We all know that the key to improved health and wellbeing is what we eat and how we move, but I’d argue there’s a big missing ingredient in that mix. 

Something I’ve learned from my own healthy living journey is that you can eat beautifully healthy food and exercise, but if your mindset isn’t healthy you could find yourself sabotaging all of your success!

Here are 4 simple mindset shifts you can make today for a healthier happier you:

Ditch the good and bad labels on food

Some foods are less good for our bodies, but when you label foods as ‘bad’ and demonise them you give them a greater power over you, making them harder to resist. Instead, try and see foods in terms of how they make you feel. It’s a much more positive way to view how you nourish yourself. Eat more foods that make you feel energised and light, than bloated and stuffed!

Remember that food isn’t morality

Connected to the above point about labelling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, remember that eating less healthy ‘bad’ food doesn’t make you a bad person just as eating healthy food doesn’t make you a good one. It sounds like an odd concept, but think about how food is talked about sometimes. We’re told of sinfully delicious brownies and angelically healthy salads, what bullshit! This just goes further to ingrain the good / bad labels but extends it to attach that label to you! When you free yourself from that mindset, you’re less likely to eat foods when you feel naughty or rebellious and are much more likely to have a positive, healthy relationship with food. The difficulty around this one comes in around vegan diets and any other eating styles that connect food to ethics. I’ll be honest and say that this is a tricky one, because in this respect, what we eat is a moral, ethical and even political issue. All I can advise here is to be cautious of how this impacts on your relationship with food.

Reframe how you see exercise

If you struggle to drag yourself to the gym and feel like you need to torture yourself with hard workouts, it’s time to reframe how you see exercise. Instead of being a chore that helps you maintain or lose weight, start thinking of exercise in new ways. It’s your ‘me time’, a way to feel more connected to your body and a practice of self care, or whatever other positive outcomes you get from moving!

Change your diet mentality and quit the ‘all or nothing’

I think most of us are done with the diet way of thinking, but that mentality of ‘I’ll just start again on Monday’ while you polish off the contents of the fridge, can still creep in if you feel like you have to eat perfectly all of the time. I call this the diet mentality, also known as being all or nothing! Instead of trying to eat perfectly or seeing healthy eating like a diet that has to be stuck to 100%, start to see it as a long term lifestyle change. When you focus on it like that, and remind yourself that no-one can eat perfectly all of the time for the rest of their lives, it takes some pressure off. You can have a slip and still be a healthy eater when you switch your view point. There’s no reason to start again on Monday when you’ve never fallen off the wagon in the first place.

If you feel like your mindset could do with a makeover, check out my Mindset Makeover Course which is packed with really practical ways to overcome mindset issues including being all or nothing, emotional eating and more.

What mindset shifts have you made recently?