Now before you think I’m stepping in for Jeremy Kyle and offering life advice - I’m not here to give relationship advice... so you’re just going to have to trust me where I’m going with this one and see if you grasp the moral of the story…
Put yourself in this situation.
Imagine…
You’ve been without a ‘partner’ for a while now.
However, you’ve been seeking a new ‘partner’ to make you happier and now think you’ve found the one.
You begin a journey with this ‘partner’ who wasn’t your normal type (you chose to ignore the stable, trustworthy other potential ‘partner’ because they were ‘too boring’.)
You were promised great things with this exciting ‘partner', and everything is going well, at first anyway. But eventually, the honeymoon period is over and little bad things about your exciting ‘partner’ that you were fully aware of at the beginning, start to become strikingly apparent.
You’re experiencing extreme mood swings, happy one day, angry the next. You try so hard to stick with your ‘partner’ for fear of failure and the ‘told you so’s’. It was supposed to work!
But in reality, you’re getting tempted by anything and everything because you’re unhappy and craving a better balance in life - key ingredients in this relationship are missing and there’s no avoiding it now.
So eventually you cut ties with your ‘exciting' but toxic ‘partner’. It just wasn’t a sustainable ‘partnership' as you were miserable.
You start living your life more, going out, eating more and more, until eventually, you’re unhappy again. Why? Because your lifestyle has caught up with you, you’ve let yourself go and you want a ‘partner’ to commit to and have some accountability in life again.
Back you go in search of a ‘partner'.
You’re surely wiser than before though and surely wouldn’t go back to your previous ‘partner’? No surely not...
Ok so you’ve gone back. At first it feels great again, you realised why you always needed that ‘partner’. Phew.
Except this time, it fails miserably after an even shorter period and you’re back where you started. Only worse off because you have no faith anymore in ‘partnerships' full stop now.Â
You go off the rails again, and are now at an all time low. You’re bigger, and more emotionally unstable than you’ve ever been before. It’s time for a fresh approach, right?
Now then - imagine going back again and seeking out that same previous ‘partner’ or someone almost identical.
If you were giving advice to a close friend you’d tell them they were crazy right?
Incase you haven’t caught on… here’s the moral of the story...
This is what people do when they go through diet after diet, or even worse - going back to diets that they THOUGHT were right for them - they had short term success but never lasted that long because it was an unsustainable approach.
Each time - you ignore the diet that was perfect for long term success - the ‘boring’ approach. That boring diet that gave you a well rounded balance when it came to calories, macro-nutrients, and lifelong manageability.
Now if you have still struggled to grasp the moral, I want you to go back through and read this again from the beginning - and replace the word ‘partner’ with ‘diet’ and watch it take on a whole new different, but relatable perspective.
Congratulations if you took home the message before getting this far. The chances are, you actually know what’s right for you, you’re just eluding to the sensible option, but...
Put simply, you have two options...
Continue with the toxic approach to diets and continue to get heavier each time you fail. Whether that’s Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Atkins or whatever it may be... (It sounds crazy when compared to relationships - so why do it with your diet?)
Or switch to a lifelong ‘diet’ that offers balance, stability, and permanent results?
I know what works for me.
But do you?
Best of luck,
Luke Armour
Luke Armour Personal Training (LAPT)