Do you have things that you do regularly but you have no idea why you do it that way other than “this is how my mom/dad/grandparent taught me”?  I think a lot of us think that the way we do things is how EVERYONE does things because that might be all we know…our parents teach us ‘how things are done’ and we continue to do them that way on autopilot.  And for a lot of things, that’s totally fine, being able to automate processes is what makes it possible to move through our day without being crippled by decision fatigue, but sometimes we may go on to discover that the way our parents/family does things really isn’t the best way.

When I first got on social media one of the “viral” sentiments going around was similar to this meme:

I definitely thought it was funny when I first read it, a bit of snark about how kids now are spoiled but “back in our day” things were different and, the implication is, better.  And absolutely, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hose water or kids playing outside, but I for one am pretty happy that my nieces and nephews are wearing bike helmets and aren’t chewing on toys covered in lead paint.  Just because something was traditionally one way, doesn’t inherently make it better.

Sure there will be some cases of over-correction, I don’t think we ever need to try to protect ourselves from any risk at all, but not all changes are bad…sometimes they are good, and truly necessary.  Just over 100 years ago in Canada women weren’t allowed to vote and before a small number of women started a movement to change that, most people just accepted it for what it was and never questioned why that was the case.  A more recent and heartbreaking example was the use of residential schools; they were accepted by most for a long time, but turned out to be a truly horrific practice.

Often when we look back on these things we’re confounded – it honestly boggles my mind how recently women couldn’t vote…or have a bank account of their own, or work in certain jobs…of course I’m not implying things are perfect yet, we still have work we’re doing in a lot of these areas but we’re aware now.  We’re not just accepting that “this is just how it’s always been”.

I see this mentality a lot when I first meet with new clients.  Often they’re defensive about what they’ve been doing or are willing to do before I even start talking.  As soon as they sit down they’ll say “I hate running, so if you want me to run I’m not doing it.” or “I’m not giving up cheese, so if that’s necessary to losing weight then I’ll just stay overweight.” (These are actual quotes by the way haha). 

My response?

“Good to know, I will work with that.”

They’re usually pretty skeptical and suspicious of that response, but I do mean it. I don’t know where they got the idea that they need to run to do anything in fitness, but clearly many people think that running is mandatory, and it isn’t; the only clients I’ve had that did any running, wanted to run.  And while I will be completely honest and say I don’t love dairy as a food group from a health perspective, I also don’t believe in losing weight by excluding foods that you love, so regardless of what someone’s “can’t live without it” food is, I will never tell them they can’t or shouldn’t have it.  I think unnecessary food restriction is much less healthy than eating a small portion of cheese every day. 

Where do these ideas come from?  Why do we think we have to do certain things or we’re failing?

Why do we think we can’t lose weight unless we do endless hours of cardio? 
Why do we think if women lift heavy weights we’ll turn into a female Arnold Schwarzenegger?  
Why do we think we have to weigh whatever number it is that’s in our head that we’ve decided is our ‘goal weight’?  
Why do we think that we can’t eat any sugar at all, ever, or we will be forever doomed…to the point where we think it isn’t ok to eat fruit?
Why do we think that wine is healthier than beer?  
Why do we think that we have to eat nothing but salad if we want to lose weight?
Why do we think we can eat whatever we want as long as we’re intermittent fasting or that it’s the only way to lose weight if you don’t want to live on salad?
Why do we think smoothies are automatically healthier than other foods?
Why are we SO BAD at estimating calories?

I’ll tell you that, for the most part, “why” is either because that’s just the first thing we were told / the thing we’ve been told the most by people that we believe are trustworthy OR because we’ve been told so many conflicting things we latch on to the one we WANT to believe.

We usually sweat more doing cardio so it’s easier to believe that cardio is the key to weight loss – and since women haven’t historically been encouraged to weight train it’s just easy to continue to believe that weights are not good for women.

It makes sense that a brownie isn’t good for the waistline – but believing a double fudge cookie and a peach are the same thing is just the result of not knowing what to believe because all the information is so conflicting.

We know we shouldn’t drink too much – but believing the limited evidence that wine is better than beer means that we can still have a drink without feeling bad.

Vegetables are low in calories so it’s logical to believe they are the key to weight loss – but intermittent fasting is a nice to believe when you really don’t want to live on salad.

The bottom line? Our ideas about what we should and shouldn’t do are not necessarily right but if we never take the time to analyze WHY we think what we do or WHERE our ideas came from then we aren’t able to challenge any beliefs that are limiting us.

It’s easy to get comfortable with things, even things that maybe aren’t ideal.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, change is hard, even when it’s good change.  There will always be a component of discomfort when we have to make changes, we might have to admit fault, we might have to face some hard truths, we might have to admit that we’ve been the problem, so often we just stay where we are.  But where a lot of us are is choking down salads and tiny prepacked “healthy” brownies that taste like cardboard, instead of fruit, in very short windows of time, while running for hours and lifting weights that are way too light and then following our workouts up with an 800 calorie smoothie (that we think is 250 calories) and then finishing our day with a glass of wine on our quest to be 120 lbs.  Not one thing in that sentence makes sense, but we do it anyway.

The worst thing we believe that isn’t true is that anything worth doing has to be hard. If you don’t get up at 5 am, you’re lazy.  If you don’t feed your kids only homemade, organic food then you’re a bad parent. If you don’t compete in crossfit then you’re not really into exercise.  We’re very very dramatic about our all of nothing views in this world.  Yes often there is a lot of hard work that goes into accomplishing things we want, but the pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect is extreme and unnecessary.

Years ago I joined a yoga studio with my girlfriend.  This was before I joined the bootcamps at my gym so the closest I’d come to group fitness was gym class (which I passed by strategically participating as little as possible). As I’ve shared before, doing anything physical in front of anyone else was pretty terrifying for me and for the first several weeks I felt uptight and uncomfortable in the classes but a few weeks in we were sitting in a pose just working on deep breathing and I opened my eyes and looked around me, just to see what everyone else was doing; to my surprise, no one else had their eyes open or felt the need to check on anyone else, they were all focusing on themselves and what was happening on their own mat.  After that I never felt the need to check either.  I was supposed to be there for me, taking care of my mind and body and I was missing out on so much of what I was there for by worrying about anyone else around me. It dawned on me that anyone who was using their time in there for making comparisons or worrying about what was happening on someone else’s mat was there for the wrong reasons and I really didn’t need to worry about what they thought anyway.  I needed to stay on my own mat.

Traditions are great, I love making a turkey and knowing that I do it the way that my Gramma Rita did hers and that it was my Mum who taught me how to do it.  It makes me happy to continue that tradition.  My diet the rest of the year that stemmed from learning healthy eating from the woefully misguided Canada Food Guide that I grew up with?  That was an idea I NEEDED to challenge because it was not serving me well at all.  The feelings I had about my body growing up that stemmed from eons of women being told how their bodies should look and what constituted beauty was also something that needed challenging, for all of us.

Whether it’s how you think about your body, how you form your impressions of other people, why you eat what you eat, how you keep your home or how you interact with your children, take a moment now and then to consider if what you’re doing is how you really want to do things and if you’re doing what you do for the right reasons, or if someone else told you that that is how it should be.  And if it was someone else, maybe ask yourself if they’re right?