Brandon Provo
This post is dedicated to the best tasting doughnut you have ever had and how you can enjoy them more often.
The Life Diet — How to live a sustainable, disciplined and incredible life
The Why
My friends, your life is short. It’s so short that everyday that you don’t do things you love is a day gone by and you might not be able to make up for it. Just turn on the news to see what I’m talking about — You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you just got diagnosed with terminal cancer or your girlfriend is now pregnant with sextuplets and your spare time just got evaporated sort of scenarios.
This article is not totally about how you could die tomorrow. Rather, it is a highly considerate idea of why and how you can change your lifestyle habits for the better so you can live your life to the fullest! It starts with your food choices and I call it the Life Diet.
So, if you’re the type who cannot only eat one piece of candy and instead have 8 when you’ve not exercised in any way for the last few weeks, I would bet you are left with 1 of 3 emotions:
Guilt: The “WTF is wrong with me? I shouldn’t be eating this but I want it so much!” feeling.
Satisfaction: Not just satisfaction but a strange erotica and empowerment or entitled sense where you feel like you deserved that heavenly splurge, though you didn’t.
Carelessness: “What does it matter? I don’t care how I look” or “I’m going to eat this food and nobody is going to tell me different. I want it, it’s cheap and that’s all there is to it.”
Both guilt and satisfaction are made up things that people develop over a long period of time. They are emotions that have caused a severe lack of discipline in what satisfies them and to top it off, they feel an offense has been committed by doing something that brings joy. Carelessness is another beast entirely. All I can say is you’re either in for a rude awakening when your Dr. tells you to change your lifestyle or else, or risk a slow deterioration of your muscles flexibility and strength as you grow older. So why not change your life now?
I can’t tell you how many times people say to me “I can’t eat that, I’m on a diet” or “I need to bring sexy back” and they never truly change their bad habits that prevent them from having real results. They stall for a month on a diet that was not a lifestyle change. So, my point is this —
to live a more healthy and sustainable life you need to make lifestyle changes in order to see the bigger picture.
You might not see the bigger picture of what a diet is because diets are only there to sell you on quick fixes like a 3o-90 day “cleanse”. You may have lost some weight but what did you to do to build your character or change your perspective on life? Rather than making better food choices only, you should focus your energy on something that changes both the physical and mental planes that govern your world perspective. The bigger picture I want you to see is living in a way that is sustainable and not cutting calories so low you cannot do it the rest of your life. It is not completely cutting things out of your diet that you love to eat and it is not something achievable in 90 days! What it IS is something that goes beyond low carbohydrate meals and some exercise. It coincides with exploring the space you live in and going places you never thought you would go before. It not only takes years to balance all of this in harmony but a new perspective of life and what you think you understand about it. Think of the next 90 day fitness plan as just a road you take to get to the highway.
A Change of Perspective
Author Confession: I remember one of the first times I spoke to someone who is vegan. We were talking about foods and he told me I shouldn’t drink milk. So, what did I say? “What do you mean?? Milk is amazing! I’ve been drinking milk forever and it has protein and calcium and blah blah blah”. I still remember that day and I was annoyed he would challenge a reason not to drink something as simple as milk. A couple years after that I realized those disapproving words were not my own. Not only were they the sad result of endless “Got Milk” advertisements we grew up with but my perspective of daily consumption was challenged and I definitely took offense to it.
I challenge you to consider why you consume something to begin with.
Think of the last time your perspective was challenged and how you absolutely couldn’t see something from another angle until, suppose, years later (like me) or never. When your perspective is adjusted, it allows you to look at something from another angle and you realize your potential folly. You need to be more open to the now instead of what your upbringing taught you to be like. Today, I am not a vegan or vegetarian but I’m not a die hard meat eater either. I consume foods with great balance and so should you but don’t part with the things you love to eat, such as doughnuts or candy or carbohydrates in general.
I promise you that if you miss the bigger picture of what a diet or fitness program is meant to do, you will go back to those guilty pleasures with a vengeance and you have basically wasted your time. So please,
Don’t feel guilty about the “unhealthy” things you love to eat. They’re delicious, so eat them!
But you must change your perspective of what that thing is and what it does for your life. Only then can you enjoy it guilt free.
A pinch of discipline
When you have discipline, you enjoy every bite of a doughnut rather than voraciously eating 4 with little, real, satisfaction afterwards. Discipline calls to you when you are already drunk and you stop before you end up with your guts stuck in your hair the next day. Discipline changes and challenges your entire world view.
So, allow the next 90 day diet or fitness program to serve as probation from doughnuts with little cheats in between rather than a life sentence that makes you guilty every time you want it. Unless 6 pack abs are in your minds eye, it’s ok to eat sweets and fatty things you love on a weekly basis. As long as you’re actively doing some exercise that challenges you and phasing out but not eliminating things like fried foods, sugars — especially things like white bread or pastas because they turn into sugar when it enters your body, and overly greasy or saturated fatty foods then you’re ahead of the game. That’s it!Slowly chip away at eating those things with regularity and I promise you, you will appreciate it more and you might even like it less than when you were eating it all the time. It happened to me and it can happen to you.
When you truly start enjoying your food and the exercise you put in to earn it, you will begin to tap into this simple truth that will change the way your body works and control what you crave. You will no longer guilt trip yourself to not eat things like doughnuts or candy or indulging in a fun night drinking.
How can you make this change happen?
When you are trying to change your life, you need to think of sustainability. It is THE major word you need to understand about getting fit and living a better life when you’re on a diet or doing a new program to better yourself. Does this diet cut out so many calories that you’re tired at work or other activities? If yes, consider how you can eat more while staying on track for your goals. i should mention you can eat as many veggies as you like! Hate veggies because all the recipes you’ve seen are steamed, lame and not appealing? Check these out!
Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking — “No shit. Tell me something I don’t know”. So, allow me to tell you something you might not know.
Have you ever read a book that is meant to change your life and create better habits for yourself and you think to yourself in every chapter, “Uh huh! This book is just telling me simple tips about things I already know. What a waste…”
It is interesting we invest time into a, potentially, best selling book to learn something new but we believe we know it all and then we don’t even try putting it into action. So, I challenge you to consider if you do really know what you just read.
In Stephen R. Covey’s book — The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he says this:
“To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.”
This quote is as timeless as it is simple. It is a raw truth of people who think they know about how to do something but don’t implement it in their lives or their craft. Knowing is not the same as doing something to benefit you for the rest of your life. It sounds simple but simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and for good reason. You need to use what I’ve talked about here in your approach to eating the things you love and balancing it with better food choices along with some fitness challenges. Life is dynamic and so is your body so use it to it’s full advantage and have fun with it!
By now, you should be realizing it is not as simple when you have to rewire your bad habits or the way you act on things that give you pleasure. Living a life of constant pleasure impulses is something that dies very hard so don’t let it be your excuse because it will bite you eventually. It is simple to understand when the owner of a Fortune 500 company or renowned fitness trainer talks about their morning routine where they meditate for 15 minutes, re-read their long term goals and eat their steel cut oats. It’s another story when you actually implement it into your own routine every single day for the rest of your working career or athletic journey. It’s not so simple anymore when you do what it takes to get to where you need to be.
Not sure what things to do for exercise? Let me introduce you to the quickest and most effective training I can recommend for the time sensitive person — Enter HIIT with Zuzka! Men and Women will love these! And maybe hate it at first but wait until you see the results. They’re challenging and not much longer than 15–20 minutes each. Zuzka is amazing! She is the person who got me into doing HIIT workouts when I first got into fitness and it evolved from there for me. Again, think of perspective and that feeling of knowing before doing. These exercises are tried and true so do it for a week and then be the judge. If it doesn’t work for you, then modify to your liking but don’t give up on it. Life is about modification to build yourself up to being on top of your game. We all know, nobody walks before they can crawl.
People only see the results, not the endless hours of consideration, work and struggle you have put yourself through.
Success is indeed on the far side of failure. Always remember that those who have it had the end in mind before they began. Their goals were not so tidy that 90 days would resolve the issue that stops them from getting what they want. So, you can believe it when I say success is not a 90 day endeavor — try 10,000 days. Maybe even 365 and see what happens 🙂
Life Diet Wrap Up
The Life Diet is my own accord of what I believe it the most balanced and sustainable way to live life but it is not the end all be all. It is absolutely what works for me and I challenge you to consider how it can work for you. Modification may be necessary but remember that doing the things you love should not cause guilt or a create an unquenchable satisfaction stimulus. I want you to eat doughnuts and be happy about it because we don’t know what is going to happen tonight or tomorrow. Any moment you let go where you have not been productive or done something you love doing is a moment wasted. So, live life as it was meant to be:
- Challenging
- Dynamic
- Educational
- Balanced
- Sustainable
- Disciplined
- Fun
- Filled with failure
- Regrouping
- Forging ahead
Thanks for reading
Follow me @life_ofplay on IG to see my fitness adventures and stay tuned for more!
