Nutrition Nugget: The F*ck Its
A Bite-Size Read for Your Health and Your Waistline
Fair warning, this one has some profanity.
Because we’re going to talk about… the “fuck its.” I promise you know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been there! Maybe it was that time where you indulged for breakfast. Then later in the day, somebody was eating a cookie and you were like, “Oh! I’d really like some of that cookie.” So a conversation started in your head: “Should I? Shouldn’t I? Ah…fuck it! I already had the muffin this morning!”
Or maybe it was one of those times you said “I’ll start on Monday.” Then you realize it’s almost Thanksgiving and then there are holiday parties at least once a week…”Fuck it…I’ll start next Monday…err January?” Sound familiar?
So often, especially this time of year, we say “fuck it” and inevitably there are also moments of “Why did I do that?” I’m a firm believer in no need for guilt! Here’s how to avoid the “Fuck Its.”
Go with me for a minute. You go to the grocery store and buy some eggs. On the way home, you accidentally drop one of the eggs. What do you do with the other eleven? Usually we’re a little extra careful, right? We take more care to ensure we don’t break another.
The “fuck it” mentality is like taking the other eleven eggs and throwing them on the ground. You dropped one, you might as well have zero eggs. What?! That’s absurd! We really wouldn’t do that. But it IS what we do when we employ the “Fuck Its.” In reality, what happened to one egg has no bearing on what happens to the other eleven.
Applied to our healthy eating habits, the dropped egg might be the muffin for breakfast; the cookie for afternoon snack because we essentially gave up on the day is another egg. As we head into this holiday season, how do we take this lesson with us? Perhaps the holiday meal or the extra dessert is the broken egg. The other eleven eggs are all your other meals of protein and fiber, your activity, your moments of pause and reflection (like meditation or a breathing exercise), and your healthful snack of an apple and walnuts, for example. Those other eggs could also be your reasonable bedtime, your water intake, or your vitamins. The eggs you protect can look like so many things! The point is that with so many healthful choices each day, there’s no reason to toss all your eggs down the drain because you slipped up once.
When you choose to focus on the other eleven eggs (A.K.A all the things you do every that still support your health, energy, and goals), you are choosing to focus on the positive. I can tell you from personal experience: focusing on everything we are doing and holding onto everything healthful, even when some things go awry, is critical for long-term wellness.
So when one egg breaks: protect the other eleven. We don’t have to be perfect! In fact, we want our healthy lifestyles to allow for life and enjoying ourselves. Focus on protecting your healthful habits instead of fixating on the one thing that went wrong and throwing everything out the window. That’s how you avoid the “Fuck Its.”
