Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
7 podcasts over 7 days with the ParrotPal 7 day free trial. An app that specialises in fat loss, and you can track food by just typing it out or voice noting into the app! Short daily podcasts to start your day.
Hello welcome back to day five of the PARPAL trial and today I want to talk about a very important topic and it's perfectionism. This is one of the main reasons why people are miserable in their pursuit of health and fitness and especially weight loss or weight management because you think you've to be perfect on plan, you think you've got to have perfect results, you've to have perfect fit into your clothes, you've to have perfect workout and your perfect days and your perfect meals and your clean perfect meal plans. All of this is horrendous for you. Just flat out full stop bad for you. There's no benefit to it at all.
Speaker 1:We know the people who are obsessed over how clean or perfect a meal is, that is a route down to real bad mental health issues. Focusing too much on the perfect, nutrition plan in a world of imperfection is crazy. Think about it, nothing is perfect so how the hell can we be perfect when we are part of the imperfect? Nothing about us is perfect, we've got loads of junk DNA, we've evolved with this now we've still got things that we've got pancreas, not pancreas, that's really useful. What is oh my god, the appendix.
Speaker 1:I really need it. You know what I mean, when we really think about it, perfection from imperfection is not possible. There is no such thing as perfect. Now here's the thing, there's a recent research study looked at on 2022 but it agreed with a study in 02/2002. So June 2022 a study appeared in personality and social psychology compared perfectionism to just working with set goals for excellence and found surprising results.
Speaker 1:Perfectionism versus excellence okay. Perfectionism leads to worst outcomes in fact other studies reveal that not only does perfectionism bring worse results it can also make you miserable and that your life is lacking in creativity and it's less fulfilling. Why the hell would you want this? Why you want a perfect nutrition plan, perfect training plan, perfect everything? You don't.
Speaker 1:I'm not perfect, you're not perfect. Get over it. Can we do good enough? That's really what this study looks at. So it looks like excellence is more than good enough.
Speaker 1:And the difference between excellence and perfectionism which is this. Perfectionism is defined as the means being stuck with standards that are always too high and anxiously focusing on them. So you could say Scott I've done PowerPuff for four weeks. I've lost two pounds on average. It's not good enough.
Speaker 1:I wanted to lose four. You said one pound of fat loss a week. That's not good enough. Hate it, what am I doing wrong? And you've given yourself these standards, you have to hit every absolute estimation.
Speaker 1:You could have lost two pounds in total weight, you could have lost four pounds of fat but only two pounds of showing. You could have improved your mental health, your focus, you could have improved your step count which is a big factor in health. You could have improved a lot of things within that but you focus on these these little data points that you think will be perfect. Excellence is defined as about setting good but achievable goals and being engaged flexible with them and then moving on to other tasks once they are achieved. Okay?
Speaker 1:So obviously, we want to be in the excellence team. Okay? If you're a perfectionist, you ruin everything, especially if you work in a team format as well, honestly. Perfectionism, perfectionists make everyone miserable. They also bring the team morale down because nothing's ever good enough.
Speaker 1:Good enough is good enough with your health and fitness journey. This is what this app's built on. This app isn't perfect, there'll be bugs and stuff and you can report them and say Scott this is bugger, happy days we're gonna fix it. But we launched it, it was good enough to launch. It was good enough to help you.
Speaker 1:We look at tracking, all these tracking apps are like oh you've got to be perfect, you 've to have all the perfect food, everything's got to be right, there's no way you can have a wrong database of foods. No food database is perfect. And when you speak into the voice note or you type something out and you say I had a Grenade Oreo protein bar it says it was two twenty calories, Scott twenty grams of protein, but actually the bar says it's 212 calories. I go, well, change it to 212 if you want. But in the grand scheme of things, does that eight calories really matter?
Speaker 1:Did that bar you ate? Was it exactly 65 grams in weight, or was it 63 grams in weight? You know what I mean? There's little things you don't need to worry about it's more about the bigger picture than you're doing the behaviors that equal the results over time. Right?
Speaker 1:So we don't need to be falling into these traps. The authors from the study, sorry, explore next challenge is what he said. How to hold high standards without drifting back into perfectionist anxiety. It turns out that excellentism speaks for itself. The authors studied college students with perfectionist tendencies and compared them to non perfectionists, flexible but well performed peers.
Speaker 1:The results clearly show that excellentism builds motivation while perfectionism makes life harder. So in my life, in your life, whatever you do it, go to work, you put in effort, you genuinely put in effort and you're trying to be as excellent as you can with your effort. I'll try my best, That's me being as excellent as I can be. And this is the results I get. Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Move on next day. Okay. It wasn't good enough, Scott. You tried your best, but look, your protein is 30 grams off. And I go, fucking try my best, man, I cook my meals everything.
Speaker 1:I go well have you thought about this? I thought about what? Have you thought about adding a whey protein supplement to your diet? Have you thought about having a clear whey hydro drink in the morning which is twenty one grams of protein to boost you. Well that seems low effort easy low hanging fruit for you.
Speaker 1:Okay so I'm flexible, I'm not rigid into my meal, I'm not rigid into I will never take a protein supplement, I'm not rigid, I'm willing to learn, I'm willing to move forward but I'm willing to do my best most days as well. Some days I'll feel terrible and I can't do it but I'll do the bare minimum then which will bring me results. So if I'm feeling shitty, if you're feeling like I've had a really good four days but I'm feeling a bit low now, You might think well what's the bare minimum I should do today? Well the bare minimum is I should at least voice note once into the app to say what I've had to eat today. That's the bare minimum.
Speaker 1:Like how can we improve on the bare minimum? Well maybe I can barcode scan some of the foods because I do have the barcodes, okay? Maybe I could at least hit half my step count I think, I should do that. Okay, cool. Maybe I should at least try and hit my protein, one or two of my meals, I should try and increase my protein, okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Then before you know it, you're 6070% to where you need to be anyway. And that's what those are what add up. The 70% days, the 80% days, the 69% days, the 72% days, the 81% days, they all add up and in the end this is a huge change in your life. Right? So this mindset, better results, less anxiety, you become a better person to be around, your characters build in, you're flexible to change direction here and there and learn, you are very open to learning, you're not rigid and rigidity is death, know, like you're just stuck in your ways and not willing to learn.
Speaker 1:There's a proverb in the Zen Buddhism and it talks about like super strong winds coming, Came to wind noise. Super strong gust of wind comes. The oak tree on the surface outside massive trunk, massive, no air is coming down. Strong enough gale knocks that oak tree down. Next to the oak tree is a little bamboo stick, a little weakling but very flexible.
Speaker 1:This wind, no bother. The bamboo is pliable, flexible, takes the wind in a stride. That wind is not breaking up bamboo. After the fact, you've got a big strong tree, very on the outside strong, no way has fallen down, has broken down. The bamboo, smaller, more nimble, more flexible, can handle more pressure.
Speaker 1:Okay? You can see your life this way. If you're nimble and you're flexible and you're willing you're pliable and you're willing to learn, you're willing to be like water, you're willing to be like bamboo, you can go the flow, you can change, you can tweak, you can learn. But if you are that orchard tree with your rigid ideas and your rigid way of life and your rigid diet plan and your rigid rigid, no I'm not believing this and I got told for thirty years that I shouldn't eat sugar, I'm not, I refuse to eat anything with sugar, you definitely do. I refuse to eat a chocolate bar so it made me fart instantly, know, you've got these old patterns of diet culture conditioning.
Speaker 1:You're the oak tree and that gusts the wind life is gonna hit you hard, miserable, hit you down. So don't be a perfectionist, don't think you need to be perfect, track to the best eatability today. I'm gonna leave you on this because I just want you to take action right now. Even if you haven't tracked yesterday or whatever, you listened to this, like I'm done it, just do your best. If you track your nutrition which is easy, builds the picture of your health.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm overeating and my energy makes sense. Let's take action on that. That fact is that. Let's take action. My protein is so low that definitely need to improve my protein.
Speaker 1:Like I spoke about previous podcasts, it's important. My step comes really low but the research shows if you walk at least seven to 8,000 steps a day that's when you get like really high, the most of the health benefits. The people that walk 4,000 steps a day in average in this study was like twenty years long, they would have way higher chance of a heart disease, cardiovascular disease and death. So you're like wow if I walk 4,000 steps a day for the rest of my life I'm going be in real trouble or the risk is increased. So if I can just try and walk seven to 8,000 steps today now, make this a habit, when I go into my older age or one, my end years, it's part of me easy and keep doing it and the risk is greatly reduced and it's little effort, it's literally a walk around the block.
Speaker 1:Can you do it? Can you walk around the block? Can you voice note what you've eaten? Can you put a smile on your face? Can you try and eat meals of protein?
Speaker 1:Can you try and eat wholesome meals of course but can you try and not beat yourself up if you do have a chocolate bar and can you try and understand the root of desire and craving when it does pop up and can we handle emotional eating? Not 100% of the time but can we reduce the instances of emotional eating outbursts and even if we do have emotional eating outbursts we say that's fine, it's happened full stop. Not adding on the end of it oh my god I'm such a loser blah blah blah what am I doing this, I'm so stupid, I'm so fucked up. None of that, just I did overeat last night, I emotionally ate last night, I see what happened. Crack on with the day.
Speaker 1:Have a good day and I'll see you back here for another day of the PowerPilot trial.