I WILL BE PERFECT ON THIS HEALTH JOURNEY.
MAY 29, 2020 - I read such a great, mind-blowing concept in the Never Binge Again book by Dr. Glenn Livingston today. It makes SO MUCH SENSE, but feels so contradictory to how we - as women - have been trying to retrain ourselves.
You all know the phrase PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION. We use it as a way to give ourselves grace and continue towards a goal we want to achieve, even when the road to that goal takes unexpected turns and gets littered with fails. That’s good. I like that. I’m on board with that. But…
…THAT CAN’T BE YOUR MENTALITY WHEN YOU MAKE A COMMITMENT. Perfection is the essence of commitment. Dr. Livingston makes the point that when you allow ANY possibility that you will ever binge again to change the commitment from “I will” to “I try” then you are resolving to having NO commitment at all. WOW. Mind blown. You must authoritatively declare your food plan as 100% perfect or you are not committing to anything at all.
It is ONLY when perfectionism is applied as a post-binge analysis tool that it works against you, and in the interest of your unhealthy-thinking self that wants to abandon all hope that you could ever stick to a plan.
So, if you DO happen to binge, your response should be simple: acknowledge at this point ONLY that you are a fallible human being, but don’t allow this acknowledgement to fuel your unhealthy-thinking self down a rabbit hole of negative self talk and a spiral of binge eating. Instead, calmly admit that you are on this journey of practicing a set of food rules, but that practice is now over. Analyze what went wrong, adjust your food plan if necessary, and THEN (yet again) declare it PERFECT and FINAL because you are re-committing to it. Perfection is the essence of commitment, so you will NEVER binge again! In summary…
‘PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION’ ONLY AFTER A BINGE.
OTHERWISE, STRICTLY PERFECTION.
Therefore, I will be perfect on this health journey. This is a commitment I’m making to myself, for myself. Sorry, unhealthy-thinking self. You simply have no power here.
