Okay…football season has started so I am back to my analogies of sports to weight control, so here comes another: “Slowing things down”.
In sports, often rookies discuss the reason why they improve over time is because with more experience, the game “slows down” for them. The transition from playing college ball to the professional ranks is difficult because the people they are now playing against in the pro leagues are bigger, stronger, faster and more experienced than the previous competition in school. This produces the need for those rookies to learn quickly how to keep up with their new competition, i.e. they will perform better when the game “slows down” for them.
Now, moving from the sports arena to the weight control field: “Slowing things down” holds much pertinence here as well. When life is hectic and we find ourselves running around attending to all of the obligations that face us, it is very difficult to focus on the necessary steps for weight control, such as: counting protein portions, ensuring 3 meals and snacks a day, finding exercise time, planning meals, etc. We need to find ways to “slow things down” so we can, in fact, place our weight control efforts high on our priority lists.
Additionally, slowing down our actual eating process also helps with weight control efforts. Scarfing down a lunch bought from a fast food drive through at lunch due to little time for a meal will not be nearly as helpful as sitting down and eating a compatible/prepared weight control meal. At the dinner meal, “slowing things down” by purposefully taking more time to eat the food, savor the taste, enjoy the ambience etc will be more beneficial than eating very quickly.
We all lament how quickly times goes by as we age and we wish that time would slow down. To achieve better health and happiness via weight control we all need to slow things down as best we can.