Another cool photo from Thomas H.’s recent set
Perfection Is the Enemy of Good Enough
By David Osorio
Originally posted on 1.11.16
As the Look Feel Perform Better Challenge enters full swing, many of you are diligently working to count your macros and make better decisions at the checkout line and in front of the fridge. We commend your diligence and are here to support your efforts in the online forums, during the bimonthly nutrition lectures, and in person around the gym.
But a public service announcement, perhaps even a warning, is warranted at this early stage of the Challenge. This Challenge is three months long—about as long as a college semester—and the reality is that motivation can wax and wane over a period of this length. The New Year finds everyone on their best behavior, feeling impervious to temptation and carefully planning each and every meal. And then you know how it goes: things get complicated. Life happens. You’re starving after a long, brutal day at work and end up grabbing a couple slices of pizza on the way home.
Remember not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. What’s important is your cumulative effort. Overarching trends—not any particular day, night, and certainly not a single meal—will be the key to making sustainable changes and ultimately looking, feeling, and performing better.
Changing your nutritional habits is like practicing free throws. On different days, because of different circumstances, your success rate will fluctuate. A bad day where you missed 30 shots out of 50 doesn’t negate the next day, when you creep up to a 90% success rate. If you’re out there, practicing and putting in the work, the sum of your efforts will add up to a higher average success rate, which is what we all want.
Maybe you didn’t get any points today. Maybe you went over by 30 grams on your fat intake. Maybe you had a few slices of pizza and a couple of beers with your friends last night. The world won’t end! There are far more important questions to ask yourself. Are you eating cleaner overall and making more intentional decisions than you were last month? After a couple of weeks, is it getting easier to look at meals and assess how they’ll fit into the bigger picture of your goals? Do you have more “go-to” healthy meals that you enjoy and have become staples of your diet? Do you feel better than you did before you started the Challenge?
In these first couple of weeks, take a moment to remind yourself why you’re doing this and what you’d like to say you accomplished three months from now. It probably won’t be something like, “I didn’t eat a single grain of sugar.” It should be something more like, “I learned how powerful nutrition can be and can confidently say that I’m healthier and happier than I was before I started.”
Are you doing LFPB this year or have you done it in the past? If so, what is the biggest challenge and how did you deal with it?
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Yesterday’s Results Board: HSPUs / DBSSRDL | Double-Unders, Hand Release Push-Ups, Pull-Ups
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