. The cognitive figuring out is put to the side, you’re able to tap into the subconscious now. Change happens here – behaviors, choices, and actions come out of how your subconscious is shaped. Is it based on surviving, rushing, working harder, punishment & reward? Or on abundance, flow, ease, and inner peace? All you need to start with are the 2 habits described earlier. Since the first is coming from the conscious mind, figuring everything out, is heavy and draining. The latter is coming from the subconscious mind, a place of overview, having the whole trajectory in sight and choosing proactively.
Fruits and vegetables help to open up access to the subconscious parts of the brain. Through improving the digestive flow, strengthening the organs, and balancing the gut flora where the nutrients enter the bloodstream. Memories, both joyful and painful, are stored in the organs, not the mind. Including childhood memories, hidden gifts and talents, and deeper senses. All come alive when more healthy nutrients enter your cell membranes. Central Nervous System traffic increases, from the gut up to the brainstem, along the spinal cord. Not only that, the pineal gland is activated, releasing DMT naturally, and bringing inspirations, insights, visions, and revelations to create new life.
Anything that the organs and digestive system cannot process properly, is processed by the mind. Which is much slower, demands all your attention, and needs you to compromise your goals and priorities. The body communicates through feelings and emotions. When there’s sensory or emotional overwhelm, the thoughts that come through are distorted as well. Imagine that you’re a mother of 2 kids and a demanding freelance business and you’ll get the picture. No time, energy, or attention is left to what’s most important to you. Constantly being absorbed by conscious thought processes, while the outside world doesn’t slow down.
Important note: this is not the only reason for conscious overload. There are a lot of influences from the outside that have an impact as well. Your environment can lift you up or drain you. Outside influences are out of your control, what you feed yourself with is something you can choose. Optimize what you can control first, and the environment around you changes with you.
Live a Life You’re Willing to Die For
Do the slowing down yourself. Start with changing your life’s trajectory, by creating an overview of your current life and your ‘best case scenario’ life. The first is to be honest with yourself, to detach from it, and come from a neutral position. “Okay, this is what I’ve got right now”. The second is to go for plan A and plan A only, committing fully to yourself and your ‘best case scenario’. Sounds like a utopia? Trust that the ‘worst case scenario’ dissolves when you eliminate anything connected to it from your being. Any obligation that your mind comes up with you can throw out of the window. It’s simply no longer aligned with what you want to identify yourself with, it needs to die first to be reborn. Anyone and anything that was connected to the old fades away (grieving is a natural part of transformation), no need to explain yourself to others. Pick a life you wish to die for and find the people and experiences along your way that link up with that.
Select the foods that guarantee success, make you feel lighter, and help you access your subconscious, where all change happens. Tap into the state of creativity, of timelessness, of ‘meditation while you’re awake’. Open up the doorway of joy, curiosity, and childlike wonder to fuel your mission. Settle into an awareness that’s below the horizon, where time seems to slow down. Look underwater to open up an ocean full of aliveness like you’ve never seen before. Where the unknown becomes exciting to explore, rather than something that scares the shit out of you. These are all nothing fancy, but very real, and accessible for you at all times. Once you’ve been there for the first time, your perspective of life changes. There’s no way back.
This has been the driving force throughout my life and continues to be. I found out about all of it not through active pursuit, but by bumping into it. The small bubble that I lived in burst open over and over again, forcing me to shift my entire perspective on life. What I’ve learned along the way is what’s practical, what’s simple to apply straight away, and what’s sustainable in any situation. Wherever I come from (old identity) and wherever I’m heading (new self-image), I know that it starts in the middle. In between the conscious mind and the super-conscious (Divine, Universe, God/Goddess, how you want to name it) is the subconscious, living from this place changes everything. All I can wish is that you can feel what it’s like to live life in this state.