You're Not Gonna Make It If You Do This

Detoxes don’t work.

They’re just a tease of the life you actually want.

As appealing as the short-term fix looks, at some point, you’ll have to strap in for the long haul.

I had to deal with this process many times.

• When I lost 100lbs.

• When I became a pescetarian.

• When I quit porn and (pretty much all) video games.

When losing weight, I had to shift my thinking from “I have to suffer without tasty junk food” to “I’m eating other foods that taste good and better serve my goals.”

(If you want help losing weight, you can get direct coaching from me here.)

When becoming a pescetarian, if I had lived each day thinking “I don’t get to eat farm meat,” it wouldn’t work. I had to change my lifestyle.

Instead, the thought became “I’m eating more fish and diversifying my diet to reduce the risk of heart disease.” That made it stick more easily.

(Diets can often be in flux due to new information and new goals, so don’t go crazy if you hear about me eating different things later.)

When quitting porn and damn near eliminating video games, I can tell you that pitying yourself with thoughts of “I’m sad because I can’t see naked strangers or play my bidja gaymes” will not work out well.

Instead, I tried to see it like Will Ferrell’s character in Step Brothers:

“So many activities! It’s making my head spin, how many activities [I] could do.”

Instead of a lack, I saw it as an opportunity to change for the better.

Here’s the main point:

Removing negative things from your life completely seems like an effective strategy, but there’s a flaw to it:

Your brain doesn’t enjoy when it feels like it’s missing out on something.

Let’s say you have certain fitness or nutrition goals. You can “cut out” your beloved junk food for a month, but that’s not sustainable.

And what I mean by that is that you cannot be happy if you exist in a constant state of “lack.”

You need to think about your life and goals holistically.

Instead of removing junk food for just a month, hating your life, and looking forward to when you can have them again, you can do something else.

Think of your goal.

Maybe it’s to lose weight. Instead of “missing out” on tasty junk food, you can replace it with tasty, lower-calorie food.

This way, you’re not living with a temporary black hole in your mind.

You’re instead changing the way you live in order to reach a goal that you set for yourself.

There are many downsides to choosing a temporary detox (where they temporarily deprive themselves of something) instead of carving a path towards your desired goal with a lifestyle change:

• Diets: Drastically changing how you eat for a month or two is not sustainable. Food is quite literally what sustains you, so it needs to be something you can maintain.

• Digital detoxes: It’s very cool that you didn’t use your phone for a day, but if you go right back to the habits that were so troublesome that you even undertook that detox to begin with, it doesn’t matter.

• Fitness start-and-stops: New Year’s Resolutioners. Need I say more? No, but I will. Temporarily making a big change is not going to work. You need to make a (say it with me) Life. Style. Change.

😈 DEVIL’S ADVOCACY 😈

What about those people who prefer to live in the moment and hate thinking long-term?

Well, they’re not gonna make it, so be careful if you hear things like these:

• “Everyone else is doing it.” (Everyone else is dumb and would probably eat glue if it gave them enough social media likes. Focus on yourself.)

• “This detox will be the first step towards actually changing my habits.” (Maybe, but if you truly expect this to be habit change, just start smaller to ease it into your life. You may want to become a driver, but no matter how intent you are on that goal, you’re not gonna start off by taking the highway for a week and seeing how it goes.)

• “My friend and I are gonna try this out together to motivate each other.” (That could be a good first step, but be wary. If your friend gives up during this drastic shift, how will that affect you? Will you give up, too? Maybe you two should start much smaller so that you can more easily stick with these new habits. Make sure that you keep up with this goal regardless of what your friend does. There’s strength in numbers, but your friend can’t build your habits for you.)

There are tons of benefits to choosing lifestyle changes over short-term fixes and “detoxes.”

Here are some examples:

• Instead of jumping into a waterfall every day for a week in order to learn how to swim, it would be more helpful if you learned how to dog paddle first, right? Think about it that way

• Not only will you avoid overwhelming yourself, but you’ll build a strong foundation for your future progress.

• Even though it’s possible to “jump-start” a habit with an extreme shift, it’s very unlikely to stick because it’s too much, too soon. If you start slowly by working towards a lifestyle change, your chance of success increases exponentially.

Sounds good, right? But how do you start?

Check this out:

ACTION STEPS:

1. Pick something you want to accomplish or change.

2. As a beginner, don’t begin the process as an extreme fad.

3. Start slowly.

4. Mark milestones.

5. See progress.

6. Enjoy your new habit.

Okay, bye!