As a Dietitian and Trainer for close to a decade now, I am still amazed at just how hard the overwhelm is for the person entering, re-entering or maintaining their healthy lifestyle. From supermarkets, social media feeds, the latest app and magazines, this space is noisy! In my work I attempt to simplify things. To work on the human side of nutrition science also known as food! We sit down to breakfast, lunch and dinner, not Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates. The world seems to scream, ‘if you only buy this next shiny thing you’ll get there’ or oversell the ease of behaviour change, while profiting off of the rebound when it doesn’t work.
There are a staggering 3000+ marketing messages targeted at us every day now, with the majority in fitness encouraging that internal voice narrating the script of comparison and judgement to be ever more perfectionistic and hard to please. The average person bombarded by these messages is retreating from the start line back to the next available fast-food outlet or Uber eats to add more evidence to the ‘it’s just not for me’ script. The courage to approach the start line gets further away with your social media algorithms now saying you’re at the perfect point to justify a $600 watch or a $200 pair of tights. While the latest smart watch or compression tights would no doubt add to the level of motivation for the next bout of the ‘best self’ fight. They probably don’t change the game long term. 3 months from now, there will probably still be the ‘need for the next’. I am more interested in that internal narrative, in the one that is disabling rather than empowering. One of my favourite quotes is from a graduation speech; a story of two gentlemen comparing the size of their bank accounts to which one replies, "I know you have a lot more but you will never have what I have… enough". The need for the next versus the knowledge that we already have enough. This one simple sentence is the essence of the change of the internal narrative, and perhaps why you’re reading these very words at my start line.
The next course, the latest research, the next journal article may change the game or it may not! Rather than waiting for the great white unicorn, I thought of changing the narrative and starting from a place of enough. I might not know everything about food and exercise, but perhaps I know enough to add value to the lives of those who care to read. Maybe I could evoke the same reaction in them. They might not be the fittest or healthiest or greatest version of themselves, but my bet is, they have enough to start. So this is my line in the sand comrades, this is my enough moment. Here is to starting!
What would you start if you knew you were enough?
Yours in Health
Sean Cornish
