When Pursuing Your Health Backfires

Channeling your focus into eating healthy meals and exercising is great…

Until you make “being healthy” your whole personality.

Have you ever met someone who won’t let anything get in the way of their gym session, or stresses out if they miss a workout? Or someone who meticulously maps out all their meals and won’t allow any flexibility into their rigid eating plans?

Perhaps that person has been you.

Or maybe if you haven’t experienced that level of commitment (blaming your lack of consistency on your lack of willpower), maybe you can still identify with a feeling of preoccupation with food and/or exercise.

Where you…

…Wake up thinking about what you’ll eat first, finishing your first meal and planning for your next one, watching the clock to see when you’ll eat next, tracking and weighing food, telling yourself what you can and cannot eat, paying attention to what others are eating, beating yourself up if you eat something off-plan. 

…Plan your next workout and checking your body in the mirror to see if there are any noticeable changes, worrying about what will happen if you miss a workout, feeling anxious about taking time off exercise.

…Weigh yourself frequently, taking photos, measuring your body parts, scrutinizing your figure in the mirror.

Getting too focused on keeping up what began as the pursuit of health can become problematic in and of itself.

This kind of fixation on your food, fitness, and body is often accompanied by impatience to see changes to your body, self-criticism, and hyper-vigilance over your behaviors.

This tunnel vision can build up over time, and is especially common with chronic dieters and yo-yo dieters—people who oscillate between periods of restriction and periods of overeating. 

Whether you are currently attempting to lose weight or have already stepped back and are attempting to heal your relationship with food, you’d do well to incorporate what my partner Alexander has termed “identity diversification.”

Which is the opposite of “making something your whole personality.”

Identity diversification is when you not only allow, but encourage yourself to pursue your various interests, whether they be related to work or productivity, hobbies and play, or spending time with others.

The primary benefit of identity diversification is that when you have multiple goals or interests, becoming fixated, preoccupied, or unhealthily obsessed with one is a much harder trap to fall into.

In my years of experience as a coach, I’ve often seen individuals become just as impatient with healing their relationship with food as they were when they were waiting to lose weight.

But when you are able to, for example, attend calls with your coach, complete some recommended reading and journaling, and then turn your attention elsewhere, there’s less downtime for your brain to start spiraling into thoughts like, “Okay, now what? Why aren’t things different? Is something wrong with me? This isn’t even worth it.”

The additional benefit to adding more facets to your personality is that you give yourself permission to start living your life and enjoying how you spend your time without needing to wait until you’re in the “perfect” body.

As for me, some of my current interests are playing music (violin and theremin), reading books (psychology and fantasy), collecting and caring for rare houseplants, gloving, lettering, and learning languages.

What about you? Wouldn’t thinking about something other than your food or body be nice for a change? 

Where else would you like to place your attention in your life?