A reader says to me:
Matt, I have a serious 7-11 pizza issue. The place is a block from my house. I’ve been trying to clean up my diet. When I go shopping I wander around and look for items. I have two questions: first, is it sorta whole food based or healthy somehow, second, can I see myself eating this literally every day or almost every day? This is based on behavior matching in BJ Fogg’s tiny habits. I got a box of kind bars the other day and been eating one in the morning, and a slice of that tiny German whole wheat bread stuff with some tuna salad. When I’m at 7-11 I try to get a greens juice with the pizza. I also try to get in a whey shake in the morning. I wish it were a Sweetgreen or something accross the street.
I’m trying to find little ways to lazily eat more healthy so I can accumulate small wins and build momentum.
I know that 7-11 feeling. Many years ago when I was doing shift work we had one about five minutes away and you’d best believe I was up in there at 3 am for some of the worst food-like products mankind ever invented.
There’s a lot to say about all this, but let me zero in on the biggest factor.
It’s good that you’ve got filtering questions. It’s also good that you’re connecting them to good, that is sustainable and repeatable habits.
This is a decent start to cleaning up a diet as far as the behaviors go.
What’s going bad here?
Two things.
One, you’re chasing food emotionally. Making decisions based on how hungry you feel, or what you’re craving right this minute, is the highway to a candy-bar crash-out.
This is how most people eat. If you want to look, feel, and perform like most people, have at it.
Look around you at most people and you’ll see why this is not a good idea.
Two, you’ve got no system in place and no larger objective when choosing what to eat and what to buy. Wandering around the shop looking for things to eat is a FAST way to end up with pizzas and full-sugar Cokes and instant burritos in your fat face.
You’ve got a good foundation beginning by looking for whole foods and things you’ll actually eat.
But there’s other factors to consider here, and that’s where the opportunities are.
Let me tell you what I do.
I set a protein target for each day. This number can vary but it’s hard to go wrong starting at 1 gram per pound of lean body mass.
I set a flexible calorie target. I know roughly how much I can eat each day if I want to maintain or lose. I know also how much it will take to make the scale go up.
Why roughly?
It’s hard to give a number because there are a lot of variables in play and the real number will come from trial and error. A good place to start is 12 calories per pound of body weight, and then adjust every week or so according to the scale and how you’re looking.
(A secret: Calories listed on food labels are always general estimates. The energy your body takes and uses from any meal are always approximate. When you tally up your food intake and guess your daily calorie burn, you’re always guessing. The way around this is to eat the same thing every day, and then add or remove from that skeleton. That makes it a lot easier to dial in your energy balance.)
Every food decision I make is based on those two targets. Everything I buy, everything I eat.
Is this contributing to my protein target? Is this going to fit my calorie target?
I track everything I eat in an app. As long as I’m ticking those two boxes, I don’t care about much else.
This is about as simple as I can make it. You want your choices and behaviors to be sustainable, but you’re looking to escape the loop of eating “whatever”, too.
Build a daily system. Set goals in that system. Make decisions based on that system and the goals.
Once you get in the habit of doing this, eating goes on autopilot.
And once you get a head of steam behind your daily routine, you can even have a fat-pizza once in awhile.
Eating like this requires a major change from the emotional whims and chasing flavor-town that drives eating for most people.
The good news is that it isn’t hard to do. In fact, I prefer it because fewer decisions to make is less stress for my tired redneck mind. But it does take time to get into that space and build your daily discipline.
That’s all I got for you today. If you’ve got a question or comment, flip it my way or ask over in the group Q&A thread which is currently free for my email subscribers.
Matt Perryman