Written by: Rita May, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Managing your health is just like managing your wealth. As we must work to attain wealth, we must also work to maintain our health and fitness. And just as there are many ways to lose wealth, there are many ways to let go of our health and fitness too.
To keep our physical health in good condition, we need to make more deposits than withdrawals, just like we do with our finances. But instead of money, our lifestyle choices determine what goes into our "health account."
What are your health and fitness deposits?
Health deposits are the good things we do to ourselves regularly. These can include daily movement, drinking water, getting enough quality sleep, managing stress, eating nutritious and balanced meals, mainly whole foods, regular exercise, connecting with loved ones, and looking after our mental health.
Every positive action, no matter how small, contributes to our overall health. Just as one penny deposited into a financial account builds up that account, so small changes in our daily habits help to improve our health.
What does withdrawing from your health and fitness account look like?
These are the things that will prevent you from reaching your health and fitness goals or can even make you sick.
These can be unmanaged stress, staying up late too often, drinking alcohol and eating processed foods too often, sitting all day, yo-yo dieting, and not looking after our mental health.
Finding a balance
We want to accumulate wealth/health but we also want to have some fun. We want to make sure we put in enough deposits but we also want to withdraw some from time to time.
If you want to lose weight it’s like starting with an empty bank account or even being in “health debt”. You’re overweight and may have some health issues too.
If you’re in debt or have an empty bank account, first, you’ll want to save money, i.e. you‘ll concentrate mostly on your deposits. Similarly, you want to stabilize your health and lose weight at first.
But this phase doesn’t last forever.
Once you’ve saved a decent amount you can also spend some money on nonessentials. Likewise, once you gained your health back and lost weight you can be a bit more flexible.
It doesn’t mean that you spend all your money or gain all the weight back. It means that from time to time you can treat yourself responsibly.
When you’ve reached your goal you want to maintain or increase your fitness/health but you can be a bit more flexible with your withdrawals.
We know that the keys to a healthy relationship with food are moderation and balance. The same is true for our spending habits.
Just like we can overindulge in unhealthy foods, we can also overspend on unnecessary things. And just like with food, when it comes to our money, it's important to find a balance that works for us.
Spending money is complicated like our relationship with food
Interestingly, our relationship with money can be just as complicated as our relationship with food.
Just like with food, we can have a love/hate relationship with money. We may love the freedom and flexibility it provides, but we also hate the stress and anxiety it can cause.
We may want to spend money on things that make us happy, but we also feel guilty about spending too much. We also want to eat all the delicious foods, but we feel guilty about eating too much.
And, just like with our food choices, we often feel like we're not good enough when it comes to our financial decisions.
We spend money because something was on sale even if we didn’t need it.
We spend money to fit in, to be accepted. We do the same with food when we’re in social situations.
We shop and/or eat to suppress our uncomfortable feelings (stressed, lonely, bored, frustrated, angry, criticized, etc.) or to distract ourselves from these feelings. We overspend and overeat to make ourselves feel better.
Losing money feels worse than gaining the same amount. Similarly, when we lose 2 kilos we feel like it’s “nothing” but when we gain the same amount it feels a lot.
We think we’ll be happy when we earn X amount and we also think we’ll be happy when we weigh X kilos.
Society sends us mixed messages in both areas
We hear that it's important to be "financially responsible," but then we're inundated with commercials for luxury cars and products.
Similarly, we read in the media that it’s important to eat mostly whole foods, drink responsibly and lead a healthy lifestyle but we’re constantly bombarded with adverts for highly processed foods, drinks and alcohol, and expected to work long hours.
Just like we can overspend, underspend, and misuse our money, we can also overeat, undereat and abuse our food in a variety of ways. And, just like with money, we can make better/healthier choices that will benefit our overall well-being.
A few key things to remember to keep our health and bank accounts in good shape.
When it comes to spending money or spending from our “health and fitness account”, there are a few key things to keep in mind
Make a rough budget and stick to it.
Spend on things that matter to you. If you don’t truly enjoy that dessert, don’t waste your calories on it.
Avoid buying things you and your body don’t need.
Understanding your habits around eating can help so much with reaching your health and fitness goals.
My Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course teaches you all the habits that can lead to permanent weight loss and provide a system to stick to these habits. It also helps you update your mindset around weight loss so you don’t self-sabotage your results and prepares you for unexpected and emotional situations too.
Rita May, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Rita May is a scientist turned Emotional Eating and Health Coach. She helps driven professionals and entrepreneurs who are successful in other areas in their life but struggle with their weight because of emotional and stress-eating.
Her coaching method is based on three pillars: the science of nutrition, psychology, and a bit of spirituality.
She doesn’t believe in the one-diet-fits-all approach. Instead of giving you a diet plan, she helps you choose a way of eating that you enjoy because that’s the one you will be able to sustain in the long term.
However, nourishing your body is not enough. Our well-being is also affected by stress, relaxation, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, joy, self-awareness, our personal history and so much more.
Using her Mindfulness to Food Freedom method and How to stop eating your feelings workbook she helps her clients eliminate emotional and stress-related overeating or binge eating. She designed her Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss program to help busy professionals and entrepreneurs lose weight and improve their health with just a little time investment per week so they can focus on their work, business, and family.
