28/02/2021
THE PATH TO HEALTH – LOW ROAD VS HIGH ROAD
If we think of optimal health and our health goals as being a destination, there are two roads we can take to get there – the low road and the high road.
The person that takes a low road approach will get to their goal quickly, but will struggle to stay there as they’ve engaged in unsustainable methods to fast-track their progress and which work against the body in the long run.
Here are some examples of what a low road approach may look like:
- Overly-restrictive dieting that is not sustainable and which creates an unhealthy relationship with food.
- Training too hard and too often to try and offset your lifestyle and/or speed up your progress, usually leading to you either breaking down sick or injured or just burnt out.
- Using steroids, peptides and fat-burners to get buffed like your favourite Insta-star.
- Thinking in terms of a timeframe – for example, telling yourself, “if I can stick to this diet and training regime for 12 weeks, then I’ll hit my goal and I can relax”. The problem with this mindset, is that as soon as you’ve hit your goal, you will switch off and go back to your default setting.
How many you have been guilty of the above? I have (except the performance enhancers!), numerous times, until I realized after many failures that I need to approach things from a different angle.
The high road approach to health takes much longer than the low road, but once you’ve reached your goal, you’ll stay there, as you’ve learnt to engage in practices that work with the body and not against it.
A high road approach involves building healthy habits that feel sustainable and enjoyable and something that you could do for the rest of your life. It takes longer, but it’s MUCH more satisfying and effective.
Why then do most of us take short-cuts when it comes to our health?
Firstly, it’s likely a symptom of the quick-fix, over-stimulated society we live in. With everything at our finger-tips, it can be hard to be patient.
Secondly and more importantly, many of us have a track record of falling short of our health goals in the past.
As the years have progressed, our weight has ballooned up, our battery is empty and it all seems too hard. Continued failures have taught us not to trust ourselves when it comes to our health. As such, we struggle to invest in ourselves as deep down, we don’t believe we’ll be successful.
This is where most people need some level of support and coaching - to help you change the stories you tell yourself about why you can’t have what you want and put together a game-plan that will help you take a high road approach to your health – a plan that will get you to your goal and keep you there.
Take the high road!
